How silly
For PBS I reported on Six Apart using the tongue-in-cheek title “Journalist Bailout” for its attempt to lure laid-off journalists into its ad program.
Lo and behold, lawmakers in Connecticut are proposing a real government bailout for newspapers.
Talk about a silly and stupid waste of taxpayer money.
You’re right that it’s silly and stupid, but imagine if it actually passed? Wouldn’t the papers feel obliged to give positive coverage to the government? People talk about how bad it is that the government has its hands in the banks with the financial bailout, but it would be so much worse if the government had its hands in the media.
But what about the buggy-whip manufacturers? As long as we’re intent on rescuing the obsolete, why not them too?
well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say newspapers are obsolete; they just need to become leaner and meaner, and there’s lots of evidence that the proliferation of Web 2.0 is picking up a lot of the slack. to provide a bailout is to just inflate the newspaper’s revenues and put off the inevitable restructuring that is being forced upon them.
It hurts, I know, but newspapers, or some form of them, will continue to live on for a long time to come.
are bloggers able to request bailout money too??? i’d like to start another blog and need about $15M