Thursday, January 01, 2009

Bailout for Newspapers?

We've joked for a while at the idea of the federal government propping up the media in a quid pro quo fashion, but, apparently, some lawmakers are considering a newspaper bailout.

Connecticut lawmaker Frank Nicastro sees saving the local newspaper as his duty. But others think he and his colleagues are setting a worrisome precedent for government involvement in the U.S. press.

Nicastro represents Connecticut's 79th assembly district, which includes Bristol, a city of about 61,000 people outside Hartford, the state capital. Its paper, The Bristol Press, may fold within days, along with The Herald in nearby New Britain.

That is because publisher Journal Register, in danger of being crushed under hundreds of millions of dollars of debt, says it cannot afford to keep them open anymore.

Nicastro and fellow legislators want the papers to survive, and petitioned the state government to do something about it. "The media is a vitally important part of America," he said, particularly local papers that cover news ignored by big papers and television and radio stations.

To some experts, that sounds like a bailout, a word that resurfaced this year after the U.S. government agreed to give hundreds of billions of dollars to the automobile and financial sectors.

Relying on government help raises ethical questions for the press, whose traditional role has been to operate free from government influence as it tries to hold politicians accountable to the people who elected them. Even some publishers desperate for help are wary of this route.

Newspapers have been a dying industry for 40 years, and every person who has or does work for one knows it. We've all discussed it. Publishers, manageing editors and business managers have spent countless hours redesigning the pulp product to make it more appealing and necessary for the reading public. But despite the creation of new sections, new beats, coupon sections, bigger type, shorter stories, longer stories, more pictures, snappier headlines and more marketing efforts, newspapers are seen as an important part of the lives of fewer and fewer Americans.

The blame has been laid at many a doorstep. Lazy readers. Busy readers. Bad writing and editing. Irrelevant stories. Rude customer service reps. Bad delivery people. And on and on. But the truth is, most people don't see newspapers as the integral part of their lives that they once were. More and more people get their information from broadcast news programs, cable networks and the internet, where choosy readers select exactly the news they want when they want it. It's simply impossible for an 18th century technology to compete.

This isn't to say that all newspapers will go away. I don't think they will. But newspapers will become smaller, community-focused efforts, filled with school board meetings, zoning board meetings, and community calendars of rec center events. More coverage of local high school sports. Bigger stories about local bake sales and block parties. In short, newspapers will become more local and less national.

Granted, interviewing Mrs. Smith, whose pooch saved a toddler from an open culvert, isn't the sort of reporting most people go to J-school for, but newspapers will have to deliver the sort of information that is either awkward or impossible to find on the internet. That doesn't mean there won't be hit pieces investigative reporting on local government and businesses, but it means the days of focusing solely on Washington, D.C. are over.