Guess we could subsidize buggy whip makers too


Should newspapers be non-profit?
I'm shaking my head over this one by Joe Mathewson. He wants to convert newspapers to nonprofit organizations.

But does "healthy" have to mean "profitable"?

Let's dream for a moment about newspapering freed from the profit motive. Purists may argue that newspapers, like any other enterprise, should have to earn their way in the marketplace, and if they fail the market test, so be it.

But in fact newspapers, as important to the civic health of our society as public transportation, have a claim on public allegiance that goes beyond financial measure. Does anyone believe that our society is better, our civic virtue enhanced, by the failure of the Washington Star and the New York Herald Tribune and the Chicago Daily News and all the other fine dailies that have perished for purely financial reasons?

To be sure, if advertisers continue to pare their commitment to newspapers, they may become less interesting to read and less useful. But if their professional staffs can be preserved, perhaps even augmented as their companies capitalize better on the Internet, newspapers' freedom and opportunity to report the news, especially the sensitive, prickly news, can only be enhanced, freed of any concern about offending advertisers.

Again, market devotees will resist, contending that lack of competition and the profit motive will give rise to journalistic sloth. But in fact competition for the news consumer will continue to be rife, especially for the younger folk who tend to look to broadcasting and the Internet rather than picking up a newspaper. To survive and prosper in the face of this vibrant competition, newspapers will have to be very good indeed.

If the newspapers were fulfilling their job, they wouldn't be in trouble. As it is, practiced readers can pick a handful of newspaper websites and know most of the news stories that will be reported over the next day or so in other papers, and in about three days on the major television networks.

Newspapers have been in trouble since the 1970s when cities who used to have four or five papers dropped to one or two. Some mark the decline of American journalism with evening papers folding up their operations. Me, I mark it with the funny pages. When you can't read the comics, I know that the accountants are calling the shots.

I'm a news junkie from way back and a former paperboy, but I wouldn't read a publicly supported paper. I hardly ever watch PBS, and only occasionally listen to NPR's All Things Considered or Fresh Air.

I believe newspapers do serve an important function, but I question if they can do that if they are protected from the free market. Even NPR and PBS have to compete.

Oh, and if it is going to sell newspapers and advertising, it is a for-profit business in my book.

Hat tip to Brain Terminal.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Fri - December 9, 2005 at 05:27 AM  Tag


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