President's Perspective
Working to Ensure That There IS a 'Future of Journalism'

(May 2, 2010) Will the future of journalism be nothing more than conferences about the future of journalism? Not if we have anything to say about it.

The Washington-Baltimore Guild formed a future of journalism working group earlier this year. One of the members, Rob Morris of the National Labor College, has even established a working Web page for working-group members to issue reports, theorize and offer recommendations to the local. Other members are Frederick Kunkle of the Washington Post, Mariya Strauss of the International Labor Communications Association, and Lynda DeLoach of the National Labor College. (We hoped for – and got – a mix of journalism producers and journalism consumers from our local’s members early on.)

The local also hosted Craig Aarons, public policy director for the communications policy think tank Free Press during the April meeting of the local’s Executive Council.

While many of us are busy writing the first rough draft of history, Aarons took time to reveal some history that’s not so well known.
     
The Founding Fathers of our country (and yes, they were all men) believed so much in a free press that it was practically free for those producing newspapers and other publications. At the time of the nation’s founding, the subsidy was equal to $30 billion in today’s dollars. Most of that came in the form of postal subsidies to facilitate distribution.

I can’t help but note that, while the government is not allowed to subsidize the U.S. Postal Service, enacting some kind of similar arrangement today would help the USPS in its current budget difficulties and help newspapers and magazines reach wider audiences curbed by recent onerous rate hikes.

The federal subsidy today, mostly in the form of tax breaks, is a comparatively paltry $1 billion, according to Aarons.

Both the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission have conducted symposiums on the future of media and the future of news. Congress held hearings early last year when the newspaper industry turmoil seemed to be at its greatest.
     
There are several proposals being floated to steady the ship of the Fourth Estate. None of them give the current crop of publishers a free pass, though. How about not-for-profit journalism? A limited-profit corporation? Enabling new buyers to shuck off the debt incurred by the newspaper industry’s buying spree of the 1990s and 2000s? And that’s just for starters.

Free Press co-founders Robert McChesney and John Nichols (a former Guild member in Toledo who served on the local’s bargaining team) are going to talk to Guild local leaders from across the United States in May 1 in Cleveland. Our local is sending Guild international chairperson Connie Knox ( Baltimore Sun), Region 2 vice president Sheila Lindsay (American Nurses Association) and myself (Catholic News Service) to the April 30-May 2 gathering. Further, I’ll be at a Free Press-sponsored forum May 11 in Washington on the future of media. Said forum will be held at the Newseum. While the notion of a museum for news sticks in my craw, I’m willing to go into the belly of the beast to demonstrate that our craft and our savvy need not be relegated permanently to museum status.pond?