Jeff Jarvis alerted me to a truly boneheaded piece at the WSJ by Steven Rattner, an advisor to the New York Times Company and an investment banker, who suggests that the government should start tithing us to support old timey journalism:
[from Red All Over][...]
The omnipresent stresses suggest that we can't expect the objectives of enterprises that were organized around a for-profit interest to necessarily intersect with the societal value of quality journalism. So perhaps it's time to think about new models for the news business.
Not-for-profit status might be one possibility. Instead of having billionaire moguls as proprietors, we could try to turn them into philanthropists who found nonprofit organizations to buy and operate their local papers. At least one such example exists: the St. Petersburg Times, owned by the Poynter Foundation as a result of a bequest by Nelson Poynter.
Purchasing major newspapers would be costly and perhaps impractical, so a hybrid model may make more sense. We could create a pool of money (possibly from a license fee similar to how the BBC is funded). [emphasis mine] News organizations with an expensive but important project in mind could apply for funding, much the way producers in the public television world have for the last 40 years. Philanthropy could also play a role here, as Joan Kroc did when she left NPR a $200 million kitty.
We've had experience in the past -- the New York City subways come to mind -- with businesses that began as conventional, for-profit corporations, and, for one reason or another, were later rendered unprofitable while still being viewed as essential services. It's time to apply some creative thinking to newspapers and, for that matter, to serious journalism in other media. Then we need to convince Americans that they should pay attention to it -- and pay for it.
He's not kidding: but what a dumb argument. It sounds like Yogi Berra. This great journalism is so good for us -- "The Washington Post, a model of journalistic excellence, has lost 14% of its circulation since 2000." -- that no one wants to read it very much, and profits are crumbling. But we should read it, by god! And we should have the government tax us to support it, if necessary, he argues.
Jarvis says Rattner has basically given up on the industry:
[from Crying Uncle In The News Business]After detailing the headaches for the news industry, Rattner — big-time media investment banker — proposes not new business thinking for news but nonbusiness thinking: A BBC-like license-fee to support newspapers (that is, a tax and government support) or gifts from philanthropists (read: manna from heaven). The first is a terrible idea — unconstitutional, I’d say, and damned unjournalist — and the second is wishful thinking in the face of a lack of thinking in the industry.
In the end, Rattner is actually giving up on the news business. But I say it’s too soon to do that and that as a private equity buyer, I’d think he’d at least be attuned to the efficiencies still available in the news business, the strategic necessity to create sustainable business models, and the huge potential of new media and new methods.
Well, I am betting with Warren Buffett: the newspaper business is already dead and the people in it just haven't realized it yet. We will hear a lot more weird proposals to delay the inevitable in the next few years, as the whole system crumbles into tiny little shreds of moldy newsprint.
Jarvis points to Jack Shafer's comments at Slate, but leaves out the best bit, I think:
Rattner's 1,300-word diagnosis and prescription doesn't ever consider that the falling circulation and rotten earnings reports can be simply explained: Many of the newspaper industry's customers—subscribers and advertisers—prefer other products. That horse-and-buggy customers might prefer automobiles or VCR owners might switch to DVDs is only rational. So, if newspaper customers want to spend their money elsewhere, why should we put newspaper companies on the dole? If the cable news channels were having trouble hitting their numbers, would he send Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC to ballet school, too?The modern newspaper "crisis" that Rattner writes about was readily apparent to the industry in the mid-1970s, as I wrote in a November column. Declining circulation, failing newspapers, and depressed advertising revenue were acknowledged by industry panel after industry panel. Changes in living and working patterns, demographic shifts, and increased transience got the blame for the business's woes.
But, now, the Internet is stealing the ad revenue and classifieds that kept the whole mess afloat. Now, those props have been knocked out, but Rattner et al don't want to rethink the business from top to bottom -- I think it's too late but, hey, others are still willing to give it a go, like Jarvis -- and instead they simply congratulate themselves on the excellent, excellent job that top newspapers are doing. It's like Bush giving an attaboy to Brownie.
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