There have been various proposals to "save journalism" from the crisis
brought on by digitalization. But by and large these ideas have less to
do with meeting the information needs of a democratic society than with
preserving the profit potential of existing media outlets.
Television broadcasters in the Aloha State have been quietly embarking on an underhanded media merger for more than a year.
Of all the Big Lies told by the pooh-bahs of talk radio - that our
biracial president hates white people, that global warming is a hoax,
that a public health care plan to compete with private insurers equals
socialism - the most desperate and deluded is this: that the so-called
Fairness Doctrine would squash free speech.
Nonsense.
The Fairness Doctrine would not stop talk radio hosts from
spewing the invective that has made them so fabulously wealthy. All it
would do is subject their invective to a real-time reality check.
NEW YORK - Last week, rumors from the world of print media were rife: a hundred reporters from
The New York Times
news desk to be bought out - or to lose their jobs if they refuse;
steep cutbacks at British newspapers; staffs slashed at Condé Nast -
eight respected editors axed at Glamour
magazine. In the United States and elsewhere, there is a sense that
the long-foreseen implosion of news publishing is accelerating, having
reached a kind of critical mass.
With his measured calm and seriousness of purpose, Walter Cronkite set
a high standard for television journalism that has rarely been met
since his retirement in 1981. But the legendary CBS anchorman who died
Friday also may have unintentionally contributed to the American Left's
dangerous complacency about media.
The feeling of many Americans (especially liberals) about the Cronkite
era was that journalists could be trusted to give the news reasonably
straight.
Sometimes passing good public policy is about telling compelling stories. In the case of our quest to pass the Local Community Radio Act, which could put new LPFM stations on the air across the country, there are numerous stories to tell.
Corporate media are in a state of severe business shock, it
seems—layoffs at newspapers large and small, due to advertising revenue
drying up and readers ceasing to pay for a printed copy of a newspaper
that they can usually read for free online. The state of the press has
generated an enormous amount of attention in the press itself, with
journalists and pundits offering any number of plans to "save" dying
newspapers. Congressional hearings on the state of the media suggest
that lawmakers are worried about what might happen next.
You'll have to excuse me-I'm a little tired, having stayed up all
night watching episodes of Lost online. I've never really cared what's
in that hatch, but thought I should stream the videos before they cost
me the equivalent of two weeks worth of groceries.
The question of "How to save Journalism?" is a front-burner issue,
as major metropolitan dailies, like the Rocky Mountain News and the
Philadelphia Inquirer, implode. Calls for bailouts in the tens of
billions of dollars have gone up, even from critics of the industry,
and some are calling for further relaxation of limits on media
ownership so newspapers and television stations can merge, presumably
to improve the financial prospects of both.
In his book "Bowling Alone: The Collapse and
Revival of American Community," Harvard scholar Robert Putnam pointed
to ways Americans had become less connected - to one another and to
their communities - over the second half of the last century.
Now, the promise of federal stimulus money presents a historic
opportunity for communities to come together in old-fashioned,
roundtable discussions to talk about how technology and innovation can
change the future of community life.
