From the Washington Post, ”Arizona's oldest continuously published daily newspaper, the 138-year-old Tucson Citizen, will publish its final print edition today after its owner failed to find a buyer.”
In the same edition, Bruce W. Sanford and Bruce D. Brown argue that “[u]nless Congress embarks on far-reaching change in public policy to maintain the viability of journalism as it evolves online, we will soon find ourselves with the remnants of a broken industry incapable of providing the knowledge necessary to manage life in a complex world.”
Um, guys, ever hear of that thing called the internet? Al Gore invented it, you know.
Sarcasm aside, I have a hard time believing that if newspapers go away, you and I will be unable “to manage life in a complex world.” I also have a hard time believing that newspapers are going to go away.
Be that as it may, Sanford and Brown argue that in order to survive, newspapers need regulatory reform “to adopt a new business model.” I can agree with that, provided reform means less regulation, not more.
But some of their proposals strike me as just plain silly, or worse, counterproductive.
Enforce copyright infringement on search engines? I would think that the newspaper would want the widest possible distribution in order to sell web page advertising.
Federalize the “hot news” doctrine? That strikes me as a double-edged sword, since there are already cases in the blogosphere of newspapers stealing from bloggers.
Use tax policy to promote the press? Oh, come on. The legacy media, the ones who are going down, are already government lapdogs, which pretty well explains why they are going down. And Sanford and Brown want to make newspapers even more beholden to the government?
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