Senator Proposes Nonprofit Status For Newspapers 426
The AP is reporting that a senator has introduced legislation that would allow struggling newspapers to operate as nonprofits, similar to the way public broadcasting works. "[Sen. Benjamin] Cardin [D-Md.] introduced a bill that would allow newspapers to choose tax-exempt status. They would no longer be able to make political endorsements, but could report on all issues including political campaigns. Advertising and subscription revenue would be tax-exempt, and contributions to support coverage could be tax deductible. Cardin said in a statement that the bill is aimed at preserving local newspapers, not large newspaper conglomerates. ... The head of the newspaper industry's trade group called the bill a positive step."
1st Amendment? (Score:4, Insightful)
So in the US, we have the 1st Amendment which says this: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; ..."
It seems to me that what this law would do is give a competitive advantage to those newspapers that avoid endorsing candidates.
Isn't that abridging the freedom of the presses that want to make political statements endorsing candidates? It basically says, "Don't make political endorsements, or else we'll tax you."
Re:What a good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>A somewhat more balanced media is in everyone's interest.
Yes it is, but "balanced reporting" is a myth. The reporters allow their own biases to sneak-into the articles. Not on purpose of course, but just as a natural consequence of being human. For example if you asked me to report on the Democratic Convention, it would probably be very negative since I don't like big-government parties. Vice-versa if I did a Libertarian Convention article, it would probably end up being a fluff piece. It's just natural bias.
I prefer reporters be honest about their views, even if those views are slanted, rather than pretend to be unbiased, which is a falsehood. Nobody is unbiased.
BS (Score:3, Insightful)
That's bullshit, if a news organization cannot survive in the market it doesn't deserve to exist. We don't need another NPR-style organization. News is not Sesame St. for adults. The papers are facing the 21st century with a 19th century technology, WHAT DID THEY THINK WAS GONNA HAPPEN? Meanwhile, New York Times still makes me laugh every time someone links to it and it asks for registration, BS, I close the window right there. Drudge is 21st century news, adapt or die.
Re:Shortly to be followed by.... (Score:2, Insightful)
We've actually had that for a while now. [nea.gov]
Someone just forgot to tell the suits that they couldn't really commoditize culture without some serious problems creeping in.
Re:1st Amendment? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would agree with you, but there's already a lot of precedent for this.
For instance, churches are already tax exempt. (Apparent First Amendment violation number one.) But they are legally prohibited from making political endorsements, or risk losing their tax exempt status. (Apparent First Amendment violation number two.) As with all nonprofits organizations.
A lot would have to change for this to be considered unconstitutional.
Re:What a good idea (Score:3, Insightful)
I know that the path to a "somewhat more balanced media" rides right though my local newspaper collapsing and falling into oblivion. Of course, I'm speaking of the San Francisco Chronicle, and they are collapsing.
Re:1st Amendment? (Score:5, Insightful)
So what happens when the government decides a newspaper is a little too biased in their reporting and claim that it's endorsing another candidate? Will the press have to censor themselves to avoid appearing like an endorsement?
Re:1st Amendment? (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't that abridging the freedom of the presses that want to make political statements endorsing candidates? It basically says, "Don't make political endorsements, or else we'll tax you."
Not really, because the assumption is that everyone deserves to be taxed. Not being taxed is the exception - it's a special privilege, and if you want that status, you are required to do certain things.
Balanced media (Score:5, Insightful)
The newspapers are not making money now, so having their advertising and subscription revenues tax exempt won't matter. The big difference would be they'd be able to get tax deductible donations.
Why do you think soliciting donations will make the media more balanced? As the mayor of Corruptville, I of course realize that we need balanced reporting in our fair town. I will even donate some of my embezzled funds towards that end - as long as the newspaper doesn't tell anybody about my embezzlement.
The best part of Capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
The best part of Capitalism is letting bad business fail. If the newspapers can't fund themselves legitimately through voluntary commerce, like any other business, they need to fail, as they deserve.
With tax-exempt status, they exists solely at the mercy of government legislation. What are the chances they will criticize the government that grants them favored status?
This is a recipe for State control of news dissemination.
They may not be able to make political endorsement (Score:3, Insightful)
but they surely will still have their respective slants on stories, which political cartoons they carry, and so on.
