Internet Content Connoisseur
Hello. Welcome to Washington State. Do you print outdated news on dead trees while fleecing the advertising industry? If you answered “Yes”, we’ll give you a 40% tax break. That’s now the law in Washington.
In the last 3 years, US ad spending shrank from $230 billion to $222 billion. The two most volatile categories was the Internet and newspapers. (Everyone else pretty much stayed the same.) Internet ad revenues grew from $17B to $26B, while newspaper ad revenues shrank from $47B to $34B. In essence, the Internet started eating newspapers’ lunch in the order of $9 billion. Make no mistake. This is an epic battle to the bankruptcy filing.
What’s truly frightening is the idiotic, insular logic that brought us this bill, sponsored by state House majority leader Lynn Kessler.
“The actual newspaper reporting is meant … to get information to the public, and to make sure that our government is held accountable for decisions that government makes, and that the stories that are written are accurate, and they can get this information out to a broad section of our community,” Kessler said.
Unfortunately, she is tragically misinformed. (Maybe she should lurk moar.) Journalism is meant to do what she describes. I should know. I have a degree in it. Newspapers, on the other hand, make a profit from delivering journalism in the form of newsprint.
Wanna stifle innovation? Then give flawed business models an artificial advantage over innovating competitors.
Kessler and her ill-informed ilk have made it that much harder for those small groups of people who are advancing journalism to actually make a living doing so. But then again, a thousand independent media outlets with their own strong editorial voices would only make political life that much more difficult.
Ben is the CEO of the Cheezburger Network, the company behind the hugely popular blogs I Can Has Cheezburger?, FAIL Blog, There, I Fixed It, and more than 25 others. His job is to make the Internet laugh for 5-minutes a day.
T at WSB
May 13th, 2009 at 11:46 pm
Hey, thanks for weighing in on this one. Several of us “independent media outlets with … strong editorial voices” here in Seattle are discussing appropriate response. Irony for me, just hours after I heard about this, I was out covering the monthly gathering of our area’s largest political group, which was hearing legislative wrapups from the local reps and senator. No other journalists in sight, of course, none of that subsidized “actual newspaper reporting” stuff.
John Cook
May 14th, 2009 at 12:05 am
Ben,
Great post. Not sure if you saw it, but Todd Bishop did a follow-up interview with Kessler on TechFlash where she offered more of her rationale.
Many of our readers — who happened on the news on a “blog” — offered similar arguments to yours.
http://bit.ly/LUBof
John Cook
TessM
May 14th, 2009 at 8:46 am
interesting. wonder how much newspapers contribute to political campaigns.
(BTW did u meen to slip in a liddul lolspeek? “lurk moar”)
Cameron Newland | Ahh, The Smell of Fresh Subsidy in the Morning | Cameron Newland
May 21st, 2009 at 10:32 am
[...] Read more at BenHuh.com –> Thursday, May 21st, 2009 Philosophy, Politics, Seattle var disqus_url = ‘http://www.cameronnewland.com/2009/05/21/ahh-the-smell-of-fresh-subsidy-in-the-morning/ ‘; var disqus_title = ‘Ahh, The Smell of Fresh Subsidy in the Morning’; var disqus_message = ‘Hello. Welcome to Washington State. Do you print outdated news on dead trees while fleecing the advertising industry? If you answered “Yes”, we’ll give you a 40% tax break. That’s now the law in Washington.%0AIn the last 3 years, US ad spending shrank from $230 billion to $222 billion. The two most volatile categories was the [...]%0A’; View the entire comment thread. About Cameron Newland [...]