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."
What a good idea (Score:1, Interesting)
A somewhat more balanced media is in everyone's interest.
Good idea (Score:3, Interesting)
i like it (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this is a really great idea. It forces them to be a little less biased, and it keeps well-written articles available. The natural beauty of print is that it's costly to publish, compared to digitally. This tends to force the writing to be polished, which online articles, blogs specifically, never achieve. There's just something nice about reading an article someone else has proofread before you. It's jarring to read blogs that have foregone this, as you tend to notice the little grammatical mistakes everywhere. Or worse, it's syntactically correct, but semantically rubbish.
Re:On the face of it... (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is, the vast majority of newspapers are owned by giant conglomerates. Gannett and McClatchy just going to say, "Oh hey, lets dissolve!"? Don't think the CEO's with their 7 figure salaries are gonna get behind that one.
Anyway, even the papers that are already non-profit are taking it in the ass. Look at St. Pete. The industry has to successfully make a revenue transition from 1 medium to another without going bankrupt in the process, and it doesn't help that the web sucks for revenue. Look at all these huge, popular web 2.0 services that still haven't found a way to make a profit. The Ad revenue pie is the same size, but way too many people want a piece, and you don't get that natural geographic advantage that newspapers have traditionally enjoyed.
No tax on losses and independence (Score:2, Interesting)
Just between us, are you comfortable with a newspaper's independence if government officials and bureaucrats can threaten their tax-exempt status?
Couple this with the return of the fairness doctrine, and you have a recipe for an Orwellian experience.
Considering costs... (Score:5, Interesting)
The two primary costs of operating a newspaper are (a) paying the reporters, and (b) printing papers. We all know subscriptions are down and that the medium is evolving so that only the largest national papers can afford to print copies. Also, readership in local areas doesn't really demand printed copies as much as they want access to the information. For example, one thing local reporters cover is town council meetings and police reports. Thanks largely to digital search mechanisms, it's way easier to grab this information from the pages of a reputable townie news service website than to sift through a printed paper.
So, I see the costs of printing a newspaper disappearing over the years and that leaves only the cost of paying reporters. My question is... what's to stop the small newspapers from firing the majority of their staff and operating like Internet newspapers with self-moderated volunteer staffs? All it'd take is to deploy Slashcode, buy-in from town administrators and business owners, and a critical mass of town residents to begin operating a near-free town news service.
Meanwhile, I see "tradition newspapers" as an occupation disappearing, regardless of tax exempt status or not.
And look at it this way... the newspaper profit model has been largely based on ad-revenue for so long that a simple "local" implementation of Craigslist could easily facilitate job postings, garage sales, and local advertising so that tiny, tiny charges for these would pay the small staff that's needed to maintain the hardware and post the most interesting stories on the mainpage.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:1st Amendment? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why not just Newspapers?
Why not TV?
Blogs?
Magazines?
What is the Press these days?
I am all for the press not endorsing candidates but I just don't see that happening.
Re:Balanced media (Score:5, Interesting)
To be fair, though, the one major example I have of donation supported media (National Public Radio) is remarkably balanced, especially in it its coverage of the ongoing economic troubles. At the very least they've not been more unbalanced in any direction than privately funded media.
Tax Breaks for Corporate Media (Score:4, Interesting)
Presumably the goal is to preserve newspapers as a necessary source of information gathering. The idea is that in the age of the internet, we face a free-rider problem and fundamental news gathering is less profitable. Ostensibly journalists are performing a public service.
But how well this proposed solution will address the real problem? There are lots of right-wing newspapers that are not profitable but they have dedicated corporate sponsors so they keep operating. Consider the Washington Times, or the Pittsburgh Tribune. If we let newspapers be non-profits we are giving a huge tax-break to Richard Mellon Scaife, and Rupert Murdoch, and Sun Myung Moon. All of the money these guy pump into their right-wing propaganda machines will be tax-deductible.
I want to save newspapers too, but this proposal will incentivize more propaganda than it will actual news.
Re:What a good idea (Score:1, Interesting)
I am not sure how you distinguish between someone who tries to be unbiased but fails, and someone who doesn't try, or what your basis is for asserting that Fox News belongs in the latter camp.
I'm from a Scandinavian country and the press here is often hailed as one of the most enlightened in the world, and they vehemetly deny any bias. However, you will often see interesting variations in the use of quotation marks and speech indicators.
For example, an article might describe a statement from the human-rights organisation ASRO that asylum seekers' rights are breached. The headline for this might either be "Asylum seekers' rights often breached.", OR, "- Asylum seekers' rights are often breached." OR "ASRO: Rights are often breached." OR "Rights are often breached, says ASRO.". Of these the latter three have a statement form that allows the reader to associate the message with the sender and assess its weight and credibility as one voice of many. The first statement is drastically different, and rather describes this as a fact.
Your reaction might be that this is simply random variations in writing style. I have however, over the last four years, not seen ONE case where a 'factually treated' statement has been negatively impactful on any party on the left, but many cases of the opposite. For example, the subtext to an interview picture might well be "America suffers from paranoia", but would ABSOLUTELY NEVER be "Pakistan suffers from paranoia".
Should I consider these journalists as trying and failing, or not trying at all?
Re:What a good idea (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think advertising your bias works either. People who don't like your bias won't read your article, even if you did some excellent work.
