Save America's newspapers
Share with others:
Years ago, after sophisticated browsers first made the Internet accessible to large numbers of people, we had a dream, followed by a nightmare.
The dream was that we would be able to read all of our favorite newspapers in real time on computers in our offices, schools or homes -- without waiting a day for coverage of yesterday's news. The news would be presented in a rich array of media. Since the Internet would permit newspapers to reach vast numbers of people around the world, the cost to each reader would be little, or even free. This dream largely has been realized.
But so has the nightmare.
The nightmare was that newspapers would end up offering their content for free in an effort to popularize their online editions. Some readers would then cancel their print subscriptions, and the effect on newspaper advertising would be even more financially damaging. Some advertisers, confronted with increasingly fragmented media markets, would cut back on print ads and pay only a fraction as much for online ads.
As it's turned out, newspapers also have lost a lot of potential advertising to news aggregators such as Google and Yahoo, and to online classified advertising specialists such as craigslist and Monster. One by one, great newspapers that had served their readers and communities well for decades have been forced to shrink and lay off journalists, or even shut their doors.
Eventually, we could be left with a newspaper industry that is a shadow of its former self, with a few weakened national newspapers, fewer major regional newspapers such as the Post-Gazette, and a number of hollowed-out local newspapers that supplement dispatches from the Associated Press with a few local stories and a few local columnists.
We love newspapers. We read several every day. We value their independent news coverage and their investigative reporting. We appreciate their insights into political matters and human affairs. Most importantly, though, we value newspapers as defenders of our freedom.
Thomas Jefferson wrote, "The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right, and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."
In most communities in the United States, newspapers root out the bulk of the news and set the standard for credibility. Television, Internet and radio outlets often echo what they have learned from the newspapers.
Newspapers help keep governments, corporations, unions, nonprofits and other institutions and individuals honest. If we continue to lose newspapers, we lose key pillars upon which this special republic, the United States of America, is built.
So how can we save America's newspapers?
The two principal sources of revenue for newspapers are advertisers and readers.
There has been a sharp decline in print advertising, and online ads have not yet come close to making up the difference. But many newspapers have never had more readers, if you combine their print and online operations. The problem is, advertisers aren't willing to pay as much to reach the online readers, and readers have grown accustomed to getting their newspapers on the Internet for free.
We believe the need is sufficiently dire for the U.S. Congress and state legislatures to amend antitrust laws so that newspapers could join together, perhaps with other media and Internet companies, and figure out how to charge enough for their content and services to survive. Provisions of the federal Sherman Act and state statutes that prohibit price fixing or collusion would need to be amended in a limited way to allow this to happen.
At this point, with the exception of The Wall Street Journal and a few others, no single newspaper can unilaterally begin charging for its content without losing much of its online readership. There simply is too much free content on the Internet, and we have become a nation of free riders (people who receive the benefits from a service without paying any of the costs).
But if newspapers could sell their advertising in concert, with appropriate limitations to prevent gouging, they might be able to compete with the Googles of the world. If they could charge each reader a small annual fee for their online content, this would help them continue to finance the professional journalists we need to bring us real news and hold our institutions accountable.
There is precedent for this type of action. In 1970, Congress passed the Newspaper Preservation Act, which created a limited antitrust exemption so that competing newspapers in a market could combine business operations if one of the newspapers otherwise would fail. The Post-Gazette and the former Pittsburgh Press worked under this type of arrangement for years before the Press folded in 1992.
We do not advocate a financial bailout. We advocate legislation that would permit newspapers to charge a fair amount to compensate them for services that are invaluable to our nation. Newspapers are too important for us to let them wither on the vine.
First Published May 29, 2009 12:00 am
