Former Denver spokesman and Frontier Airlines communications director Andrew Hudson is arguing for a statewide sales tax to save the Rocky Mountain News and other Colorado newspapers.
The 150-year-old Rocky was put up for sale in December by its owner, E. W. Scripps Company in a prelude to shutting it down, leaving the struggling Denver Post as the city's only major daily.
Writes Andrew on his Denver PR Jobs website:
"A newspaper is a critical part of our state's economic engine. The loss of the Rocky Mountain News as a source of information could be quantified as an economic loss to this community in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Not only does the newspaper help to promote our state to the world, its reach and power provides readers and businesses with critical information that drives transactional and investment decisions.
A newspaper creates an important level of transparency that helps to keep government and elected leaders accountable and honest. However, without any type of objective scrutiny of government spending, abuse of power, elected officials' positions on issues, and investigations into overall government conduct, it puts the average citizen and a community at large at a serious disadvantage. Citizens rely on this level of scrutiny.
For example, a recent Rocky Mountain News article by reporter Kevin Flynn exposed the City of Denver for failing to determine if the red-light camera enforcement was actually reducing red-light running by motorists. While red-light cameras are quite a lucrative exercise for the City, we have no idea if it is actually solving a public safety problem as promised. Will critical articles such as this be read by a community on a blog? Will bloggers attend boring zoning committee meetings or City Council meetings? Will they attend press conferences?"
My friend Andrew makes some heartfelt points. There are many cultural and civic reasons to support the survival of a
major daily newspaper, especially one with the Rocky's heritage.
But they don't justify his proposal for a taxpayer bailout, or for having a government-appointed commission oversee a newspaper that is supposed hold government accountable.
The potential closing of the Rocky Mountain News represents the market-driven loss of a delivery product, not the wholesale elimination of news and journalism. It's a very long stretch to conclude that we're all one newspaper failure away from an information anarchy of lazy amateur bloggers.
Who's to say that the remaining Denver newspaper might not do a better job at serving the community? Or some other?
More importantly, why would business and government watchdog reporting be any less likely, complete or impactful just because the majority of media consumers choose to read, listen to or watch such information through an online news site as opposed to via a print edition? Or news weeklies, magazines, television, radio, social media, RSS feeds, email alerts, podcasts and every integrated combination of technologies we haven't even thought of yet?
There are plenty of reasons to believe that the unlimited space and connectedness of always-on, Internet-driven media ultimately make our institutions more transparent, not less.
A "newspaper bailout tax" is unlikely, of course. You'd have a better chance convincing taxpayers to buy the Denver Broncos than the city's newspaper. But it's interesting to read the many reactions posted to Andrew's proposal for a couple of reasons.
One, because it underscores the emotion and complexity of the transformation to a new media economy.
And two, because this entire conversation wouldn't be happening without the same Internet responsible for killing the newspaper that some people think we are obligated to save.
. . . . . . . . . .
Recent Comments