Senator floats newspaper bailout

I'm sharpening up my shoes and kickin' some shins, people.

U.S. Senator Benjamin Cardin (D-Maryland) has gone ahead and done it, proposing a bailout (of sorts) for the horribly troubled newspaper industry.

The good news is that Cardin's plan, as he's outlined it, doesn't just hopelessly shovel money into an industry which will simply waste it and ask for more (*cough* auto bailout *cough*). Rather, his idea is to let newspapers become tax-free, non-profit entities, much like PBS and other non-profit broadcasters, allowing them to accept money in the form of donations -- which readers and even advertisers could then deduct from their taxes as well.

One snag with the plan: As Cardin notes, going non-profit would curtail newspapers' ability to make political endorsements (although many non-profits flount the law and make endorsements anyway). Newsrooms would certainly have a lot of adjustments to make to their editorial pages if they undertook such a conversion.

Cardin says that his goal is to help the papers of smaller cities and communities, and that it isn't to line the pockets of giant publishing empires like the New York Times. However, Cardin cited the recent closure of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in his introduction of the bill. The P-I was owned by Hearst, a vast publishing empire with operations around the country and in numerous facets of the media.

I appreciate Cardin's sentiment here but ultimately have to agree with media critic Jeff Jarvis, who called the move "another well-meaning but ultimately dangerous attempt to provide a government rescue for newspapers."

We may not have to worry about it much (and, really, if a media company wants to become a non-profit organization, there's nothing preventing them from doing so as it is) in the end: Prospects for the bill, which has no co-sponsors to date, appear slim.