The Death of NJ Journalism

Yesterday, it was reported that NJ’s Gov. Christie has announced more details of his plan to trim 1,300 jobs from the 63,500-person executive branch workforce, including 129 jobs at New Jersey Network. The plan calls for NJN to be privatized. “The state doesn’t need to own its own television network,” Christie said in his budget address. I guess that sounds reasonable. But what if that statement was phrased like this: public media should not be subsidized by the government. Maybe you agree with that too. Why don’t Bob McChesney and John Nichols? Here's why not:

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/4/robert_mcchesney_and_john_nichols_on

McChesney and Nichols talk about their new book, The Death and Life of American Journalism. They maintain that journalism should be seen as a public good. With the collapse of the business model that supported journalism over the past 150 years, they advocate for public subsidies to sustain an independent, uncensored, non-commercial, non-profit news media sector. They argue that currently the resources don’t exist to allow for online journalism, and competition for ad dollars undermines the integrity of an online news system. Also, “new media” is in many ways simply commenting on “old media,” and there is so much less “old media” being produced. Also, the majority of news is coming from corporate news packages.
So what can be done? The authors say that, first, we need to open the dialogue to get citizens thinking about how they can become part of the solution. We’re losing a generation of young journalists, so use AmeriCorps as a model. They suggest a News AmeriCorp: send young people into community stations, develop sites in underserved areas, school radio stations, etc. and provide “supercharged” funding to make it happen akin to European models. And look at the tradition of US subsidizing a free press: the first 75 years we subsidized the postal system, which was largely intended for the distribution of newspapers. In today’s dollars, those subsidies equal $30 billion. That’s the kind of subsidies European countries spend on their public media today. That amount equals about 12 weeks of what we’ve been spending on the war in Iraq, or 5% of the first bank bail-out. For that investment, we might indeed avoid that kind of bank bail-out situation when citizens are informed. It’s a relatively small amount when considering what’s at stake. The Founders meant for freedom of the press to come into play when needed. Citizens must act now to prevent the situation where the vast majority of news information is packaged by power elites. And we can start by reminding our legislators that the government of New Jersey should continue to subsidize NJN, at least to be an alternative to the only other news outlet that covers the entire state. That would be radio station NJ101.5 FM, whose respected news department shares its airwaves with reverb-enhanced talk radio performers and their lockstep, biased callers. Also, NJN is public affairs, emergency information, a source for the arts, history, and much more. To expect the network to survive through the kindness of viewers like you and corporate funders in our current economic environment is foolish. Tell your legislators to save NJN.