True North

Is the newspaper industry too big of itself to fail?

It’s no news that the slow decline of the print industry has rapidly become a death spiral for numerous newspapers across the country.  From the fall of papers like the Rocky Mountain News and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and the potential collapse of other major metro papers like the San Francisco Chronicle and even the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the final spasms of the printed daily have been violent and, unfortunately true to form, self-indulgent.  While some like Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders fatalistically mash their sour grapes and others like AP head Dean Singleton threaten the new media with legal action, a few like LA Times columnist Rosa Brooks search for the same solution any failed American corporation with a faulty business plan has adopted - demand a federal bailout:

I can’t imagine anything more dangerous than a society in which the news industry has more or less collapsed.

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?…

It’s time for a government bailout of journalism.