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| Britain | |
| A national endowment for journalism | |
| 2009-02-14 | |
| The traditional newspaper is dying. The Evening Standard has been sold off for a pound to a former KGB agent, the Los Angeles Times is bankrupt and even the New York Times is in trouble. Mexican plutocrat Carlos Slim may become its largest shareholder in return for financing the paper's billion-dollar debt. Except for the financial press, newspapers have failed to convince readers to pay for online access -- and there is no reason to think that readers will suddenly succumb to the charms of PayPal. The newspaper bust has been good for one business. Policy wonks have been charging into the breach with a host of different solutions to the escalating crisis. Aside from the usual appeals for tax breaks and bail-outs, the more innovative proposals come in two types.
There is a third way out. We urge democracies throughout the world to consider the creation of national endowments for journalism that are carefully designed to confront the impending collapse of investigative reporting. The real concern is not the newspaper, but news coverage. It's not clear that print news is a viable technology. Classified ads are more efficiently delivered by websites. Nobody under 50 waits to read all about stock prices or sports scores in the morning edition. The government should sit back and let the market decide the right way to distribute the news. But there are huge costs to losing a vibrant core of investigative reporters covering local, national and international stories. The internet is well suited to detect scandals that require lots of bloggers to spend a little bit of time searching for bits of incriminating evidence. But it's no substitute for serious investigative reporting that requires weeks of intelligent inquiry to get to the heart of the problem. Without Woodwards and Bernsteins, there will be even more Nixons and Madoffs raining mayhem and destruction. It will take decades to revitalise investigative journalism if we allow the present corps of reporters to disintegrate. This is happening at an alarming rate. A Pew study indicates that 15,000 journalists lost their jobs in the US in 2008, with reductions of more than 20% at large newspapers. These grim numbers are harbingers of a worldwide crisis that undermines the very foundation of liberal democracy. Any serious solution should focus exclusively on this problem -- the collapse of investigative journalism, not the fate of particular delivery systems. The problem with a BBC-style solution is clear enough. It is one thing for government to serve as one source of investigation but quite another for it to dominate the field. A near-monopoly would mean the death of critical inquiry. There are serious problems with private endowments as well. For starters, there is the matter of scale. Pro Publica, an innovative private foundation for investigative reporting, is currently funding 28 journalists. It is hard to make the case for a massive increase in private funding when university endowments are crashing throughout the world, imperilling basic research. More fundamentally, a system of private endowments creates perverse incentives. Insulated from the profit motive, the endowments will pursue their own agendas without paying much attention to the issues that the public really cares about. Here is where our system of national endowments enters the argument. In contrast to current proposals, we do not rely on public or private do-gooders to dole out money to their favourite journalists. Each national endowment would subsidise investigations on a strict mathematical formula based on the number of citizens who actually read their reports on news sites. Some might find this prospect daunting. Readers may flock to sensationalist tabloids that will also qualify for grants for their "investigations". But common sense, as well as fundamental liberal values, counsels against any governmental effort to regulate the quality of news. So long as the endowment only subsidises investigative expenditures, in-depth reporting will get a large share of the fund -- provided that it generates important stories that generate broad interest. The endowment must monitor media hits and circulation counts. This is doable. Advertisers already rely on independent audits. So can the government. Some governmental monitoring of financial matters is also necessary. News organisations would otherwise be tempted to obtain subsidies for marketing and business operations. Without minimising the problems involved in institutional design, the creation of an effective and disciplined national endowment seems entirely realistic. The crisis in reporting comes at the worst possible time, when a broad range of industries are lining up for big bail-outs. We generally oppose government efforts to second-guess the market. But this case really is special. Liberal democracy can survive a crisis in the auto or construction industry, but it cannot do without a vibrant fourth estate. | |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #10 I would prefer a memorial. Newspapers should just die and let us move on. |
| Posted by: DoDo 2009-02-14 14:32 |
| #9 There already is a national endowment for journalism. It's housed in the Columbia University's School of Journalism, the University of Missouri's School of Journalism (or is it Mississippi? 3dc can tell us), etc. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2009-02-14 13:47 |
| #8 Pro-terror presstitutes should consider the fate of their predecessors, Goebbels and Streicher, and count themselves lucky if bankruptcy is all they get. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2009-02-14 11:56 |
| #7 A Pew study indicates that 15,000 journalists lost their jobs in the US in 2008 See, there is a silver lining to our current economic problems! I suppose the market for Obama cheerleaders is saturated. |
| Posted by: DMFD 2009-02-14 11:28 |
| #6 " losing a vibrant core of investigative reporters covering local, national and international stories" Losing? It hasn't existed in 20 years. They are all slanted now, from the choice of pejorative and prejudicial wording, slecting which facts to include or ignore to slant individual articles, to the choice of which stories to puslish and which to ignore. Journalism is dead. Good riddance. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2009-02-14 11:04 |
| #5 LOL Onion! |
| Posted by: .5MT 2009-02-14 10:38 |
| #4 "Anything that government dollars are spent on, the argument goes, are subject to "accountability" which is subject to political pressure from the Fixed that for ya', W. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2009-02-14 10:22 |
| #3 I don't see how this can occur without the government also (eventually) regulating the content. Anything that government dollars are spent on, the argument goes, are subject to "accountability" which is subject to political pressure from the party in charge. |
| Posted by: WTF 2009-02-14 08:35 |
| #2 The real alternative is to go back to their roots as simply broadsheets for the political parties they represent. Back in the 19th Century, that is what they were. That they started to attract advertising and make money was just a spin off rather than a goal. So, let's see the parties directly carry the load of propagandizing the masses rather than any government subsidy. Pay your party dues and get a subscription at the same time. Of course, the Donks won't support this because it would involve their own money. Socialism only works till the other guys money runs out. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2009-02-14 08:35 |
| #1 IMO, the establishment of National Endowment for Child Molestation is even more urgent. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2009-02-14 08:03 |