QUERY: Are there serious options for "subsidies" for the news?
Bill Densmore
How about some ideas. Between the bookends of the traditional journalistic
view: "Public support for journalism over my dead body!" and the notion of
a government press -- think Voice of America -- what are the options.
One idea: Report for America?
http://www.cjr.org/reconstruction/report_ignores_webs_nimble_nat.php
(I sent the idea to the Obama transition site, change.gov, in January)
-- bill
FROM THE WASHINGTON POST OP/ED PAGE:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/22/AR2009102203960.html
PUBLISHED HEADLINE: Yes, journalists deserve subsidies too
By Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols
Friday, October 30, 2009
EXCERPT --
What to do? Bailing out media conglomerates would be morally and politically
absurd. These firms have run journalism into the ground. If they cannot make
it, let them go.
Wait for "pay-wall" technologies, billionaire philanthropists or unimagined
business models to generate enough news to meet the immense demands of a
self-governing society? There is no evidence that such a panacea is on the
horizon.
This leaves one place to look for a solution: the government.
Did we just call for state-run media? Quite the opposite.
We seek to renew a rich if largely forgotten legacy of the American free-press
tradition, one that speaks directly to today's crisis. The First Amendment
necessarily prohibits state censorship, but it does not prevent citizens from
using their government to subsidize and spawn independent media.
Indeed, the post-colonial press system was built on massive postal and printing
subsidies. The first generations of Americans never imagined that the market
would provide sound or sufficient journalism. The notion was unthinkable. They
established enlightened subsidies, which broadened the marketplace of ideas and
enhanced and protected core freedoms. Their initiatives were essential to
America's progress.
The value of federal journalism subsidies as a percentage of gross domestic
product in the first half of the 19th century ran, by our calculations, to
about $30 billion per year in current dollars. It is this sort of commitment,
established by Jefferson and Madison, that we must imagine to address the
current crisis.
That level of subsidy to journalism is found in Scandinavian nations, which are
among the freest and most democratic in the world.
Saving newspapers may be impossible. But we can save journalism. Step one is to
begin debating ways for enlightened public subsidies to provide a competitive
and independent digital news media. Also, we should greatly expand funding for
public and community media, and establish policies that help convert dying
daily newspapers into post-corporate low-profit news operations that realize
the potential of the Internet. If we do so, journalism and democracy will not
just survive. They will flourish.
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Aldon Hynes
needs to be that different from Teach for America. Good Journalism and Good
Education, in my mind, is very closely linked. Simply providing good
journalism teachers and good media education teachers in high schools,
would, IMHO, do wonders for the news industry.
Beyond that, I really like the idea of subsidies that aren't viewed as
subsidies. The paid public notice subsidy is, IMHO, a great example of the
sort of subsidies that governments shold be supporting. The cash for
clunkers program and the benefit for first time home buyers are other
programs that at least indirectly support advertising and hense support news
organizations. I'm less excited about them, since in my mind they are
further removed from the need of the public to know what is going on in our
governments.
As I think more about it, there is another, similar subsidy that I think
would be very good for our country. Here in Connecticut, we have publicly
financed campaigns. I don't know how much of the public financing of
campaigns goes to newspaper advertisements, but it is another indirect form
of subsidy to news organizations.
Personally, I'd love to see public financing of campaigns expanded, and done
in such away that more of the public funding goes to advertising that
supports local news organizations. It is a logical place to advertise
anyway.
Thoughts?
Aldon
Josh Stearns
Journalism Jobs Program
The final proposal for a short-term remedy to the journalism crisis is an attempt to support veteran, qualified reporters and simultaneously to engage young people in journalism. One of the biggest problems with the collapsing business model of print newspapers is the possibility that tens of thousands of highly trained and experienced reporters will dissipate into other sectors of the economy, and tens of thousands of talented young people will be dissuaded from becoming journalists in the first place.
Building on Eric Klinenberg’s idea, a small percentage of these AmeriCorps jobs could go to journalism positions, fellowships, or even to journalism projects to report on the new initiatives being created through this act. These also could provide a much-needed service if combined with or subsumed under university media literacy programs. A promising model has been implemented recently by a John S. and James L. Knight Foundation-backed initiative at Stony Brook University. The school has hired 50 laid-off journalists to undergo summer training with the goal of joining dozens of universities in the fall to teach “news literacy” to non-journalism majors.
A similar program could be established to hire journalists to teach media literacy and help launch journalistic endeavors at all levels of education. The media literacy program could be expanded to include many more universities through the creation of formal Department of Education grants that might be leveraged using foundation support.
There are other direct avenues for federal government programs to aid in job creation in this industry. The Department of Labor could design a program aimed at keeping reporters employed at existing news organizations or at new outlets. Such a job-creation program would stimulate the economy and offset unemployment payments that might otherwise go to out-of-work reporters. The structure and administration of such a program requires further study, but the basic cost-benefit analysis is promising. If the government were to subsidize 5,000 reporters at $50,000 per year, the cost would be $250 million annually, a relatively modest sum given the billions coming out of Washington. Drawing on Ed Baker’s ideas for subsidizing journalists and from the New Deal-era Federal Writers Project, this injection of resources would serve as a bridge to help keep reporters on the beat in local communities as the industry transitions to new business models and new media forms.
R & D Fund for Journalistic Innovation
“The only solution I have to offer is pluralism itself,” writes New York University Professor Jay Rosen about the future of news. “Many funders, many paths, many players, and many news systems with different ideas about how to practice journalism for public good (and how to pay for it, along with who participates).”
To create the necessary institutional pluralism, and to provide for a future of text-based media read on electronic devices with multiple revenue streams and multiple platforms, we need to think about the new media marketplace as an incubator for innovation. We propose the creation of a government-seeded innovation fund for journalism — a taxpayer-supported venture capital firm that invests in new business models. As a starting point, we are proposing a $50 million per year budget.
Such a fund is not without precedent. The Telecommunications Development Fund (TDF) was created by Section 714 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act to focus investment in small businesses that produce important public goods in the communications sector that were ignored by for-profit venture capital.
A private, non-governmental, venture capital firm, TDF was seeded with public funds and authorized to make investments with public service goals. TDF is governed by a board appointed by the FCC chairman. This model could be adopted for a journalism fund with provisions that the board would be made up of representatives from industry, academic institutions, and public interest groups. A firewall would be set up between the board and the journalism initiatives they fund. Clearly, such an initiative would require an act of Congress to establish, though it’s crucial that such legislation include provisions to shield the fund from any undue political influence. This new venture capital firm could be set up as a public-private partnership, with federal matching funds for foundation-supported projects.
Whereas many of the other strategies discussed here are aimed at transitioning legacy media into new sustainable forms, the new journalism fund should support forward-thinking endeavors that take advantage of new technologies. Resources should also be used to provide guaranteed loans to startup initiatives, such as Web-based community newsrooms and services, as well as projects that serve communities of color. The idea is to try to catalyze a wave of innovation in journalism 2.0 and to trigger market forces that will help move some of these nascent projects from concept to full-fledged operations.