MICHEL MARTIN
NPR Tell Me More
10-05-2009
Senator Pitches Newspaper Bailout
Host: MICHEL MARTIN
Time 09:00-10:00 AM
Play Audio
MICHEL MARTIN, host:
I"m Michel Martin, and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News.
Today, we"re going to talk about the future of the business we are in. I don"t mean to get personal so soon in the program, but did you read a newspaper this weekend, catch the news? If you did, we thank you. If you didn"t, well, you"re not alone. If you have picked up a paper lately, you can probably tell the traditional news business is in deep trouble.
Newspapers are getting thinner. Many of them are folding altogether. The reach of the coverage has shrunk for many news organizations, and, of course, reporter and editor jobs are disappearing. As a matter of fact, according to a new report by UNITY: The Journalists of Color - that"s a consortium representing four journalist associations -since the recession began, journalism jobs have evaporated at a rate almost three times that of positions in the general economy.
We"re going to devote much of today"s program to looking at various aspects of the journalism crisis, and we"re going to start off with a part of the media that has been hardest hit: print journalism. Newspapers have been devastated as advertisers have transferred their budgets from hardcopy to online page views. U.S. Senator Ben Cardin, Democrat of Maryland, believes he has a lifeline. This past March, he introduced the Newspaper Revitalization Act which would give newspapers that regularly publish local, national and international news the option of becoming tax-exempt nonprofits.
Senator Cardin joins us now from his home in Maryland. Welcome. Thank you so much for speaking with us.
Senator BEN CARDIN (Democrat, Maryland): Michel, it"s a pleasure to be with you.
MARTIN: What inspired your sponsorship of this bill? I know that your hometown paper, The Baltimore Sun, has had many of the difficulties that we"ve talked about nationally.
Sen. CARDIN: Well, I think local newspapers are critically important to our democratic system. They"re a check and balance on what we do in government, what happens in business, what happens in our community. And more and more of our local bureaus are being closed. You know, I know people get their news on the Internet and they say, gee, why do we need the local paper?
Well, most of the news comes from those investigative reporters who work for newspapers. That"s where they get the source of their information. And if we lose those local news bureaus, we"re really losing a lot. So I"m trying to keep an independent local newspaper going by giving them an additional source for revenue through local contribution.
MARTIN: Why is legislation needed for this? Why can"t they simply use existing mechanisms to transform their corporate structures, if they so choose?
Sen. CARDIN: Well, they can, and some have. We know that some affiliated with faith-based groups or educational institutions have been nonprofits and are able to get contributions from the community. The problem is that the IRS makes that difficult for a traditional, local newspaper. Because they get so much of their revenues through advertising and subscriptions, the IRS has taken the position that they can"t qualify as a nonprofit.
My legislation would allow them to continue to get revenues through subscriptions and advertising, which are very much down, but also to be able to get local community support through contributions, basically maintaining their independent status.
MARTIN: Have newspapers expressed interest? And I also should mention for the sake of full disclosure for those who don"t know that NPR, National Public Radio, is a nonprofit along the lines of what we"re talking about here, but it has always been a nonprofit. There was no conversion of status, as it were.
Sen. CARDIN: There is interest. Quite frankly, there needs to be more interest if this legislation is to move in the United States Congress. Local newspapers are going to have to come forward and say that they want to do this.
MARTIN: Why do you think they"re not more interested? Is it you think that they"re just so preoccupied with survival that they"re not as open to other options as they could be? Is it that they"re sort of preoccupied with their day-to-day existence? Or why do you think that is?
Sen. CARDIN: Well, I think that"s part of it. I think also it"s that many have been taken over by large conglomerates, and the large conglomerates are in trouble. And it"s unlikely that they could become a nonprofit. So I think it"s mainly the structures that they"ve gotten themselves into and the current competition. They look at themselves as competing on the Internet, and yet they are basically giving their product away free on the Internet. So the current business model does not work, and I don"t think they"re really focused on how to survive.
MARTIN: One objection that I"ve heard is that if newspapers were to become nonprofits that they couldn"t endorse candidates. They could editorialize as they do now, but they could not endorse specific candidates. And for some, this is a real problem. Because they say, well - on the national level, perhaps, it"s not as big of an issue, but on a local level, a lot of people really do rely on the endorsements of local newspapers. People say, look. I don"t have time to follow these races closely, the School Board, the County Council and so forth. I really need this. It"s really part of the service. What do you say to that?
