"Other democracies pay for accurate reporting, so why shouldn't the U.S.?"

Wow, we have accurate reporting in the U.S.? Hm, I guess we do, occasionally, but not until several years after it would have done any good.

"If the thought of government subsidization of journalism seems novel, it shouldn't. Most other democracies provide far more direct government support for public media than the U.S. does (Canada spends 16 times as much per capita; Britain spends 60 times as much). And as Nichols and McChesney point out, our government already "doles out tens of billions of dollars in direct and indirect [media] subsidies," including free broadcast, cable and satellite privileges. "

So so so many things wrong with this article and with this 'journalist,' I hardly know where to begin. For the government to come in and bail out the newspapers is at best, insulting and at worst, dangerous.

Its insulting because like the automakers, print media failed to keep up with innovation; just as the automakers failed to embrace clean fuel and hybrid technology, the newspapers ignored or paid lip service to the frontier that was the Internet.

A bailout of the newspapers is also dangerous in terms of what it would mean for a free market of ideas. Its bad enough that corporate media outlets are influenced by shareholders opinions and investments (not just Fox, folks!), but to have the government holding any pursestrings raises an all too real spectre of government controlled or state-run media.

Think it can't happen? Obama already fired one CEO and that bailout money came with government strings - such as what cars to make and how to profit from them. On a semi-related note, the Fairness doctrine - which has nothing to DO with money, is further evidence of government desire to control content.

How then, can media be independant, if the state has any say (and yes, they will) in content and or reporting? even the appearance of such a situation makes for catastrophic overtures as it relates to free speech.

The media should bail itself out. Til then, I'll read what makes sense and enjoy the blogosphere - oh, another reality that print media ignored and was subsequently pummeled by.

"I can't imagine anything more rewarding than being part of the new team that's shaping U.S. policy."

What? Do you want to rename something and foster some great sense of accomplishment?

'Don't get fooled again' - Pete Townsend

Journalists going on the Pentagon payroll officially now.

The best suggestion that Rosa Brooks put forward was that newspapers become tax exempt non profit organizations, as the old business model for newsprint is well on its' way to becoming as relevant as typewriter manufacturing or the music industry. Brooks' most relevant point, that honest paid journalism (already quite degraded during the Bush error) is an endangered species & a robust free press is a necessary part of any functioning democracy, simply can not be avoided.

-So so so many things wrong with this article and with this 'journalist,' I hardly know where to begin

Why do you think she is picked to be an Obama propaganda advisor?

"If newspapers become mostly infotainment websites"

If? If?

"We can bail out journalism, using tax dollars and granting licenses in ways that encourage robust and independent reporting and commentary, or we can watch, wringing our hands, as more and more top journalists are laid off or bail out, leaving us with nothing in our newspapers but ads, entertainment features and crossword puzzles."

Or alternatively, the top journalists can start their own blogs / websites, and charge for their articles. Possibly via a subscription model. Or, the top journalists covering a particular niche, whether politics, or art, or literature, or the economy, can band together and start fee paying sites, or even print papers covering a particular genre.

Or, the good journalists, can write books.

And before someone says that it isn't possible to make money from articles on the internet, consider Nate Silver, someone whom most people here would have heard of. Before he started writing about politics, he wrote about, and analysed baseball. He was a writer and analyst for baseballprospectus.com, a successful site with articles, stats, analysis, on and about baseball, that works on a subscription model. Subscribers of BP, of which I am one, are certainly willing to pay money for internet articles.

Sorry for you Rosa, but you can always blog, write books or do something else. At least you won't have to get your articles past editors and owners.

Lots of us are going to lose our jobs for economic reasons and obsolescence. We need to stay loose and adapt.

"...how will we recognize, or hope to forestall, impending national and global crises?" Ya mean like the way "we" recognize and are trying to forestall catastrophic climate change, or 911, or Katrina, or near-total economic collapse?

"How will we know if government officials have made terrible mistakes, as even the best will sometimes do?" Ya mean like invading threat-less sovereign nations without enough manpower or resources?

"How will we know if government officials have told us terrible lies, as the worst have sometimes done?" Where to even begin with that one...?

Yup - if only we had strong newspapers, all of that would have been avoided...

the age of making a large living via one's own ideas and someone else's labor is ending, the age of living small via personal labor is beginning...there will be violence in between...neither newspapers, nor their advertisers, are needed...papers have done far more to deceive than they have ever done to illuminate...wait until schools and teachers find themselves in the same boat...ha! 'but, you need us - so feed us!'...sorry...feed yourselves...

Journalism has already been dying a slow death. Quit pulling a "Terri Schiavo" and let it collapse already. We can rebuild and revive a better journalism.

>>If newspapers become mostly infotainment websites -- if the number of well-trained investigative journalists dwindles still further -- and if we're soon left with nothing but the yapping heads who dominate cable "news" and talk radio, how will we recognize, or hope to forestall, impending national and global crises? How will we know if government officials have made terrible mistakes, as even the best will sometimes do? How will we know if government officials have told us terrible lies, as the worst have sometimes done? A decimated, demoralized and under-resourced press corps hardly questioned the Bush administration's flimsy case for war in Iraq -- and the price for that failure will be paid for generations.