Re:BS (Score:2, Insightful)
Drudge and news should never appear in the same sentence.
The fact that Drudge and the Huffinton post and other piles of shit like them are what passes for Web journalism, is the reason so many people are worried about the demise of the traditional newspaper.
Re:1st Amendment? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What a good idea (Score:3, Insightful)
How will this make the media "more balanced?"
Non-profit status for newspapers (that now can't have a political view) is simply a tax on newspapers that do. This seems like a limit on free speech along the lines of the fairness doctrine.
This is further complicated by the fact that no journalist seems to believe that they are capable of bias.
Re:BS (Score:5, Insightful)
Drudge is 21st century news, adapt or die.
In case you didn't notice, Drudge and his host of imitators are news aggregators, not reporters. The stories they link too have to come from somewhere. If all the old line, stale, MSM news outlets that people love to bitch about closed up shop, the blogosphere would have precious little to do.
Re:What a good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What a good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is, if you give up trying to be unbiased, you get Fox News.
Even if it is a mostly unattainable goal, it's better to try and deliver an unbiased product.
I do admit, it'd be nice if a reporter would be open about their bias right from the start. The nice thing about the web (if any papers transitioned to it correctly, which, of course, none have) is that you could make that sort of information available in a reporters bio. Trusting your news source is important; nobody has time to fact check all their news.
Re:1st Amendment? (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems to me that what this law would do is give a competitive advantage to those newspapers that avoid endorsing candidates.
Not really.
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.journalism.newspapers/browse_thread/thread/7d20a09702df3dc8 [google.com]
Although his bill would expressly permit nonprofits to publish newspapers, there is nothing under current law to prevent them from doing so. [...] The only major substantive change in the Cardin bill is a provision that would allow nonprofit newspapers to sell commercial ad space free of charge, provided that at least as much space is allotted for editorial content
as for ads.
There are already non-profit news organizations that get along just fine.
And nothing I've read contradicts what that google groups posting says.
The only thing that isn't 100% clear, to me, is whether the current non-profit newspapers operate under Section 501(c)3 of the IRS tax code (which is what everyone is so scared of & the google groups post elaborates on) or if they operate under some other free speech limiting portion of the tax code (you know, the one that prevents non-profits from endorsing political candidates).
Re:1st Amendment? (Score:2, Insightful)
Not that bad of an idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Desperation effort (Score:5, Insightful)
You have to realize how desperate the newspaper industry has become. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer printed their last paper edition last week. They're just a web site now, and they distribute their news via Twitter. That's how far down they've come. The Detroit Free Press only prints on Thursday, Friday, and Sunday now. The San Francisco Chronicle may go next.
And those were once Great Metropolitan Dailies. Little papers go under every day.
Nothing is really replacing them. Blogs are mostly punditry; few have paid reporters. If anything, the future may be TV news presented via the Web. TV news has historically been time-limited, but that's not a Web problem.
Re:What a good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There should be no nonprofits (Score:4, Insightful)
If the tax system was fair in the first place, no loopholes would be needed. Income tax is really unlawful. It punishes productivity and penalizes saving.
Umm... Arguably, without taxes and nothing backing the US dollar, inflation would spiral out of control and that would really punish savers.
Arguably, income tax is preferable over spending tax, because if you reward saving too much you end up with a deflationary death spiral which is what caused the great depression and would still punish people who saved their money because they'd probably be unemployed and have to spend those savings.
Re:1st Amendment? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's still a stupid idea. Reporting of news is always going to be slanted one way or another. It's just as easy to not report news that hurts your candidate as it is to only report news that hurts your candidate's opponent.
Besides, it's not taxes that are hurting the newspapers. It is that no one wants to wait until tomorrow to read something that is already old news on the web.
Re:BS (Score:3, Insightful)
And the AP is what? You know that 95% of the AP content comes from member newspapers right? Nice circular logic there.
I'm sorry your local rag sucks the pole, but that's not a good basis for condemning the entire industry.
Re:What a good idea (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing is, if you give up trying to be unbiased, you get Fox News, or CNN, or MSNBC, or Pravda.
Fixed that for you. Bias doesn't just swing to the right. A major complaint of a lot of people is that most of the media bias seems to be to the left.
Re:Only hindering the inevidible. (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is, the online news services are all leaching off the traditional media for their content.
