The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers

The premise of this article is that journalism in the United States (US) is collapsing, and, as stated by the authors, "with it comes the most serious threat in our lifetimes to self-government and the rule of law..." They state that the internet luring away advertisers and readers and the economic meltdown are being wrongly blamed for "...newspapers, as we have known them ...disintegrating and... possibly [being] on the verge of extinction..."

They first detail the role of media corporations in abandoning news media because of lack of profitability or slowly cutting bureaus and jobs. "Mired in debt and facing massive losses, the managers of corporate newspaper firms seek to right the sinking ship by cutting costs, leading remaining newspaper readers to ask why they are bothering to pay for publications that are pale shadows of themselves. It is the daily newspaper death dance-cum-funeral march."

The authors observe that radio is, for the most part, abandoning reporting on news and that the internet, which depends on print news as its source of original journalism, has few business models for creating and sustaining news services of its own. However, "... the Internet cannot achieve its revolutionary potential as a citizens' forum without such journalism. We are entering historically uncharted territory in America, a country that from its founding has valued the press not merely as a watchdog but as the essential nurturer of an informed citizenry. The collapse of journalism and the democratic infrastructure it sustains is not a development that anyone, except perhaps corrupt politicians and the interests they serve, looks forward to. Such a crisis demands solutions equal to the task."

The authors trace the decline in newspapers back to the 1980's when newspaper owners began to look for short-term profits over long-term viability. A weakness growing as early as 1960 - a “generally agreed-upon professional code” that relied too heavily on official sources to set the news agenda and decide the range of debate in political culture - began to erode news journalism, so that now it is books, rather than daily news, that serve as a watchdog on issues. The authors cite the early news coverage of the planned invasion of Iraq as an example of the news "spoon-feeding us lies masquerading as fact-checked verities." Another example cited is the financial sector coverage even before the US financial crisis began. "They [news media] trade in trivia and reduce everything to spin, even matters of life and death."

The authors' premise is that "we should not seek to restore or re-create [the old corporate media system]. We have to move forward to a system that creates a journalism far superior to that of the recent past." The authors examine the discussion of the role of government in restructuring media, "the Fourth Estate", as the first duty of the state. They cite history and legal interpretation on government support of the press and point out that by issuing broadcast licenses, the government is already involved in regulation. "Both the rise and decline of commercial journalism can be attributed in part to government policies, which scrapped the regulations and ownership rules that had encouraged local broadcast journalism and allowed for lax regulation as well as tax deductions for advertising - policies that greatly increased news media revenues."

According to the authors, "The truth is that government policies and subsidies already define our press system." The question the authors pose is whether the government's policies and subsidies will be "enlightened and democratic". They suggest that "Enlightened elected officials, media unions and public interest and community groups that recognize the role of robust journalism are going to have to step up to argue for a real fix." They state that where reforms need to lead is "to have competing independent newsrooms of well-paid journalists in every state and in every major community." This, they state, is especially true for digital media, which needs to grow in a pluralistic system with non-monopolistic and varied institutional structures.

The authors propose a mix that "would vary, with more not-for-profit and subsidized media in rural and low-income areas, more for-profit media in wealthier ones. The first order of any government intervention would be to assure that no state or region would be without quality local, state, national or international journalism." The role of the state and public policy would be to help subsidise the resources for journalism as a public good, rather than a profit centre.

Government interventions proposed here include:

• "…we need to think about an immediate journalism economic stimulus, to be revisited after three years, and we need to think big. Let's eliminate postal rates for periodicals that garner less than 20 percent of their revenues from advertising. This keeps alive all sorts of magazines and journals of opinion that are being devastated by distribution costs. It is these publications that often do investigative, cutting-edge, politically provocative journalism."
  
• "…give all Americans an annual tax credit for the first [US]$200 they spend on daily newspapers. The newspapers would have to publish at least five times per week and maintain a substantial "news hole," say at least twenty-four broad pages each day, with less than 50 percent advertising. In effect, this means the government will pay for every citizen who so desires to get a free daily newspaper subscription, but the taxpayer gets to pick the newspaper--this is an indirect subsidy, because the government does not control who gets the money."
• "Have the government allocate funds so every middle school, high school and college has a well-funded student newspaper and a low-power FM radio station, all of them with substantial websites. We need to get young people accustomed to producing journalism and to appreciating what differentiates good journalism from the other stuff. "
• "The essential component for the immediate stimulus should be an exponential expansion of funding for public and community broadcasting, with the requirement that most of the funds be used for journalism, especially at the local level, and that all programming be available for free online."

The authors conclude that: "These proposals are a good start, but then the really hard work begins. We have to come up with a plan to convert failing newspapers into journalistic entities with the express purpose of assuring that fully staffed, functioning and, ideally, competing newsrooms continue to operate in communities across the country. The only way to do this is by using tax policies, credit policies and explicit subsidies to convert the remains of old media into independent, stable institutions that are ready to compete and communicate in the decades to come. To get from here to there, and especially to make possible multiple competing newsrooms in larger communities, policy-makers should be open to commercial ownership, municipal ownership, staff ownership or independent nonprofit ownership. Ideally the next media system will have a combination of the above; and the government should be prepared to rewrite rules and regulations and to use its largesse to aid a variety of sound initiatives. "