Rescuing (or bailing out) the Newspaper Industry
November 14, 2008 by Barbara
Filed under Barbara Schwartz
There’s been a bailout or a proposed bailout — or a rescue, depending on your word preference — of the lending industry and the auto industry. But where’s the rescue/bailout of the newspaper industry?
Ross Douthat over at The Atlantic and Jon Fine at Business Week are asking that question today, with tongues firmly in cheek, and yet … why not bail out the journalists?
It’d be a bargain at any price, Douthat says:
Doesn’t America need the New York Times as much at it needs the Chevy Cobalt? Isn’t the Star-Ledger as important as the GMC Savana? Sure, GM employs roughly five times as many people as all all of America’s newsrooms combined – but that just means that we’d be much, much cheaper to bail out! GM needs $25 billion, but we’d settle for, I dunno, five billion? Pocket change, in other words!
If Detroit is getting funds to help it retool to create energy-efficient cars and trucks, shouldn’t The Oklahoman, which recently announced it’s cutting back on its circulation area because of rising costs, get a little something to help it move forward into a new frontiers of publishing?
What do you think? Logical next step, or one step too far?
Barbara Schwartz is the editorial director at the Xenia Institute. She lives in Oklahoma City, Okla., and currently is pursuing a Master of Divinity degree at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa.
