'The Nation' weighs in on newspapers' woes

Here's an interesting (though a bit long) read on newspaper woes and some potential solutions to our problems, in this week's issue of The Nation:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090406/nichols_mcchesney?rel=hp_currently

Of course, since it's The Nation, there's quite a bit of chest thumping about newspapers -- and, of course, certain periodicals -- having the unique ability to expose corruption in big business (i.e. AIG), keep the government honest and allow Americans living everywhere from big cities to rural areas a chance to be informed about everything from local news to world events.

(If anyone can find a daily newspaper that currently accomplishes these three goals regularly, please let me know so I can subscribe to it!)

Much of their discussion of the problems besieging news papers have been mentioned here, so I thought we could discuss some of the solutions. And in particular, the pros and cons of any ADDITIONAL government subsidies that benefit newspapers (as the article notes, there's already some out there for print and broadcast companies).

Among the solutions I liked was the idea of giving people an annual tax credit for the first $200 they spend on daily newspapers. As authors John Nichols and Robert McChesney write:

"In effect, this ($200 tax credit) means the government will pay for every citizen who so desires to get a free daily newspaper subscription, but the taxpayer gets to pick the newspaper -- this is an indirect subsidy, because the government does not control who gets the money.

"This will buy time for our old media newsrooms -- and for us citizens -- to develop a plan to establish journalism in the digital era. We could see this evolving into a system to provide tax credits for online subscriptions as well."