I'm actually looking forward with mild amusement to the panic when the flow of content from the big boys ceases.
It also doesn't help (Score:2, Insightful)
When the editors and such lean so hard to the left while the area they serve doesn't. A prime example is the AJC (Atlanta Journal and Constitution). They are so far the left they had to actually ask for a "conservative writer" for the editorial page. It was hilarious their reaction to known conservative writers they "refused to consider" . In other words they needed someone harmless and unknown. The AJC was practically the OJC during the last election. Yet go read pages which accept reader submissions and its clear the base doesn't lean at all the same way.
Now they are still bitching about loss of jobs and liberal professors are decrying the loss of jobs and "professionalism"; ready those dirty peasants with their blogs versus the glorious gods of journalism produced by said schools.
Bite me. Papers are getting what they deserved. Do not expect in an age where information is available from many sources that if you don't appeal to your possible customer base that you can remain viable. Either adapt to your customers or go the way of the dodo
Re:What a good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Dude, their slogan is "Fair and Balanced." I admit they're not trying to be unbiased, but they are definitely trying to pretend like they're unbiased, which is the worst of all worlds.
Re:The best part of Capitalism (Score:1, Insightful)
The problem is, at a local level, letting all of the newspapers fail is a gateway to corruption and the like.
I'm a reporter at a local paper. I cover the school board for a 10,000-resident town. Do you know how many stupid things we uncover? The majority of taxes in our area go to the local school and town, and very often I'm the only one at meetings. If papers aren't there examining everything the school/town do with a fine-toothed comb, who will?
Re:What a good idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Hmm...so, why doesn't the senator, expand this bill, to allow non-profit status to tv stations....?
How about local/national not for profit NEWS stations...like the news paper thing, they'd have to stay as neutral as possible.
You can't blame Fox News for being what they are...they are in a competitive market, and they found an apparently LARGE audience that eats up what they put out. They are in the business, primarily of making money.
Re:What a good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't resist: that's because reality has a well-known liberal bias. ;)
Nonprofit: Tax-exempt v. tax-deductible-for-donors (Score:4, Insightful)
Nonprofit isn't a single status. Certain nonprofits to which donations are tax-deductible for the donor have to avoid "substantial involvement" in politics, including explicit endorsements, to retain that particular status (Particularly, 501(c)(3) organizations, so called because their tax exemption is established in 26 U.S.C. sec. 501(c)(3)). When the group of people who make up a 501(c)(3) want to act collectively politically, they typically set up separate organizations which are also tax-exempt nonprofits, but to which donations are not tax-deductible for the donor, which can be substantially involved in politics.
Most tax-exempt nonprofits are not restricted in their political involvement at all. See, generally, 26 U.S.C. sec. 501 [excluding 501(c)(3)].
Furthermore, with regard to newspapers, any newspaper which chose to become a nonprofit (i.e., not to be operated for the benefit of private owners/shareholders) could do so now and become a 501(c)(3) now with the restrictions that would be imposed by this bill. So I don't see how this really provides any new options.
Re:The best part of Capitalism (Score:4, Insightful)
The best part of Capitalism is letting bad business fail.
If the bailouts Congress has been handing out so freely haven't convinced you that we aren't really in a capitalistic society any more, nothing ever will. We're running an unholy union of capitalism and socialism right now, and I really wish we'd pick one of the two and stick with it. As it is, we get the drawbacks of both, and the benefits of neither.
Omission is not always bias (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, why are protesters relevant? You're clueless if you don't get the idea that they are presenting an opposing viewpoint, but why do we need to know every anti-Democrat opinion there? If you want a story on it, it should be a SEPARATE story (or even editoral) and thus shouldn't be a part of the general convention coverage article. Thus omission isn't bias, it's proper reporting.
By your argument, failing to report the tin-foil hat conspiracy version of stories is biased omission. But what is the cutoff? Presenting "both sides of the story" isn't the basis of unbiased reporting, it is the basis of turning editorials into reporting when it should be left to the opinion pages. I don't need to read the conservative counter to a Democrat's speech in an article about the speech. That counterspeech should be its own story or in the OP-ED.
Re:Omission is not always bias (Score:4, Insightful)
For example, why are protesters relevant? You're clueless if you don't get the idea that they are presenting an opposing viewpoint, but why do we need to know every anti-Democrat opinion there?
