Bail out the Press

So here we are. The last column. I’ve been dreaming about this Tuesday for a long time.
But here I am, staring at the last issue of this newspaper I will ever edit, and I feel like I’m looking at something as endangered as the Galapagos’ Lonesome George, the last giant tortoise of his species (who, by the way, finally got it on last summer with two females of a similar species after over 30 years of sexual disinterest).
Like Lonesome George, newspapers are quite seriously on the verge of extinction. Unlike George, however, there is no team of conservationists working to pass the journalistic DNA on to the next generation.
There are about 50,000 newspaper journalists in the country, according to an April 6 article in the Nation, and newspapers laid off almost 16,000 people in 2008. Huge city newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune and the Philadelphia Inquirer have declared bankruptcy. Even The New York Times is on life support, which came in the form of a $250 million loan from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helú.
    People outside of the field will tell you that journalism isn’t actually dying; it’s just moving online, where there is a plethora of online news sources and blogs. Some are rather nonchalant about the fact that, within the decade or sooner, there could be nothing in between the paper that covers your son’s soccer game and The New York Times.
    What these people don’t realize is that, despite the apparent boom of information on the Internet, journalism is narrowing by the day. With every reporter laid off, that means one less person attending press conferences and town councils; it is one less person interviewing politicians, witnesses, judges and victims. According to The Washington Post, the number of foreign correspondents employed by newspapers nationwide shrank from 188 to 141 between 2002 and 2006, meaning that there are increasingly fewer American journalists on the ground in Baghdad and Gaza.
As their newsrooms shrink, newspapers (both the print and online versions) are relying more and more on wire services, so that papers across the country are printing cloned stories. With every newspaper at the local or city or regional level that goes under, the more likely it is that the news sources those hundreds or thousands of readers turn to will have less to do with them.
The blogosphere is no replacement for the institutionalized newsroom. Implying that it is indicates a deep misunderstanding of the craft of journalism, which is based on the pursuit of truth through the seeking out of multiple viewpoints, extensive fact checking, the elimination of bias and multiple rounds of editing. The gradual disassembly of newsrooms across the country means the atrophy of the journalistic processes that create the important difference between news articles and blogs.
The situation is serious, and it must be sooner rather than later that we realize that journalism is not something we can just regretfully watch waste away. It’s time to get out the defibrillator.
However, before shocking journalism back to life, we have to figure out how we got ourselves into this newspaper graveyard. Contrary to popular belief, journalism was headed south before the Internet and long before the current economic crisis. The real culprits are corporate ownership and consolidation, which filtered the cacophony of voices into a single-pitch drone and made profits, instead of quality journalism, the bottom line.
    Hard-line capitalists might say that the journalism industry is just delivering the consumers of journalism what they want. However, I have a hard time believing that streamlined, often misleading scoop reporting (such as that on the non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq) is really what consumers want, even if that is what they’re paying for.
    Either way, journalism is more than an industry. It should be considered the fourth branch of government – an integral part of the checks and balances system upon which our democratic government is founded. Giving up on journalism would mean giving up on our form of government; it would mean giving up on the American people’s desire and right to have access to a free press.
    If we learn anything from our current journalistic predicament, it should be that a free press does not organically arise out of a free market. Just as Starbucks runs the neighborhood coffee shops out of business and puts out millions of identical iced coffees, the consolidation of newspapers creates a monotone of coverage where there once was a musical variety.
    What is the alternative to the business model for newspapers? Bear with me for a moment as I go back to that microscopic of publications, The Bates Student:
    Many college newspapers boast of their “independence” – the year they broke from reliance to self-sufficiency and have since covered all of their printing expenses with advertising and subscription revenue. The Bates Student has been dependent since 1873.
    Since our newspaper is distributed free around campus and we are unable to attract enough advertising to stay afloat otherwise, our budget comes as a fixed slice of the student activities fund controlled by the administration. People often ask me whether we are under pressure from the administration to cover or not cover certain stories. The answer is a resounding no.
    The fact that the administration financially enables a publication that often criticizes them is, I think, necessary on two levels. It’s necessary to The Bates Student because if our newspaper had even one puppet string attached to it, it wouldn’t be a newspaper. However, it’s also necessary in that, without this non-intervention policy in terms of our newspaper, Bates would not be an institution based on democratic ideals.
    I mention this example not just because I am in deep gratitude to an administration that unconditionally funds a student newspaper, but also because I think it could work on a much larger scale.
    There are two floating proposals for saving the newspaper industry. One, as recently proposed through the Newspaper Revitalization Act by Senator Ben Cardin (D-Maryland), is to give newspapers non-profit status, making their advertising and circulation tax-exempt but prohibiting them from publishing political endorsements. A Jan. 27 NY Times op-ed piece all but begs for the non-profit model when it ends with the line, “Enlightened philanthropists must act now or watch a vital component of American democracy fade into irrelevance.”
    Another method, advocated for in The Nation and modeled by President Nicolas Sarkozy, who recently spent 600 million euros to bail out French newspapers, is for the government to support newspapers with subsidies.
    Unless the Carlos Slims of the world step forward very soon with their billions, the subsidy model seems to be more sustainable, as well as more acute to the importance of journalism to democracy. The government pays for our congressmen’s salaries, so why not our journalists’?
    The most obvious argument against the subsidy model is that a newspaper dependent on the government for funding could never produce truly independent reporting. However, a quick glance outside of our tunnel-vision goggles shows that this is not necessarily true.
    First of all, the government already does subsidize the press, it’s just that most of the subsidies pay for monopoly broadcast licenses or cable privileges (i.e. the press tycoons) rather than the sprinkling of local and city newsrooms that, if given the means, could truly diversify the scope of reporting. Secondly, there are plenty of healthy democracies in the world whose governments far outspend the United States on their funding of public media: Canada spends 16 times as much as we do, Japan 43 times, Britain 60 times and Finland and Denmark 75 times, according to The Nation.
    Lastly, who are we fooling when we advocate for the idea that a consolidated press dependent on big business for ad revenue is “freer” than a multifarious press dependent on the government for funding?
    While the last thing we want is for reporters to crawl into bed with politicians, I’m not convinced that would happen. The alternative – that most major city newspapers go under and national ones hang by a thread – is  worse than the worst reporter-politician scandal imaginable.
    Democracy is an endangered species we can’t afford to lose, and newspapers are an indispensable part of its survival. Someone, most likely that handsome black man in the White House, needs to bail out the press, lest this be any newspaper’s last column.

