The Biz Blog

So here is a far out idea for boosting the newspaper business. Taboo, even. How about government subsidies for newspaper readership? Lest you dismiss me as wacko, I can stipulate that a number of perfectly sane European countries -- Norway, Sweden, France and Austria -- provide just that.

The Swedish government offered this rationale (in impeccable English, natch) in a December 2006 review of its subsidy system: "Despite increasing competition in the media market, delivery of the traditional morning newspaper plays a major role in citizens being able to keep themselves informed about the world around them and take part in discussions on issues of significance for society in general."

 

If that makes sense for civil discourse in Sweden, why not for the United States? Countless decline-of-the-industry think pieces, like the editorial in the current CJR, take the tack that many profit-hungry, tradition-bound companies have earned a ticket to extinction. Even so, it is tragic to watch the body of informative work newsrooms do melting away month by month like a polar ice cap.

 

The few discussions there are of subsidies for the American press tend to begin and end with something along the line of "Of course, we must not do that." Why not? I assume most would view this as a fatal compromise of press independence -- life support the politicos would pull or use as a baragaining chit in the face of aggressive coverage.

 

I'm not sure that is a given. The BBC does plenty of aggressive reporting (though it was subject of a painful official inquiry into its handling of an anonymously-sourced story on weapons inspections in Iraq). The Scadanavian system provides a contribution to each subscription under a formula that sets a threshold for volume of news coverage but takes no account of slant or political balance. So no newspaper is going to lose its subsidy because of a hard-hitting story. 

 

I recall New York Times executive editor Bill Keller saying at an editors' conference several years ago that U.S. politicians may grouse about individual stories but are quietly proud of our vigorous free press. Coming to the aid of an economically floundering Fourth Estate might not be out of the question. (I will concede that the last Congressional effort in that vein -- authorizing Joint Operating Agreements in 1970 -- has proven pretty much a debacle). Were fiscal times a little better, a progressive state legislature might also choose to step up.

 

The subsidies idea got a modest airing earlier this year when Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia University and a First Amendement scholar, mentioned it during a panel at the Davos World Forum (theoretically off the record but tidbits leak out).

 

Bolllinger later clarified that he meant more to float direct govenment support as a possibllitiy than to advocate. Enterprising blogger Carl Lavin followed with an e-mail to Nick Lemann, dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, asking for his thoughts. Lemann replied that "pure market forces" may not support the most ambitious journalism and that with "BBC-like safeguards of editorial independence," subsidies would not be such an awful arrangement.

 

All that said, I suspect a direct subsidy to newspaper circulation might turn out to be an idea whose time has come and gone here. The Scandanavian subsidies favor small papers, helping insure that there is daily news coverage in small towns in the nooks and crannies of the fjords. In the United States, it is our big metros that are most endangered economically. The European subsidies are relatively modest. What works in a small country of 5 million (Norway) mght not transfer gracefully at all to a huge one of 300 million.

 

Plus, our solons would risk looking retro for supporting print circulation only, rather than newroom efforts on multiple platforms.

 

Still I hate for this possibility to get throttled with a dismissive, "There's a reason we can't do that."