Because generally speaking, the reporting about the RNC is /certain/ to mention them. That's where bias leaks in, as GP stated - not so much in what is said, but what is left unsaid.
Re:What a good idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Fixed that for you. Bias doesn't just swing to the right. A major complaint of a lot of people is that most of the media bias seems to be to the left.
Really, mind pointing out who "a lot of people" are? I find it funny that so many people reference that the general public is sick of liberal bias in the media, yet I never actually see the evidence that proves it. I never see where the general public even acknowledges that it has a clue what said liberal bias is.
Was it liberal bias that the majority of the nation didn't give two shits about a blowjob yet the media harped over it for a year and a half because a certain party was pushing the story daily?
The so-called "liberal bias" in the media is nothing more than "conservative propaganda" being dished out. Sure, there's liberals in the media utilizing tv and radio just as well as conservatives. But acting like they are more prevalent is horseshit being fed to you by an agenda that's fooling you. Having a couple of segments per day of liberals doesn't make everything you do liberal bias (COUGHCNNCOUGH). Meanwhile Fox News is 24/7 conservative mouthpiece and yet no one has the balls to say the words "conservative media bias." Or maybe it has less to do with having the minerals and more to do with people spreading the word, which they've done blindly and without question in regards to the "liberal media bias."
I tell ya, Murdoch and fellow conservatives have done a great job brainwashing the public. Apparently if you don't read the GOP line word-for-word all day long, you're liberal biased media. How fucking moronic.
Wake me when the media stops sucking and the unwashed masses pull their heads out of their collective asses. The only story I see coming out of any station, CNN, Fox News, etc., is their obvious belief that their viewers are idiots who can't think for themselves. No thanks, I'd rather my media doesn't treat me like I lack the ability to come up with my own conclusions.
Re:1st Amendment? (Score:4, Insightful)
Suppose you are the Salt Lake Tribune, and you want to continue as a regular newspaper, in which event you will be taxed. And suppose that your competitor, the Deseret News or whatever, chooses tax-exempt status and hence gets a 20% 'reward'.
Do you think you'll be able to compete with that for long? How are you able to believe that in this situation, the government is "not punishing" your Salt Lake Tribune?
There is no way to turn the sow's ear of preferential tax breaks into a silk purse of "fair economic controls" or "level playing field" or "reward Paul without punishing Peter".
Re:What a good idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Ivory Tower Reality has a liberal bias.
REALITY itself has no bias. Reality is what it is.
Funny phrases such as this one only show how stupid liberal bias has crept into everything. Reality isn't biased, only those wearing rose colored glasses think so.
Re:1st Amendment? (Score:3, Insightful)
The bigger reason for that is that the Catholic Church contains about the same distribution of political perspectives as the public at large, and even the Catholic heirarchy is only slightly less diverse.
Plus, the Catholic Church isn't, in the last couple centuries, quite as vigorous about the public use of the "ban hammer" as it once was, perhaps having learned, through several centuries of experience, that influence is not always enhanced by indiscriminate use of extreme sanction.
Re:What a good idea (Score:4, Insightful)
MSNBC and HNN have nearly the same format, a morning variety show with varied opinion, but definitely not a "just news" program, some number of hours of news readers and then opinion guys/gals for primetime.
Nobody from Fox News would ever claim that O'Reilly is a news man (well he might, who knows? His program clearly isn't a news program though, and even he'd say that) same with MSNBC, Olberman nas been very outspoken on the fact that's he's paid to give his opinion, that's the point of his show, and as such, it's not a news program. It was MSNBC that really botched it over the convention coverage and tried to use the prime-time opinion line up for news.
Bottom line though, and it affects papers too, people tend to like to read opinions and editorials and they seem to like to watch it more than they like real news. You non-profit either the papers or the broadcast news and you probably have to dump them. There is probably a greater problem here if you take a step back; ABC,NBC, and CBS have been scaling back news for decades, they're basically down to a 30 minute evening news broadcast and that's about it without some sort of entertainment/investigative journalism spin. More people want to watch Jeopardy than "The News." Making papers non-profit might be a good way to make them cover more news and to protect them a little bit, but it remains unclear to me that people want to actually read news, they kind of like how they get to pick the kinds of "news" they can read or watch on their own and listen to the bias.
