Bloggasm

Over the past year or so there has been no shortage of media critics who have theorized on how to save the floundering newspaper industry. Though many of these ideas focus on utilizing the web and Web 2.0 technology, there has also been a few of what I’ll call “no more free meal ticket” schemes.

Basically, the person tries to find some organization or company that has been benefiting from newspapers and journalism for free all these years and announces that it may be time for it to pay up.

Case in point: A writer for the Columbia Journalism Review recently penned a piece arguing that since the public benefits from the watchdog nature of journalism, then it’s time for the government to begin subsidizing news organizations — an idea that wasn’t exactly enthusiastically embraced by editors and publishers.

Today, I came across an article published by the Century Foundation that has supposedly pinpointed another group that has gotten off Scott free: internet providers and cell phone companies, among others:

Consider that the consumers are paying for broadband, cell phone service, and satellites, plus the cost of the lap-tops, PDAs, televisions, and iPods. The monthly bill for all the delivery is easily a couple of hundred dollars. Mac laptops start at $1,099. Good Dell laptops start at $999. There are cheap cell phones but the kind that offer news and entertainment are still pricey as is the service that supports them. My household monthly tab for two cell phones (a Blackberry and an iPhone), a premium cable package, broadband, and two desktops computers, is about $675. Obviously, we use these devices for a great many things and, in today’s world, they are probably indispensable.

He says that, by contrast, “the New York Times subscription delivered to our door by hand is $5.10 per week. Around the country, the Orlando Sentinel is $19.50 for thirteen weeks; Atlanta Journal-Constitution is $10.99 a month; the Minneapolis Star Tribune is $42.25 for thirteen weeks.”

He concludes that the “Googles” and “Verizons” should therefore start paying for the content that has helped make their companies so popular in the first place.

The author fails to understand, however, that he would have to compare the costs of subscriptions of every newspaper available on the web to really begin to compare it to the internet’s offerings. Simply adding up your subscription costs for the NY Times and a few others just doesn’t cut it.

Adding in both an Iphone and a Blackberry doesn’t necessarily reflect the gadgets found in most households — he’s artificially inflating the cost of all this gadgetry to try and make it seem like these companies are making a killing off your content.

It should be noted that at least one cable/internet company is already subsidizing the news business — Comcast. After all, they are offering wire stories on their website. I think we’ll see similar instances of this kind of online syndication of content from major corporations.

However silly his idea is, at least it’s better than accusing God of having a free meal ticket. Mike Koehler, deputy sports editor at The Oklahoman, has started a new website called prayerforpapers.com, in which he enlists the help of invisible sky fairies to save the industry. Talk about last resort.