There's been a mini-debate going on over the last weeks in
adjoining space about whether the national government should revive (from
the New Deal era) the Federal Writers Project, an element of the Works
Progress Administration that lasted from 1935 until the war. The
F.W.P. employed 6,000 writers--some good, some mediocre, some abysmally
bad--on standards I do not know. I do know some of the work, that
in local history, quite useful. In wouldn't make sense unless very
many millions were out of work and the feds had taken on giving a job to
literally everyone who couldn't get one.
The present idea seems to come from the increasing number of journalists
who are losing their work. To the depression in newspapers,
magazines and other journalistic venues like radio, television, even
websites. The current criterion for any kind of bail-out (which
apparently is a much more dignified word than "relief") is
that, if financial assistance is to be given, it is to be given to
corporations that are at the lynch-pin of the whole economic
system. Banks, of course, and re-jiggered investment houses.
Gargantuan insurance companies. The big three Michigan auto
manufacturers. We'll see who else will get in under the wire. The wire will rise...and rise. Why the government should come to
the deliverance of some shareholders and not others is still an
unaddressed matter in capitalist theory. Why bank presidents should
retain their jobs without even so much as a dip in salary is one
question. Why the owner of a dress shop or of a restaurant should
be out on the street with his workers is another.
But wait: there will be more pigs at the trough, and there will be feed
for some.
Journalists and journalistic institutions should be barred from federal
subsidy. One of the reasons is that they have gradually degraded
their own currency. Another reason is that their currency can be
had elsewhere. Now, I am parti pris the other way. So
I have some moral authority on the matter. Oh, yes, but I do have
one gripe. Publications that mail more of their stuff to a zip
code, to any and all zip codes, than TNR and other distinguished sheets
like The Atlantic do pay a lower mail rate than we do. Maybe
the next administration will equalize the cost. But I doubt
it.
I suppose that there are some newspapers that might be considered
indispensable to the Republic, and one of them -maybe the only one- is
the New York Times. An argument, a weak argument, perhaps,
can be made that if the Times, like the Chicago Tribune
is now, were to be threatened by bankruptcy the paper (not the whole
messy journalistic jumble that surrounds it) might be a candidate for
bailout. And maybe we should start naming this help in honest
nomenclature: relief.
There are very few newspapers that are making money these days.
(Maybe the large Newhouse chain still is. But it is private,
private. So nobody knows.) I read a enthralling article by Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson in Saturday's Financial Times. It is
called, "The grey lady's keeper: If the future of US
newspapers rest on one person, this is he." The "he"
is Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr, scion of scions way back into the middle of
the nineteenth century. It could be said that the times have made a
mess of the Times. That's what I believe. And what a
mess it has made. But, then, I grew up with the old lady when she
was truly gray. It is that no longer, except in its portents. Otherwise it runs after fashionable politics, up-to-date and soon
dateable ideas, mawkish stories, dumb (and, worse yet, graceless)
columnists. Some devolve the blame on "Pinch," as junior
is called. There are others who blame it on "Punch," as
his father is called. In any case, Edgecliffe-Johnson quotes Jon
Stewart asking last week: "What's black and white and
completely over?"
The Times is deeply in debt. One reason is that it followed
the fashion of building a glamorous new headquarters. That can
probably be mortgaged with a lease-back. Still, it has hundreds of
millions in other soon to be callable debt. It had at its last
quarterly report, as I recall, $47 million in cash. Bankers can
rescue the paper and the corporation. But at very high cost and
with strict conditions. The Fed may lower its interest rate to
banks to zero this coming week. The banks will charge the Times
nearer to ten.
Then, of course, Rupert Murdoch might buy the company. Or Mort
Zuckerman.