What's missing is reading (and listening) with a grain of salt. Trusting news because it came from The Paper, or A Scientist, or A Doctor. Credentials are just there to stand out amidst the riff raff. They may still be complete idiots.
You may not like the DNC, and will obviously have a bias going in but presumably while you will have a critical eye you are going to be listening and asking questions. To the statements that sounds good, you will likely have doubts. To the statements that sounds bad...well you obviously have thought that part through.
Unless your livelihood depends on a certain candidate, like us you probably want to figure out who to vote for. You might have made a choice but harbor some doubts (likely he's just the lesser of evils). That's all we need. What we get, a lot, is corporate influence that needs a particular vote they can't outright buy. They heavily influence the outcome by blatant propaganda.
What's preventing them them from doing this now? (Score:3, Interesting)
That is my first thought - what is preventing them from doing this right now?
There is noting that says you can't incorporate a "business" as a non-profit, or rather nothing prevents a non-profit from generating revenue. One of the major disadvantages is that since you don't have profit, it's hard to have investors, which makes getting capital for expansion harder.
So to me the most important question is what does this bill allow the newspaper companies to do that a normal non-profit couldn't and is that really a good idea? Of course the story completely neglected to include that information.
Why is it that every story I read, or news report I watch I leave thinking that journalists completely failed to investigate the heart of the story? They rarely even explain what the relevant details of the situation are, let alone think to ask any of the important questions (the ones I would ask :), instead just running whatever random quotes they could get from people.
Advantages (Score:2, Interesting)
This is similar to the argument from yesterday that the American lifestyle and physical community is built around having a car; most of the time those people without a vehicle are shafted by not having access to reliable public transportation systems and not being in reach of the jobs or services they need. At present, news is accessible in both formats, and should *stay* that way for awhile longer, through whatever means possible. Not sure if tax-exempt status is the answer, but the notion of keeping it afloat awhile longer interest me.
Re:Desperation effort (Score:3, Interesting)
Which is where all the problem is, really.
Its the dailies, which have largely lost their local character by merging into giant national media empires, slashed local staffs, and turned into nothing but outlets for (1) wire stories that are available in every news outlet, on the web, and through TV news, (2) syndicated content that, again, is available equally everywhere, including often on the web for free, etc. Surprisingly enough, with most of their content that is of interest to the readers available elsewhere faster and cheaper, and with, at worst, no more advertisement, and often better targetted (which, for the advertiser means more effective, but also means, for the reader, less unwelcome) advertisements, and with better reliability than newspaper delivery, it should be unsurprising than newspapers can't find readers.
Endowments (Score:3, Interesting)
David Swensen and Michael Schmidt proposed [nytimes.com] that newspapers simply receive endowments and operate off the interest, insulating them from commercial pressures and conflicts of interest. I think that's a fantastic idea, especially in conjunction with legal nonprofit status for newspapers.
Re:What a good idea (Score:2, Interesting)
A somewhat more balanced media is in everyone's interest.
What we need to do is dispense with the charade of calling it Journalism or News. It should be called Entertainment...
EntertainmentPapers
EntertainmentTV
Perhaps setup a requirement that to be called News also requires full disclosure of sources. Maybe even restrict the use of 'pundits' or so-called 'experts'. Require opinions to be clearly labeled as such. Require all funding and payments to be publicly disclosed.
Reporting from undisclosed sources could still occur, just not on 'News' channels. Only on 'Entertainment' channels.
Just some random ideas...
Re:Omission is not always bias (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Omission is not always bias (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What a good idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Reporter bias, editor bias, assignment bias, publisher bias. Take your choice.
The only people not biased are people that don't have any background in the subject. And they are worthless too, since they don't understand what they are seeing and hearing.
Which leads us to how Entertainment Tonight covers political campaigns. Or maybe thats ABCNNBCBS Faux sensati-celebri-news. Hard to tell anymore.
Re:What a good idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe instead of shooting your mouth off you can make the observation that liberals and conservatives think the media is biased against their respective positions. Both sides dutifully drink the Kool Aid served up to them by whomever they consider a trustworthy source.
There is liberal and conservative bias, predominantly on cable news, but it most often is in the form of very vocal editorial (O'Reilly, Olberman, etc.) rather than true journalism. Perhaps what we are seeing is the polarizing effect of editorial jousting combined with the decline of true journalistic integrity. The 'chicken-or-the-egg' argument can deal with which came first: a lack of education on the part of the viewers or the coercion of viewers by media moguls.
There is lots of information out there, but if people stop looking once they get the answer that reaffirms what they already believe we will never be able to engage in a rational discourse.
Re:What a good idea (Score:2, Interesting)
Did people lament the end of the town crier too? (Score:3, Interesting)
Newspapers are largely full of things I don't care about and things that I don't understand why they even have like coverage of national sporting events. Aren't the multiple ESPNs and Fox Sports channels and websites enough? Why do newspapers have horoscopes? Why do they have comic strips that haven't been funny for 20+ years?
If newspapers want to survive they need to figure out what they do better than any other medium. Coverage of what the news channels talked about yesterday isn't one of them.
Re:On the face of it... (Score:3, Interesting)
Then in the next statement you assume that 'large contributors' would be stupid enough to support something that you are insinuating is going to be ignored ("just needs to please the few large contributors").
That is self-contradictory and tin-foil-hat-conspiracy-theory thinking at best. (That, or I you were not very clear).