4 comments

John Doe

Mon May 25 2009 15:32

Rodney Dangerfield and Maggie Gross: Chill. There was nothing racist implied by Allie's statement, and no reasonable person would ever take offense.

Jane Doe

Mon Apr 13 2009 12:22

Don't try to tell me that every time you describe a person that you do so solely on the bases of their accomplishments or qualifications. It's not, "Hey, do you know that guy who demonstrates outstanding leadership ability on the basketball court?", it's "Hey, do you know that really tall basketball player with brown hair?" Perhaps now I should think critically about why I'm comfortable choosing to identify this basketball player by his looks, lest I offend all tall people with brown hair.

The President of the United States is a person like anyone else, different from you and me in title alone- how do you draw the line between people you are allowed to describe according to their looks and people you are only allowed to describe by their "leadership ability or qualifications"?

If this is really how you feel, you must HATE when people call Barack Obama the first black President of the United States- how dare they identify Barrack Obama as black?! Or if someone calls Denzel Washington attractive- how dare they objectify the black male body?!?

I'm sure the author feels bad if she unintentionally offended anyone with this sentence- key word being unintentionally. I called you out for implying things that I'm sure you find ridiculous. Please realize that the author (and others) may feel the same way about your pretentious comments.

Rodney Dangerfield

Thu Apr 9 2009 22:20

I wholeheartedly agree. President Obama is not "that handsome black man in the White House"

You tried being clever - and it backfired. Next time try being clever without offending a plethora of others.

Maggie Gross '09

Wed Apr 8 2009 20:09

It is too bad that the last sentence in your last article for The Bates Student is blatantly offensive. "That handsome black man in the White House"? Try "the President of the United States", "President Obama", "our president", or any number of versions of this title. Barack Obama is not "a handsome black man" who happens to have found himself in the White House--he is the President of the United States, elected by the people of America.

Please think critically about why you are comfortable choosing to identify Barack Obama by his racial identity and his looks, as opposed to his leadership ability or qualifications. You'll find that your statement validates many problematic perspectives on racial identity and the exploitative, reductive objectification of the black male body.

I have spoken to several of my peers who share in my sentiments. I invite you to apologize for the offensive error you committed in your final written words to the Bates College community.

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