My Plan to Save the Press
Micropayments: Everybody’s talking about them! Will they save journalism? Can they help preserve the important tradition of reportage that results in an informed citizenship? Are they the solution to the problem of how to get readers to pay for valuable content?
No. People are idiots. I saw one of the freesheets yesterday whose cover conflated Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez, who used anabolic steroids to give themselves an edge on the baseball field, with Michael Phelps, who smoked pot at a college party to make himself look cool. (And get high.) That’s the level of information people are getting from the free papers, and they seem to be perfectly happy about it. Why would they want to pay for anything more challenging or less imbecilic?
Still, we need a fully funded working press if even a small number of us are to remain informed enough about the world and its currents and conflicts. My proposal is a form of micropayment subsidy that enables the continued existence of information gathering and analysis so vital to our political literacy. A small fee will be added to the bill every individual or corporate entity is charged each month for Internet service. Those fees will be disbursed to news-gathering entities at the end of each month to pay for the kind of reporting which, despite the cost outlay required, rarely proves profitable.
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