Sen. CARDIN: One of the restrictions on a nonprofit is that they cannot directly get involved in an election. That"s a requirement for a nonprofit. They can editorialize. They can comment about an elected official. They can get involved in local political situation, as far as reporting about it. But the one restriction is that they can"t endorse a candidate. The paper will have to make a choice. If that"s so important to it, then find a different way to survive.
MARTIN: Is it surprising to you, though, that there does not seem to be as much interest in this as one would think? I mean, the fact of a newspaper closing generates a headline for a day, a couple of days. I mean, it"s certainly a national story. Certainly, journalists are very interested in it. We just - I cited those job loss figures, which are quite remarkable, I mean, as we said, that the rate of job loss since the recession began in this industry is three times that of the general economy. And yet there doesn"t seem to be a sense of urgency around it. I mean, does that suggest that perhaps people just don"t value it? They don"t value these institutions, then?
Sen. CARDIN: Michel, I hear from people in the community all the time. I hear from people who were either reporters, associated with newspapers telling me we really got to get this done. I hear a great deal of interest in the need to look at other revenue sources to keep local papers open. What I don"t hear from are the institutions themselves, and I think that"s mainly because they are so wounded today, they"re so weakened that they just are not focused on their survival. They"re - maybe they"ve just sort of reached a conclusion that they"re not going to be around.
And I think what people confuse is how we get our news. I fully expect that there will come a day that we may not have the printed paper at our doorsteps, and our grandchildren might be telling us did you really cut down trees in order to read papers? We know we can get the information electronically, and most people are moving towards electronically getting their news. But you need to maintain the local news bureau, the investigative reporting, and they need to have revenue sources.
So the contributions is one, looking for revenues on the Internet"s another, but we need to preserve this institution that we called our local newspapers. And unfortunately, that"s becoming a real challenge today. But I think the community wants it. I can tell you that those that have been involved in journalism think it"s very important to maintain the independent investigative capacity of a paper, and that"s what we really need to work on to preserve.
MARTIN: Senator Ben Cardin is a Democrat of Maryland. He has introduced the Newspaper Revitalization Act, and he was kind enough to join us from his home office in Maryland. Senator, thank you so much for speaking with us.
Sen. CARDIN: Michel, thanks for doing this show. It"s important.
Copyright 2005 National Public Radio, Inc.. All rights reserved.
NPR Tell Me More
10-05-2009
Senator Pitches Newspaper Bailout
Host: MICHEL MARTIN
Time 09:00-10:00 AM
Play Audio
MICHEL MARTIN, host:
I"m Michel Martin, and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News.
Today, we"re going to talk about the future of the business we are in. I don"t mean to get personal so soon in the program, but did you read a newspaper this weekend, catch the news? If you did, we thank you. If you didn"t, well, you"re not alone. If you have picked up a paper lately, you can probably tell the traditional news business is in deep trouble.
Newspapers are getting thinner. Many of them are folding altogether. The reach of the coverage has shrunk for many news organizations, and, of course, reporter and editor jobs are disappearing. As a matter of fact, according to a new report by UNITY: The Journalists of Color - that"s a consortium representing four journalist associations -since the recession began, journalism jobs have evaporated at a rate almost three times that of positions in the general economy.
We"re going to devote much of today"s program to looking at various aspects of the journalism crisis, and we"re going to start off with a part of the media that has been hardest hit: print journalism. Newspapers have been devastated as advertisers have transferred their budgets from hardcopy to online page views. U.S. Senator Ben Cardin, Democrat of Maryland, believes he has a lifeline. This past March, he introduced the Newspaper Revitalization Act which would give newspapers that regularly publish local, national and international news the option of becoming tax-exempt nonprofits.
Senator Cardin joins us now from his home in Maryland. Welcome. Thank you so much for speaking with us.
Senator BEN CARDIN (Democrat, Maryland): Michel, it"s a pleasure to be with you.
MARTIN: What inspired your sponsorship of this bill? I know that your hometown paper, The Baltimore Sun, has had many of the difficulties that we"ve talked about nationally.
Sen. CARDIN: Well, I think local newspapers are critically important to our democratic system. They"re a check and balance on what we do in government, what happens in business, what happens in our community. And more and more of our local bureaus are being closed. You know, I know people get their news on the Internet and they say, gee, why do we need the local paper?
Well, most of the news comes from those investigative reporters who work for newspapers. That"s where they get the source of their information. And if we lose those local news bureaus, we"re really losing a lot. So I"m trying to keep an independent local newspaper going by giving them an additional source for revenue through local contribution.