Even the financial news has become a sham, and if there is ever something you should be able to report on without bias, it's the markets. They do more cheerleading than real news. They're poopooing Jon Stewart's criticism and he's the wrong messenger but his points are 100% valid. Honestly, I think a whole lot fewer people watch and you can hardly run a 24 network with real news, let alone the dozen or so that we've got. It's hard to put the horse back in the barn.
Re:What a good idea (Score:3, Insightful)
"Yes it is, but "balanced reporting" is a myth."
Which is exactly why we don't want the government doing the press any favors. It's going to be hard to get anything critical about the government from press that needs government favors to survive.
Re:Desperation effort (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe they never should have been dailies in the first place? Perhaps the fact that they are now only printing when there is enough there to print is a GOOD THING. Now they aren't wasting several thousands of trees daily to print fluff that no one actually gave a flying fuck about in the first place other than the person who wrote it and the company that is trying to justify to people why the need to buy a daily subscription.
There really isn't THAT much news in the world that people NEED to know about, even less that people care about, far less still that people will actually bother to read about.
You seem to think that the newspapers were 'needed' before and 'needed to have daily issues'. I suggest that the need was far less than you think and was nothing more than a way for them to take in more advertising and subscription revenue.
They are failing for the same reason the record industry is. They were pushing bullshit product that people didn't actually want for more than people wanted to spend, but there were basically no alternatives. Newspapers were virtual monopolies in most towns, only larger ones had multiples. Something else came along and people realized they didn't have to subscribe that that bullshit monopoly anymore, now rather than adapt and cut their ridiculous costs and move on to the next stage, they are whining and dieing.
Its not because we don't need/want the news. Its because the people running these businesses and the employees working for them are incapable of changing. The lack of ability to change to your environment means you either have to move to a different environment or you die. The employees at newspapers that can adapt will move on. The editors, reports and management that can't, will die with their newspaper.
Re:What a good idea (Score:4, Insightful)
When everyone else in the world seems to have turned upside down, maybe it's time to look at your own orientation.
Truthfully, until the internet came along, we used to get most of our daily news filtered through some reporter and editor. Today, we can read the federal register, congressional web sites, get blogs from people in the middle of a war zone, and so on.
This is just like all the problems we're having with the RIAA, MPAA and others. Distributors do not have a monopoly on the news any more and they're losing out to people who want to get their information, movies, music, entertainment or whatever from the source.
I won't argue whether "the media" is biased or not. It's rapidly becoming irrelevant. And now my very own Senator Ben Cardin wants to prop them up with my tax dollars.
I have a better idea: let them die a normal, free-market death.
Re:What a good idea (Score:3, Insightful)
A lot of people are Chinese. A fair old number are Indian. HTH.
Re:Omission is not always bias (Score:5, Insightful)
An unbiased news report might look like this:
Politician A today unveiled his plans for [some program]. The major parts of this program are [Part A],[Part B],[Part C]. The new legislation will be offered in the legislature next week.
A biased new article is more like this:
Politician A, whose approval ratings are at record lows, today unveiled his plans for [some program], which has been is blasted by [some hyperventilating critic] as [some affront to any number of fringe groups] . The major parts of this [controversial] program are [Part A],[Part B],[Part C]. The new legislation will be offered in the legislature next week but faces widespread opposition by [a minority of lunatics].
Note that there would generally be several paragraphs detailing the supposed failings of the three parts and featuring criticism from various people who have not even seen the legislation.
I suspect that if you are paying attention, you will notice that articles of the latter nature are more prevalent in the media today than.
I care less about the bias than the approach to the news, to the guests, to the context.
So you are OK with the condescending, arrogant attitudes that are typical of NPR?
Re:What a good idea (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree entirely. There seems to be a bias on /. that scientists are some kind of creative robot, where it's all about the facts and no bias or preconceptions creep in. People who say as much get flamed for questioning the objectivity of scientists. I suppose they think they're some different kind of creature than what the rest of us humans are.
Sure, bias can creep in, but objectivity can be applied. You may not achieve perfect balance and have the most correct interpretation of the event in question, but it's a lot better than if you don't even try.
