Newspapers’ Decline Started Long Before the Web
“The profit motive ultimately is not compatible with the public service of journalism.” — Robert McChesney, communications professor at Univ. of Illinois and co-author of “The Death and Life of American Journalism”
In this interview, the authors of “The Death and Life of American Journalism” argue that the decline of newspapers happened long before the advent of the Internet. It happened when profit-minded bosses started running newsrooms, instead of bosses looking out for what’s best for a democratic society.
When the industry sees the Seattle Post-Intelligencer go Web-only and the Rocky Mountain News shut down, as the authors point out, there becomes less and less original reporting. When thousands of layoffs happen across dozens of newsrooms and furloughs become the talk of the town, less deep reporting is done.
The authors say with fewer reporters searching and investigating stories, many newsrooms are turning to two places for copy to put in the paper and online:
- aggregation from other sources (i.e. The Associated Press, Politico.com)
- government itself (i.e. “the mayor says” stories)
These are two examples of stories journalists can’t control, and do little to inform citizens.
“So here’s what we have: The shutting down of newspapers, the decline of newspapers, while at the same time with no real replacement by the Web. All the Web is doing is aggregating what little coverage is still done by the newspaper. It’s a disastrous circumstance. If the Web was replacing newspapers, great, wonderful. But that’s not happening. What we’re doing is creating a void.” — John Nichols, Washington correspondent for The Nation and co-author of “The Death and Life of American Journalism”
The conclusion that Nichols and McChesney draw at the end of their book is government should subsidize news to save it. They argue that for the first 75 years of the nation’s history, the U.S. government provided (by their calculation) $30 billion in 2010 dollars in media subsidies. These included postage and printing subsidies for newspapers.
The pair also say government controls broadcast (television and radio) media by controlling the airwaves, and in the past have created laws that go against the notion of a completely independent media.
While other reasons exist for radio and television airwave control (limited supply), I can’t disagree more with the thought of the government handing money out to media organizations.
Signing up for a government subsidy by a media outlet only leads to licensing of some kind (look at RTE in Ireland or the BBC for example). Because they’ve received cash to operate, they’ve been forced to abide by certain laws that would go against freedom of the press rights.
Government subsidies would have the opposite effect than the authors are in search for: it would cause government control of information and lead to a misinformed citizenry.
