SOUTH DAKOTA STRAIGHT TALK

Straight Talk Commentary – Those running OUR federal government (the President and the majority party) just can’t get enough of the government deepening itself in the ownership and operation of many facets of our economy and our lives.

President Obama last weekend suggested to the nation’s newspaper editors that he would be “HAPPY (emphasis added) to look” at proposals for a federal bailout of their industry. The very simple fact is that newspapers are a dead business model. The government has no business trying to save the dead tree day late news media than it does going into the buggy whip industry.

Despite all the moolah we might throw at the papers they can’t be saved!

Gathering and reporting local news is still vital and can be economically rewarding but a meaningful timing and delivery model needs to be figured out. Locally KELOland.com is light years (and I would guess financially) ahead of our Daily Planet who has a few good days but is always slow and flatfooted. Nothing personal it’s their Gutenberg  model.

Sidebar – Not to say I don’t appreciate the “Argus Leader”, they have been doing a nice job online occasionally  with their live streamed afternoon interviews with our local and federal officials and occasionally with sports interviews.

There are several other interesting arguments made in the following article from “The Week” magazine worth considering.

        The necessity of a free press to our Democracy

The fact that news organizations should be independent of those they cover

The nonsense that somehow all media will end up in conservative ownership

The nonsense that without newspapers there will be no one to check facts and provide a check and balance to the government

A Newspaper Bailout

The Week

September 22, 2009

Maybe President Obama was just being nice, said Craig Crawford in CQ Politics, when he told newspaper editors over the weekend that he would be "happy to look" at proposals for a federal bailout of their industry. "The idea seems dicey, at best"—not just because of "the cost in these times of rising federal debt and the public's growing fatigue with bailouts." The bottom line is that "newspapers that owe their lives to the government are probably not worth having."

Obama's rationale for considering the idea, said Ed Morrissey in Hot Air, was that newspapers are serious institutions that shape useful policy debates while the blogosphere just encourages partisan shouting. Not only is that untrue, but "I seem to recall something in the Constitution" that explicitly made what the press does "none of the federal government’s business." The government should never have stuck its nose in the insurance and automaking industries, "but this is much more dangerous."

It's also pointless, said Michael Masnick in Techdirt. "There are plenty of 'real reporters' who do plenty of 'serious fact-checking' within the blog world too." The idea that newspapers need to be given preferential treatment over other sources of news reporting "is pure folly."

"It is no secret the newspaper industry is in trouble," said the Delaware County, Penn., Daily Times in an editorial, but the Newspaper Revitalization Act proposed by Rep. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) is not the answer. The bill would give tax breaks to newspapers that turn themselves into non-profit corporations, and in return they would have to stop endorsing candidates. Newspapers do have to adapt to survive online competition -- but "a truly free press requires freedom from political or government intervention even when that intervention is well intentioned."

It's nice to hear people at least talking about a future for print journalism, said Phil Bronstein in the San Francisco Chronicle. A future without profit is better than no future at all. "I'm for supporting journalism, even if it takes a vote in Congress to get there."