Blog
05.21
Newspapers only wish they could print cash too
So, eh, breaking news? Newspapers are closing their printing presses everywhere.
It’s not they are running out of ink or stories, just money. And publishers have been hurling their heads into their desks trying to figure a way out of this Internet mess.
Then, without fail, faster than a speeding IRS agent, more powerful than a local blog and able to leap tall requests with a single check… here comes the U.S. Government.
Yeah, yeah. Get your barf bags ready and let’s say those two magical words together, “Bail. Out.”
Hosted by Sen. John Kerry, some of this country’s most influential publishers caucused on Capitol Hill with shades, a cane and a dirty coffee mug in-hand awaiting a hand out.
Among the blind… er, publishing magnates were our very own James Moroney from the beleaguered Dallas Morning News, who claimed a “quasi property right” over facts that were being used for “commercial gain,” not by readers but by “someone else.”
Yeah, that’s called public information once it’s online, so I’m fairly sure that “someone else” would be everyone who regretfully isn’t interested in buying a paper to see the advertising… uh, read the stories first-hand.
Now, Kerry and the gaggle of civil servants who gathered are looking into a proposal to steer around labeling it as a bailout – allowing papers become non-profit entities.
I wonder which of those former-writers-gone-publishers was responsible for that ironic twist. Hrm.
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