Comments on: Tax breaks (not bailouts) for newspapers

By: Tuco

Tuco — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:10:28 +0000

maybe no weants to read the newspaper because of the junk that is being wriien?

maybe it’s the fact that the newspapers will not mention the race of the bad guy in less it’s a white guy doing something bad to a minority?

maybe the papers report the samething over and over again?

maybe we don’t need the papers?

By: reddy

reddy — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 11:05:24 +0000

Of course media is part and parcel of this world. It cannot escape from the meltdown

By: jgogek

jgogek — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 07:05:18 +0000

A government bailout of newspapers is a good idea. But the money should only be used for re-tooling: Helping newspapers embrace the digital era and depart the dead-tree era. Newspaper and wire service journalism are critical to democracy and free society. Blogs, TV, Radio, even magazines get their news first from newspaper and wire service journalism. They can’t survive either without these vitally important reporters and editors.

Your right that we’re about to see some major newspapers going down; I expect that within the next couple of years there will be a major US city with no newspaper. But it doesn’t have to happen.

Like the auto industry, newspapers are partly to blame for not changing with the times. But unlike the auto industry, bailing out newspapers will only require millions, not billions. And if the government takes some sort of equity stake in exchange for the re-tooling bailout, that’s OK. It works for NPR and BBC.

By: brian lee

brian lee — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 05:20:43 +0000

used to subscribe to the la times,but got sick reading about their point of view.they persistently try to persuade me to reconsider even suggesting that the discount coupons are incentive alone to disregard the half truths that they print.

By: Joann Nilson Tartalone

Joann Nilson Tartalone — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 04:41:20 +0000

As a journalism, Integrated Marketing Communication and new & emerging media professor who is actively engaged in research in this area, I have a couple of comments to ad here. Firstly, I teach cross-platform journalism so that my budding converged journalism students can write for all mediums and emerging medium forms that garner ad dollars in unprecedented amounts away from traditional television and print market areas. Secondly, the people that still read and subscribe to papers are only those resistant to technological change; one of which is my mother. She is retired and living in Florida. I visited her recently for ten days, picked up her paper for her every day and didn’t see her actually read it once–she is mostly chairbound. Unless traditional print mediums do not reinvent themselves in emerging markets such as those south of the border they will all fold to newer and more effective marketing targeted at publics which are staying more currently plugged in.

By: Steve Collins

Steve Collins — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 15:54:06 +0000

And one more thing, Brian doesn’t tell the half of it. I’ve had a JRC publisher try to charge employees to drink water at work. I’ve had the company award me a $100 prize for some story — and then renege on paying. I’ve seen one crummy, stupid, evil thing after another. So good riddance to the JRC. But I hope its papers can be saved.

By: Steve Collins

Steve Collins — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 15:52:08 +0000

Thanks for clarifying the whole issue some more. And much thanks for spreading word of plight across the globe. It can’t hurt!
By the way, take a look at an interesting piece that a blogger did for the Everyday Republican blog about your story and the reaction. It does speak to the changing ways of journalism, which I know you already get.
I hope you’ll be mentioning soon that we somehow come through this!

By: Robert MacMillan

Robert MacMillan — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 21:14:17 +0000

Regarding Brian’s comment (the former JRC newspaper editor) — It matches up with everything I’ve heard so far about the way things work at Journal Register. Ouch.

By: Robert MacMillan

Robert MacMillan — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 21:13:21 +0000

Neo – Thanks for the response. That is a good argument and I appreciate you writing it here. I will rebut on one point: The “bailout” term in the way that we’ve been using it in the past few months, and as it was used in the newspaper debate regarding Connecticut, has a definition. At least it does when I use it. I wanted to make sure that it was clear that no one is asking (at least for now!) for a taxpayer-funded bailout, the likes of which the auto and financial services sectors are receiving from the federal government. Nicastro, the other lawmakers and the DECD in Connecticut were quite clear about that. In fact, I didn’t even have to ask the question before they volunteered that information. They are correct – it’s not a bailout like that. They know what a firestorm that would raise.
I still wonder if such a proposal will come from somewhere in the business. Everyone I talk to says it won’t, but things change.

By: Neo

Neo — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 15:34:22 +0000

I was one of those “misinformed” who ran a story on my blog about the mulling of a “bailout” for these two failing newspaper operations. But the objection to the use of the word “bailout” is an objection to a word with a an inherent lack of specificity that reflects the dearth of rules that we have in our presumably market economy. It is not irresponsible as a preemptive measure to pose that Connecticut lawmakers were indeed pondering a “bailout,” whether that entails tax incentives or otherwise. The article was a good springboard for the “don’t try it, don’t even think about it” message to the newspapers. As far as it being a “bailout” or any conceivable form of preferential treatment, I don’t see any substantive difference. It is all using the intrinsically coercive power of government to pick the winners and losers in the economy, instead of the citizens themselves with their “powers of the purse.” The citizens had already spoken that they either do not need or want the news the local papers provide, or they are finding what they want elsewhere. They are not willing to “put their money where their mouths are” and buy the papers, so the government is going to take their money and do it for them? This is insane. Or else the government will “shift the burden” onto other with preferential tax treatment(like you wrote)? But once again, all of my objections will fail to connect since we are well past the stage of a logical and ethical way to run an economy, and into the era of the preferential abuse of political power.