Bias (Score:3, Insightful)
That's why the more diverse sources of reporting there are, the better. Readers can read different reports which focus on different details and make up their own minds based on the whole. Unless of course they want to be spoon-fed a headline and two-sentence summary and sound bite of outrage, then they can watch Fox News.
Incidentally I work as a newspaper reporter, and I think this senator's idea is great. So I am clearly declaring my bias.
If diverse sources of reporting are conglomerated into fewer and fewer media sources (look at Canada as a micro-example, there are two companies controlling most of the daily newspapers across the country) then variety suffers. If this continues, as it will if corporatism dominates media through buyouts, bankruptcies, etc. then there will be very little diversity. You will have, essentially, what existed before the advent of the printing press - only the wealthy could afford to have anything recorded, so the they got to write history.
The wealthy have often controlled the press (e.g. Hearst) but in the 20th century there were a wide variety of "slants" in print because it wasn't too hard for someone to round up investors, or start a non-profit and create their own publication. Today ownership of or access to a colour press capable of doing magazines or newspapers is prohibitively expensive and the biggest problem is the business model is broken. Few people want to pay for what they read, so subscription revenue is down, and advertising revenue is drying up.
Yes, the Internet will change everything but no big media companies have found a way to make money off Internet-based publications on the same scale as their print products. And no one is going to pay to subscribe to a news website, that's been tried several times and in my opinion it will never work on a large scale.
To bring my ramblings to a close, I think this senator's idea is great because it could pave the way for independent, Internet-based publications to thrive, providing news to niche markets, and as non-profits, they could solicit donations from loyal readers. That could be enough to allow investigative journalism to thrive again, and to allow small, independent publications to grow and thrive by the quality of their work, instead of by virtue of being the biggest game in town.
Re:Considering costs... (Score:3, Insightful)
So how come in every newspaper I read about a subject I have personal, first hand knowledge about, they get it completely wrong? I have had the experience of being completely misquoted in a newspaper article, where something I said was completely changed (and I knew I was speaking to a reporter, and I had approx. 8 witnesses who all agreed I was misquoted) and a complaint to the editor didn't even get a retraction. Whenever I see a news article in my local paper about technology or science, it is completely and totally wrong. Remember all those old articles about the "internet super-highway"? Or how about whenever the papers bring up violent video games (apparently every game ever is named Doom or Grand Theft Auto). Now if the only reason I see this blatant misinformation is because I have first-hand knowledge of the thing they are talking about, why should I believe they are getting everything else right? Frankly most bloggers seem down right competent next to them, and I hate the word blog with a passion.
Re:What a good idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Which facts? Facts according to whom?
All media choose to include certain facts, and exclude other facts.
Here is a good example of media bias. Next time someone gets into trouble with the law, pay attention. The news headline will say "Prominent Republican So and so was caught ______ " while if it is a Democrat you might see "So and so under suspicion of _______". The bias is there, because facts are emphasized or de-emphasized according to the bias.
It is up to you to realize that such things happen all the time, regardless of if is on FOX or NBC. The fact is, I can see the bias because I have a brain.
I don't have a problem when people admit their bias (left or right). Just quit pretending you're unbiased when you're clearly not.
Re:BS (Score:3, Insightful)
And you're aware that modern newspapers are news aggregators just like Drudge, adding little more than local flavor, etc.
To a large degree, this is true -- which is one of the main reasons they're in trouble. The way for papers to survive is not for them to become more like blogs, but less so. My problem is with the idea that the line I quoted (your words, "Drudge is 21st century news, adapt or die") provides a model for newspapers or other organizations which want to do original reporting in this century or any other.
Drudge breaks stories when he gets them, and conducts original reporting, just like the regular newspapers do ... Drudge got his big break by breaking a story that the MSM did not want to report on, the Lewinsky scandal
Did Drudge go out and cover the story himself, conducting interviews, reading records, digging through the dirt? Did he pay other reporters to do this? Or did he just link to those existing news outlets which were covering the story, thus calling attention to it and inspiring even more MSM coverage for him to link to?
As of now, drudge.com is basically a link farm. There's no evidence of original reporting on there that I can see. Don't get me wrong -- I think this kind of news aggregation is great, and I'm glad Drudge and many others are doing it. But they could no more exist without original journalism to feed their sites than /. could exist without the computer industry.