Tax for news bailout is a bad joke

Newspapers have been an important part of our society, communicating information and news. But the Internet has served the same function (and I'd say even better) than newspapers have in recent years. I'm not impressed with how they've competed in the marketplace, and how "impartial" (or biased to the left in their reporting) they've been. Given the amount, quality and diversity of information you can get online from other sources, I don't think newspapers have an inherent right to stay in business. I can get more news in a more timely manner online, than I can through traditional print media. Unfortunately, another big, dumb, slow company is now being talked up for help by big-government do-gooders through a proposed “Newspaper Tax.”

Where do the taxes and bailouts end? I don't agree with the bailouts of Wall Street, the big banks, or the Big 3 Automakers.. and I damn sure don't want the newspapers bailed out. Let's call a spade a spade - this is socialism. Through this proposal, they're essentially holding a gun to taxpayers' heads (or wallets, in this case), and saying "Fork it over, or the fish wrap gets it!"

Local blogger Andrew Hudson frames the issue in a nice way (ironically, through the Internet) but he and other Democrats have no problem using the coercive power of government to prop up their favorite industry or company... or decide which business or industry fails or succeeds – at least in the short-term. In fact, I'd say they're rewarding failure - just like Congress has with the banks and automakers. It's getting to a tipping point where taxpayers are saying "ENOUGH" to more tax increases.

It's not so much a political issue as it is about economic freedom, and how individual citizens should have the freedom to spend our money how we choose to – not how government can. It's like a Jerry Lewis Telethon where taxpayers are forced to "give 'til it hurts." Mr. Hudson knows that almost all taxes enacted by government stay in place forever, and are rarely repealed. This sounds like a sneaky way to extract more money from Colorado taxpayers, to fund an increasingly greedy state government.

Currently, 44 of our 50 states face budget shortfalls. What bureaucrats fail to remember is that budget deficits occur when spending exceeds cash inflows. To reduce or eliminate these deficits, they should (gasp!) cut spending. Trying to balance state budgets on the increasingly-burdened backs of taxpayers qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment. The cause of these shortfalls is that government has spent too much money and made too many promises that it can't deliver on.

Our country wasn't founded or built on propping up industries or companies who “deserve” to be in business. This is another step of slouching towards socialism, all in the name of good intentions – which the road to hell (in this case, bigger government) is paved with. Enough's enough –this “Newspaper Tax” idea should be dropped like a bad habit.

Captives of the media?

(Denver Post, Jan. 18) You, a captive of the media? No way. Nobody mediates for you. You think independently. You gather your own information and decide for yourself. Me too. We don’t need no media mediating for us, no sir. Yeah, right. In our dreams, maybe, but not in America today. The world is so interconnected, changes so fast, and presents each person with so many choices, that reliance on others for much of our knowledge is inescapable. But which media can we trust, and how do we keep them at our service – on tap, not on top? Especially if newspapers as we have known them are on the way out, how can we stay reliably informed as free citizens in a free society? That’s the underlying concern as Coloradans wonder about the fate of the Rocky Mountain News, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and maybe even the Denver Post.

I love newspapers. They’ll always be my preferred window on our civic and cultural life. Online and broadcast media rank a distant second. I hope enough American papers manage to reinvent themselves for the digital era so that print journalism can long continue. Since you’re reading this, you probably agree.

Yet trouble and transformation are stalking the media industry regardless. News providers face brutal pressures to adapt. For us as news users, this is a good time to think about the fundamental question we began with: Who mediates for you? Or as the counter-culture used to say, what do you feed your head?

The media seldom challenge us on this. They have a commercial motive not to. Challenging myself, I find I’m often careless as to both the quality and quantity of what gets fed into my head. New technologies and rebranding by the providers are beside the point. The problem is my passivity about the content they deliver.

A medium is a just a conveyor belt. At one end is a loadmaster, the editor. According to what’s on his clipboard, the belt gets loaded with news from reporters, opinions from pundits, and ads from businesses. It’s all conveniently brought to our homes. That convenience can be a trap, however. We may become too accepting.

“Couldn’t drink coffee without the morning paper,” worried someone at our Vanguard discussion club when the industry’s woes were this month’s topic. “We are Colorado,” says a Denver Post promo campaign. Media companies, this paper included, become part of our lives. They’re still only companies, means to an end. The end is knowing what we need to know to live together responsibly and happily.

Running the conveyor costs money. Persuading us to buy things, either subscriptions or advertised goods and services, is life and death to the company. Print is in trouble because more and more people are buying elsewhere. How concerning is that?

After all, as the Post’s Dean Singleton told fellow publishers in a speech last June, “Newspapers are the cornerstone of democracies everywhere…. If we fail, democracy fails.” Thomas Jefferson said two centuries ago that he’d rather live in a country with newspapers and no government than vice versa. So are bankrupt papers a national crisis?

