Newspaper Troubles Prompt a History Lesson
U. S. Newspapers Have Enjoyed Both Press Freedom & Postal Subsidies
Nov 3, 2009
The decline of newspapers has provoked a lot of discussion throughout 2009 about nonprofit news as a business model that could support professional, accountability journalism. The debate about the wisdom of depending on subsidies from government, or foundation dollars, made waves once again in journalism's troubled waters.
The release of Columbia University's "The Reconstruction of American Journalism," triggered it with its recommendations for various ways to subsidize the news. One of them, establishing a Fund for News similar to the National Endowment for the Arts, would be funded through a set of already-existing government fees on the telecommunications industry.
That would prove to be a contentious idea, predicted Joel Kramer, editor and CEO of MinnPost, in his October 19th column. "To many journalists, taking money from the government would be an outrageous conflict of interest and an invitation to improper pressure on news gathering," said Kramer who personally favors some government help, but he acknowledges that divides him from "some of my colleagues."
The Bill of Rights and Postal Subsidies Supported Newspapers
As Kramer suggests, nearly every time one hears the word "government" linked to the word "journalism" or "newspaper," alarms are sounded. Professor Paul Starr of Princeton University answered those alarms with a history lesson when he testified before the Joint Economic Committee of Congress in September.
Reaching back to the beginning of the nation and beyond to colonial America, he made his case that the newspaper business in the U. S. has never been regarded "as just another industry," but rather has been protected and promoted by government. Not only did the Founding Fathers guarantee freedom of the press in the Bill of Rights, Starr said, but as early as 1792 Congress passed laws that provided two distinct subsidies to newspapers. These were:
- One that allowed for the mailing of newspapers to subscribers for a very low, less-than-cost postage rate
- And another that allowed editors to exchange copies with one another through the mail system without any postage charge at all.
The result, said Starr, encouraged the spread of newspapers throughout the nation on a decentralized basis, and the exchange of copies among editors linked their papers together, in effect establishing an early national news network – all done without censoring or controlling the content of the news.
Paul Starr Traced Americans Support for Free Press Back to the Stamp Act
The early American sense that the spread of a free press was a "bulwark for liberty" and the government's inclination to encourage it, had its roots squarely in the events leading to the Revolution, Starr reminded his Congressional audience. Like the Revolution itself, It grew out of resistance to the Stamp Act of 1765, which was Britain's principal levy on newspapers.
At that time, he noted, "European governments not only censored newspapers but also taxed them with the express aim of making them more expensive....preventing the rise of a popular press that could make political trouble." The colonists' early resistance to the Stamp Act left an important legacy, he said – Americans' high regard for a free press.
Starr teaches at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and is the co-editor of The American Prospect. His appearance before the Joint Economic Committee was prompted by the fact that Committee Chair Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY) had introduced a bill, "The Newspaper Revitalization Act of 2009" to allow community newspapers to reorganize as nonprofit businesses. She convened the hearing to gather input on the news industry's future.
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