The travails of the news media, with declining paid subscriptions and advertising revenues, are well known to all. I wrote a prior post with my suggestion as to how to fund local news coverage. Now, however, the U.S. Supreme Court has given me a new idea. A new type of newspaper could be created that would consist entirely of "news" that people had paid to put in it.
No longer would corporations and unions have to fund "think tanks" to issue "reports" that PR flacks then pushed reporters to write articles on as "news." The reporters would be eliminated, cutting costs. No longer would publishers have to agonize over whether to, for example, publish articles pointing out that there is a housing bubble or private motor vehicles kill a lot of people and are bad for he environment — risking their real estate and auto ads. No longer would the free flow of information be impaired, and the Bill of Rights confounded, by artificial restrictions. The "news" presented would be put up to the highest bidder.
The news produced by such an organization would, of course, be "fair and balanced" between support for the interests of public employee unions, large corporations, and top executives. Yet it isn't the case that it would fail to find a voice. Such a newspaper would consistently assert that non-union, non-executive private sector workers, particularly new hires in younger generations, should be paid less, receive fewer benefits, and be charged more when they go to the store. It would always support the re-election of incumbents, unless they got caught.
But views would also be diverse. Some articles would point out that most people, aside from the rich and retired, were not paying enough in taxes. Others articles would claim that their public services and benefits were excessive, or that “spending” should be cut as if it were a separate line item in public budgets. Some articles would show that unimportant people should pay higher prices so unionized workers could retire earlier and spend more years in leisure, others that unimportant people should pay higher prices so executives could get bigger bonuses. That very diversity could lead to more revenues, as various interests bid for the front page.
Of course those who are concerned about fairness for younger generations, and the less politically powerful and wealthy, could continue to blog on forums such as Room Eight. At the risk of having someone pay for an article claiming they were a child molester and demanding that they be fired from whatever job they have.
The signposts to the future are becoming clearer, with the latest Supreme Court decision yet another marker. Someone with the stomach for it (not me of course) might as well take off the blinders of our hopes and beliefs and make a buck off the future as it will be.