No. Both men’s points go to freedom of the press via whatever medium works best. They aren’t limited to ink on pulp. In America, thanks to the First Amendment, it’s the marketplace and not government that picks media winners and losers. You and I as consumers, voting with dollars, make that sovereign choice.

Again, as I’ve written before, it’s up to us. Insisting on liberty, WE can make our country’s broadcasting and Internet as free as print has always been. Exercising personal responsibility, WE can choose a healthier information diet, more fiber, less junk. Conveyors inevitably come and go, but independent thinking remains.

If we're all publishers, no one is

(From PoliticsWest.com) Realization: I've been posting less here lately, and more on Facebook and Twitter. The quick shots and impulsive replies encouraged by the format on those social networks, especially the 140-character limit for a tweet, have become a line of least resistance when I want to sound off. In the last few days, versus a single post here at Politics West, I've gabbed dozens of times to my readers (such as they are) on those sites about things like Jason Salzman's assertion that Scripps should keep losing money, Ritter's clueless budget posture, Schwarzenegger's White House fantasy, and -- just this morning -- TABOR hater Rollie Heath and Christmas grinch Susan Greene.

Thus the downward spiral of convenience (plus brevity and vacuity) continues from books to magazines to daily papers to hourly newscasts to 24/7 cable to unmediated blogs to unprocessed tweets. Thoughtful written expression is dying in a race to the bottom, and to my dismay I'm one of the racers. I don't even use a pocket device for the Internet; probably if I did the descent would be even faster, driven by an itchy brain and carpal thumbs.

But, ahem, there's one small problem. Who reads any of this stuff -- my stuff that is; no doubt yours has a large, rapt audience -- who knows or cares or has the time? Well, I'm afraid it's clear who generally has the time: that would be folks who don't otherwise have much of a life. Which tentatively yields Andrews' Theorem:

The attention paid by any given reader to my online musings is inverse to that individual's ability to make any damn difference on the subject I'm writing about.

Oops -- present company excepted once again! This philosophical metacommunication is a minefield of offense-giving and self-contradiction.

I'm hardly the first to say it, but Twitter in particular is forcing upon me the discomfiting truth that if we're all publishers, no one is. Which brings me full circle to a love and regard for the old, slower, fussily-edited, tree-killing modes of writing -- the book, the magazine, the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News (pray God they both survive) -- and even their electronic cousins such as this website. May it too survive the election year that gave it birth.

So thanks for reading this, if you are. Anybody out there? Hello?

Merry Christmas and all the best for 2009 anyway, he said into the cyber-silence.

Now for an apology from MSM

The Iraqi journalist that threw his shoes at President Bush is now apologizing . Apparently, the blessings of freedom of speech and liberty are sinking in and he realizes that had he done the same before brave American soldiers liberated his country from a despicable tyrant, he'd have likely been shot on site and perhaps, his family rounded up and tortured and/or killed, as well. Now if we could only get American journalists to follow suit and realize their exploitation of this act has diminished them, as does much they say and do these days. No sitting president should be mocked and teased and ridiculed by our media when an act of complete disrespect and possible danger is launched.

Entertainment Tonight, Extra, late night variety shows and all the major networks should be ashamed of their coverage. Time to apologize for being un-American, and as petty and pathetic as any junior high kid caught in an act of harassing another student.

Opportunities abound in Rocky sale

As by now everyone knows, the Rocky Mountain News has been put on the block, This at a time when the Tribune Company has filed forChapter 11, when over 30 papers are for sale nationwide, and there don't seem to be any buyers for large-market papers.

The business reasons for this have been chewed over ad infinitum, but the chief culprit is declining ad revenue, which only looks to get worse. (I'd also suggest brand equity; the Rocky used to win the lion's share of the journalism awards, but the Post had a better brand, in part because broadsheets seem to carry greater credibility.)

Editorially, this is an opportunity.

It's an opportunity for center-right bloggers, who will now be able to go after the Post as it inevitably spins off to the left, becoming our version of the "Strib" (Minneapolis Star-Tribune).

It's an opportunity for us in the Colorado blogosphere to do more original reporting, since it's possible the Rocky won't be there to do it.

It may be a big opportunity for the Examiner, which may try to pick up some of the loose talent soon to be running around Denver looking for work. The online paper is based here in town, and could rapidly turn its local edition into the flagship for the country.

It's also an opportunity for the talent at the Rocky, who could try the same thing on their own. Shed the national reporting, bring in some entrepreneurial-minded management, ditch the printing presses and expensive delivery system, and turn the paper into an online, state- and local-oriented newspaper. Charge a nominal fee for a subscription, and go back to a no-holds-barred style, that takes on the Post directly.