The Death and Life of American Journalism by Robert W. McChesney

Author:Robert W. McChesney [McChesney, Robert W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781568587004
Publisher: Nation Books
Published: 2011-06-07T07:00:00+00:00

Dealing with the Immediate Crisis

If we do indeed recognize the need for a viable press system, then the first order of business for those who would respond sufficiently to the current crisis is to stop the bleeding and keep as many journalists employed as possible. The United States needs to buy time to enact longerterm policies and subsidies. At the same time we must guard against squandering money on the failed firms and strategies of the past. In such a circumstance, the ideal programs are stopgap measures that can transition into long-term programs if they prove effective.

An immediate initiative that could be of value to a variety of journalistic endeavors that continue in print would be to dramatically lower the price of postage. It is a pleasing coincidence that this proposal resonates so deeply in the American tradition. Cutting postal rates would be of tremendous value to a broad range of publications that practice journalism and public-affairs reporting and commentary.

Unfortunately, the digital age has not been kind to journals of inquiry and opinion. Many publications are teetering as we write. At present, the lowest cost one of these periodicals enjoys for postage is around 30 or 35 cents per item. We propose that all publications with less than 25 percent advertising in their pages pay only 5 cents for postage for each of their first 300,000 copies sent to subscribers. The scale would then gradually increase from 300,000 to 500,000, where it would return to the existing postage rates. This is a classically content-neutral proposal that would benefit publications such as The National Review and Human Events on the Right and The Nation and The Progressive on the Left. In particular, it would be beneficial to intellectually and ideologically adventurous publications such as The American Conservative, an “old-Right” magazine that mixes distaste for big government with foreign-policy positions that are as fervently anti-imperialist—and critical of neoconservatism—as those of Left-wing periodicals. The American Conservative was on the verge of folding in the spring of 2009, and continues to struggle for survival; the refusal to fold is motivated by what its editors say is a determination to be a part of a moment when “the definition of conservatism is really open for debate.”16 The founders understood that when great ideological and political issues were in play, it was essential that a wide range of voices be heard. The United States can and should update that understanding to the present day by borrowing a page from Jefferson and Madison and establishing postal rates that promote—rather than constrain—a wide-ranging debate.

To avoid putting the Postal Service in the position of having to determine which magazines “do” journalism, we would make this subsidy available to all publications, commercial and nonprofit alike, regardless of content, as long as they have less than 25 percent advertising content. We concede this amounts to a subsidy for qualifying commercial magazine publishers, but it only increases the subsidy they have always enjoyed. The 5-cent fee should weed out people who just want to dump boxes of material on the post-office steps.

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