MARTIN: Why is legislation needed for this? Why can"t they simply use existing mechanisms to transform their corporate structures, if they so choose?
Sen. CARDIN: Well, they can, and some have. We know that some affiliated with faith-based groups or educational institutions have been nonprofits and are able to get contributions from the community. The problem is that the IRS makes that difficult for a traditional, local newspaper. Because they get so much of their revenues through advertising and subscriptions, the IRS has taken the position that they can"t qualify as a nonprofit.
My legislation would allow them to continue to get revenues through subscriptions and advertising, which are very much down, but also to be able to get local community support through contributions, basically maintaining their independent status.
MARTIN: Have newspapers expressed interest? And I also should mention for the sake of full disclosure for those who don"t know that NPR, National Public Radio, is a nonprofit along the lines of what we"re talking about here, but it has always been a nonprofit. There was no conversion of status, as it were.
Sen. CARDIN: There is interest. Quite frankly, there needs to be more interest if this legislation is to move in the United States Congress. Local newspapers are going to have to come forward and say that they want to do this.
MARTIN: Why do you think they"re not more interested? Is it you think that they"re just so preoccupied with survival that they"re not as open to other options as they could be? Is it that they"re sort of preoccupied with their day-to-day existence? Or why do you think that is?
Sen. CARDIN: Well, I think that"s part of it. I think also it"s that many have been taken over by large conglomerates, and the large conglomerates are in trouble. And it"s unlikely that they could become a nonprofit. So I think it"s mainly the structures that they"ve gotten themselves into and the current competition. They look at themselves as competing on the Internet, and yet they are basically giving their product away free on the Internet. So the current business model does not work, and I don"t think they"re really focused on how to survive.
MARTIN: One objection that I"ve heard is that if newspapers were to become nonprofits that they couldn"t endorse candidates. They could editorialize as they do now, but they could not endorse specific candidates. And for some, this is a real problem. Because they say, well - on the national level, perhaps, it"s not as big of an issue, but on a local level, a lot of people really do rely on the endorsements of local newspapers. People say, look. I don"t have time to follow these races closely, the School Board, the County Council and so forth. I really need this. It"s really part of the service. What do you say to that?
Sen. CARDIN: One of the restrictions on a nonprofit is that they cannot directly get involved in an election. That"s a requirement for a nonprofit. They can editorialize. They can comment about an elected official. They can get involved in local political situation, as far as reporting about it. But the one restriction is that they can"t endorse a candidate. The paper will have to make a choice. If that"s so important to it, then find a different way to survive.
MARTIN: Is it surprising to you, though, that there does not seem to be as much interest in this as one would think? I mean, the fact of a newspaper closing generates a headline for a day, a couple of days. I mean, it"s certainly a national story. Certainly, journalists are very interested in it. We just - I cited those job loss figures, which are quite remarkable, I mean, as we said, that the rate of job loss since the recession began in this industry is three times that of the general economy. And yet there doesn"t seem to be a sense of urgency around it. I mean, does that suggest that perhaps people just don"t value it? They don"t value these institutions, then?
Sen. CARDIN: Michel, I hear from people in the community all the time. I hear from people who were either reporters, associated with newspapers telling me we really got to get this done. I hear a great deal of interest in the need to look at other revenue sources to keep local papers open. What I don"t hear from are the institutions themselves, and I think that"s mainly because they are so wounded today, they"re so weakened that they just are not focused on their survival. They"re - maybe they"ve just sort of reached a conclusion that they"re not going to be around.
And I think what people confuse is how we get our news. I fully expect that there will come a day that we may not have the printed paper at our doorsteps, and our grandchildren might be telling us did you really cut down trees in order to read papers? We know we can get the information electronically, and most people are moving towards electronically getting their news. But you need to maintain the local news bureau, the investigative reporting, and they need to have revenue sources.
So the contributions is one, looking for revenues on the Internet"s another, but we need to preserve this institution that we called our local newspapers. And unfortunately, that"s becoming a real challenge today. But I think the community wants it. I can tell you that those that have been involved in journalism think it"s very important to maintain the independent investigative capacity of a paper, and that"s what we really need to work on to preserve.
MARTIN: Senator Ben Cardin is a Democrat of Maryland. He has introduced the Newspaper Revitalization Act, and he was kind enough to join us from his home office in Maryland. Senator, thank you so much for speaking with us.
Sen. CARDIN: Michel, thanks for doing this show. It"s important.
Copyright 2005 National Public Radio, Inc.. All rights reserved.
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