Had journalists done all this in the first place, there might be people out there still willing to read them for the news information and insight.

See Judith Miller , journalist.

This all begs the question. What will Rosa Brooks do if she finds her superiors at her new job are lying, pursuing dangerous or foolish policies or making great mistakes?

Sub-prime Phil Bronstein’s Hearst Corporation borrowed too much money on over priced assets to be one of the big players in the newspaper and television business and now the bets made have fallen like the other newspaper and television companies. So whom does Sub-prime Phil blame? Google?

Free press, local journalism, the net, We need a lean vicious press. You soft yuppie consumers can bellyache all you want. American journalism has proven itself unworthy and a tool for propaganda and deserves to die.

You think the real estate bubble is dramatic, Watch what the CREDIT CARD bubble does when that magic carpet ride is over. Your margins that paid for your "lifestyle" is history. Read about it when it's too late to do anything but cry.

Free press. sacrifice, labors of love, thats all thats left, the only option for the messenger.

Or are you all thinking about your "career"?

Journalists marginalized themselves by publishing jello instead of news. They became increasingly irrelevant to the people whose lives were being decimated, yet they remain blind to that reality. We wouldn't be bailing out journalism, we would be bailing out irrelevant journalism. The self congratulatory shrieks of disbelief are a testament to their blindness. Newspapers lost their soul.

My newspaper, the Houston Chronicle, has consistently more type on sports than on news. It is literally a sports paper and no longer a newspaper. Yet the Chronicle refuses to fire most of their sports journalists. Newspapers, you have been digging your own graves for decades. Rest in peace!

Hell will freeze over before I would support government subsidies for these propaganda puppets to continue with their lies. Government and truth does not belong in the same article. As it is, reporters are nothing more than psy-op specialists working for the pentagon, let them be unemployed or like this one let them work directly for the government, fewer lies to keep up with from the so called independent journalists.

At least when the news comes from the government, most people will question it, except for the 25% party faithful on both sides, but they are hopeless cases anyways. Those pretending to be independent journalists can dupe even the non-party faithful and are more dangerous to the truth.

The question in this essay - should government fund newspapers more than they do - is fine enough, but it doesn't address why the so-called free press (corporate-owned press, actually) in the United States has been failing.

The main reason is that American journalism is pretty much propaganda. The U.S. press does have some pure factual reporting, like "the sun rose in the east today," but absent a context, it's not particularly valuable information.

The J-school credo of striving to be balanced is actually a political position, sometimes called centrism. Centrism rejects ideas of progress for the status quo. Given that power is centralized by wealthy owners in the United States (which isn't admitted from a centrist perspective), the pull is naturally toward the political right. We actually live in a plutocracy - another idea rejected by centrism.

Being objective is a completely different matter than maintaining the political philosophy of centrism. The so-called "balanced" view in American journalism reports Bush's lies as simple statements, and maybe cites a Democrat in response. However, this view also ignores history and lacks context, ignores sheer falsehoods, resulting in propaganda. The main problem with such journalism is that the true narrative lies in the details that are omitted from the story. You have to stop reading the paper to get informed.

American journalism can never buck its advertisers and its corporate owners. That's a huge bias. Journalist who can't see why that would kill journalism in the eyes of its readers just haven't thought about the matter.

U.S. news consumers are used to getting information mixed with advertising, like TV, and newspapers are no exception in that respect. The ad model for newspapers is failing, partly because of the cheaper Web route, but mostly because the content in U.S. newspapers is lacking.

The author of this essay is certainly correct that entertainment is the main course in U.S. newspapers today. The corporate owners of the press really don't care about journalism per se. They are just selling ads. Forget investigative journalism, which probably gets little funding nowadays. Journalists critical of the status quo don't continue to be hired, and that's especially the case if advertisers get nervous about content.

Five corporations or so now own all of the U.S. newspapers. Competition between newspapers in cities is lacking. There's really no good reason for a profit-seeking corporation to adequately fund basic journalism. Even still, the corporate model, as I say, just kills off the good journalists. A government-owned model can do the same.

Once you start reading the foreign press, such as journalism from the United Kingdom or France, you can see how bad U.S. journalism is. So, corporate ownership isn't the whole story. Even Canada has greater corporate consolidation of the media than the United States, but the journalists up in the Great White North tend to speak more to common civic interests than journalists in the United States. The audience for journalists in the United States is the dumb managerial class, according to the Chomsky-Herman thesis.

Finally, this author comes from the Los Angeles Times, bought by the conservative Chicago Tribune. Management at the LA Times has recently purged the few remaining good journalists from the paper, I'd say, or at least that's clear when you read the right-wing editorial page these days. But I cancelled my subscription years ago.

It's probably best to let the corporate model of journalism die. There isn't any common civic mechanism in the United States in which people are represented these days, so the idea of the press as the Fourth Estate (ala Jefferson), acting as a defense for democracy, is largely moot. It doesn't matter if you are daily informed because calling your Congressman doesn't make a difference.

People will probably get their information outside of the corporate screening process of the major dailies, reported more by local activists through the Internet. That's probably a better model for democracy, if we could have that here.

-TIA