{"id":3060,"date":"2009-03-25T15:17:34","date_gmt":"2009-03-25T15:17:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=3060"},"modified":"2009-03-25T15:17:34","modified_gmt":"2009-03-25T15:17:34","slug":"that-was-fast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=3060","title":{"rendered":"That Was Fast"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently, discussing the media in the comment section<\/a> here, Lexington Green<\/strong><\/a> had this to say:<\/p>\n

Brilliant Shirkey piece.\u00a0 He only leaves out one thing.\u00a0 The dying incumbents are going to successfully seek money and protection from the government.\u00a0 With a Democrat president and congress, their faithful allies, lickspittles, bootlickers, toadies, buttboys, catamites, lackeys also knows as “the media” will come to DC with palm extended, upright, demanding the payment that their partisan loyalty has earned.\u00a0 They will get protection and money.\u00a0<\/strong>
\n .<\/strong>
\n They will not survive that much longer as a result.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the same thread, democratic core<\/strong><\/a> remarked:<\/p>\n

The Shirky piece raises fascinating issues.\u00a0 The question of what the new economic model for journalism will be is interesting, and I appreciate the fact that this piece raises the question explicitly.\u00a0 Contrary to Lexington\u2019s comment, I doubt that there will be a\u00a0government bailout, as the First Amendment issues would seem to make that unpalatable to both parties.\u00a0 The non-profit approach is one logical evolution, where “newspapers”, i.e.,\u00a0centers of journalistic activites,\u00a0get absorbed into\u00a0non-profit institutions such as think tanks or universities to provide content to organs of information dissemination.\u00a0 Another model might be the C-span model, where profitable internet organizations such as Google fund the entities we used to call “newspapers” in order to provide content for the web.\u00a0 Most likely, you could have some combination of the two, as for example in the way that profit-making organizations subsidize research activities by non-profit institutions such as universities. <\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now we have this<\/a>. A remarkable turn-around time:<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – With many U.S. newspapers struggling to survive, a Democratic senator on Tuesday introduced a bill to help them by allowing newspaper companies to restructure as nonprofits with a variety of tax breaks.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/strong>“This may not be the optimal choice for some major newspapers or corporate media chains but it should be an option for many newspapers that are struggling to stay afloat,” said Senator Benjamin Cardin.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/strong>A Cardin spokesman said the bill had yet to attract any co-sponsors, but had sparked plenty of interest within the media, which has seen plunging revenues and many journalist layoffs.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/strong>Cardin’s Newspaper Revitalization Act would allow newspapers to operate as nonprofits for educational purposes under the U.S. tax code, giving them a similar status to public broadcasting companies.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/strong>Under this arrangement, newspapers would still be free to report on all issues, including political campaigns. But they would be prohibited from making political endorsements.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/strong>Advertising and subscription revenue would be tax exempt, and contributions to support news coverage or operations could be tax deductible.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/strong>Because newspaper profits have been falling in recent years, “no substantial loss of federal revenue” was expected under the legislation, Cardin’s office said in a statement.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/strong>Cardin’s office said his bill was aimed at preserving local and community newspapers, not conglomerates which may also own radio and TV stations. His bill would also let a non-profit buy newspapers owned by a conglomerate.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/strong>“We are losing our newspaper industry,” Cardin said. “The economy has caused an immediate problem, but the business model for newspapers, based on circulation and advertising revenue, is broken, and that is a real tragedy for communities across the nation and for our democracy.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently, discussing the media in the comment section here, Lexington Green had this to say: Brilliant Shirkey piece.\u00a0 He only leaves out one thing.\u00a0 The dying incumbents are going to successfully seek money and protection from the government.\u00a0 With a Democrat president and congress, their faithful allies, lickspittles, bootlickers, toadies, buttboys, catamites, lackeys also knows […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[185,332,49,139],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-democratic-party","category-economics","category-lexington-green","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3060\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}