Via Patterico, I found Michelle Malkin’s prescient prediction (how about that: both alliterative and redundant!), made way back in October, and reiterated in November (before the Tribune Company’s Chapter 11 filing) that the major newspapers might be asking for a government bailout.
Patterico tied the notion of a newspaper bailout to some of the actions of Governor Rod Blagojevich (D-IL):
The lesson of the Rod “you just don’t give it away for nothing” Blagojevich scandal is that bailouts don’t come free. There are always strings attached.
Among the many astounding facts about yesterday’s news on the arrest of Blagojevich was the revelation that he had sought to have members of the Chicago Tribune editorial board fired in return for bailout money.
We will be told that the Fourth Estate is a necessity, that we just can’t live in a free society without newspapers, and remain free. But the question necessarily arises: if the newspapers require the financial support of the government, how can we reasonably expect them to serve the function of being a watchdog on the government?
Thomas Jefferson said, in 1787:
Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
One wonders what our third president would have thought about the government lending money to the newspapers. As much as I love newspapers — and I even had a paper route, delivering The Lexington Herald in Mt Sterling, Kentucky, from the seventh through eleventh grades — and as much as I like to be able to hold and read a good newspaper in print, rather than online, I recognize that their time is passing; modern technology is leaving them behind. I’d like to see the newspapers find a way to survive in the internet age, but just investing money in a losing and fading industry isn’t wise.
