Being a journalism major, the future of print is discussed thoroughly, if not overly so, in all of my classes. The point is exhausted. However, while making my daily visit to good.is I found a new point of view from a blogger who was discussing something Michelle Malkin of Townhall and National Review Online wrote. Malkin had previously "joked" about a countdown to a print media bailout. However, that may not be far from reality. With every other industry heading down the poop shoot, is journalism soon to follow and be brought under the "quick to rescue everything" government that has shown up in the past month?
Malkin said: "How “free” can a “free press” be if it is leveraged with government funding? How free would they be to criticize other corporate enterprises seeking local, state or federal help to keep them afloat in hard times? A press beholden to the ruling class—a press that cannot stand on its own two feet and the strength of its product—is a press better off dead."
She makes a good point but then there are the outlets of the BBC and PBS who are very much exceptions to the rule. However, if people stopped needing the reliability of print media, which I hope and pray won't happen, I don't even want to begin to think of the consequences. This all seems like a worst case scenario. Yes, numbers will drop in magazines and newspapers published, but only in an Orwellian 1984 world should government ownership ever be imagined. And if it comes to that, let us hope in those who are being educated in journalism today and tomorrow receive the knowledge to know that any thing of this sort would be a calamity.
