Is a “Free” Press Bad for Democracy?

Posted on March 10th, 2009 Andrew Vasile No comments  Print This Post

The bad news is…

An interesting story in Time magazine this week lists ten major American newspapers that are in dire financial straits.  As it turns out, it’s just too hard to make money when you give away your content for free on the Internet.  (Surprise, surprise.)  Love them or hate them, one is forced to wonder what the American political landscape would be like without them.  Is a “free” (that is, no cost) press bad for democracy?

With the economy in decline, consumers are more tight-fisted.  With less money being spent, it makes less sense to put advertisements in the paper.  Also, the tech-biz boom means that at the same time that there are fewer advertisements being placed, there are more venues competing for dwindling ad revenue.  Take, for instance, cars.com or craigslist.  All of those second-hand cars and other assorted items used to be sold by putting an ad in the paper.  How soon we forget.

As a result, many newspapers face a hard road ahead.  Some will choose to become web-only enterprises, cutting their staffs dramatically.  Perhaps some will return to charging for their content (as pled for by David Carr in Sunday’s New York Times).  This could be a viable model: The Wall Street Journal is in no danger of extinction, and it is pay-to-read, even online.

The bottom line is: there may just be less (or lower quality) news to be had at no charge, and this could lead to a less well-informed electorate. 

On the other hand…

But it might not be all gloom and doom.  There could be a silver lining to this situation.  It is frequently decried that profit motives have added bells and whistles to television news broadcasts, while sapping them of substance.  (What “news” program has less substance than when Rick Sanchez hosts the Twitter-driven CNN Newsroom?  Does anyone really care what Ch33ringDitz16 has to say about anything?  Like, totally whatever, ya know?)

But with pay-to-read newspapers, this might not be the case.  To appeal to the widest possible audience, they might actually have to drop the distractions and editorializing, and write about…news.  This would be a good thing for two reasons.  First, it would begin to restore trust in the media as a profession.  And consequently, it might also serve to depolarize our political climate by giving both the Left and the Right someone they can jointly appreciate.

Or like, you know, whatever.