{"pk":60200,"title":"A Public Press? Evaluating the Viability of Government Subsidies for the Newspaper Industry","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Despite the availability of information from online news\n \norganizations and new media outlets, newspapers remain the primary\n \ncontributor of new content to the marketplace of information and\n \nideas-integral in setting the agenda for public discourse, connecting\n \nreaders with their communities, reducing the costs of citizen oversight\n \non elected officials, and producing investigative and local news\n \nreports. But newspaper economics have sparked massive reductions in\n \neditorial operations and threaten the press's role in American democratic\n \nsociety. The strong public interest in preserving the newspaper\n \nindustry should compel Congress to stabilize the press.\n \n \nJournalists, politicians, and legal scholars have discussed many\n \npossible solutions. This Comment evaluates the practical and constitutional\n \nquestions raised by two potential public subsidy programsdirect\n \ngovernment funding and indirect support by facilitating\n \nnewspaper conversion to nonprofit status-and whether such programs\n \ncould be administered without jeopardizing the Fourth Estate's\n \nindependence. This Comment argues that direct subsidies, though they\n \ncould be tailored to survive constitutional challenge and to protect\n \neditorial independence, cannot deliver a feasible long-term solution.\n \nIndirect subsidies likely would only be available to newspapers\n \nfollowing an amendment to the U.S. tax code and even then would\n \nprovide limited benefit to qualiying newspapers until they have developed\n \na fundraising base. Yet, this Comment concludes that subsidies\n \ncould stabilize the press practically if Congress combined direct\n \nfunding and tax-based incentives into a hybrid similar to that utilized\n \nby public radio.","language":"en","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[],"section":"Comments","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4qm6r8br","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Brad","middle_name":"A.","last_name":"Greenberg","name_suffix":"","institution":"","department":""}],"date_submitted":"2015-04-25T15:44:01Z","date_accepted":"2015-04-25T15:44:01Z","date_published":"2012-01-01T00:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/uclalaw_elr/article/60200/galley/46159/download/"}]}