Op-ed on future of journalism in the Philadelphia Inquirer

[jaysunb]

1. Good read

This was especially good:

Journalism crises have brought about reform proposals before. The Progressive and New Deal eras saw experiments with ad-free and municipal-owned newspapers. Later, the rise of one-paper towns and of newspaper chains had reformers considering antitrust action against media monopolies, subsidies for media start-ups, and other measures.

Today, even modest policy changes could bolster news organizations. Tweaking tax laws could eliminate barriers to innovative nonprofit journalism ventures and help struggling newspapers make the transition to new business models.

However, with neither nonprofits nor new for-profits offsetting newspaper job losses, public subsidies may be American journalism's last best hope. Strengthening our public media would be a good start. Right now, the United States is an outlier among democracies in its meager funding of public broadcasting.