Say Anything Blog

That appears to be what’s going on in Connecticut where government types are looking to local economic development funds to bailout a couple of failing small town newspapers.

  Seven legislators from the area served by The Bristol Press and The Herald in New Britain today wrote to the state Department of Economic and Community Development to ask for its help in preventing the closure of the newspapers.

  We’ll have more on this breaking news later, but for now, here’s the letter.

  It’s also encouraging today to see that Jim Romenesko’s daily email roundup of media news for the Poynter Institute, which the whole industry reads, featured at the top of its list the story about Gov. Jodi Rell and Attorney General Richard Blumenthal’s willingness to lend a hand to the effort to save the papers. At the very least, it’s better to go down shouting than to slip quietly into the night.

This is problematic for two reasons.

First, the media is suppose to be independent.  Meaning that it should be beholden to government in any way, shape or form.  If these newspapers take money from the government to stay afloat how can the public ever take their analysis and reporting on that same government seriously again?  It will forever be tainted by the perception that the newspapers wouldn’t bite the hand that feeds them.

Second, this shows exactly how much of a corrupting influence so-called “economic development” funds are.  Not only are they being used to bail out failing business in this instance, but they’re also being used by the political powers-that-be as little more than “petty cash” funds for their buddies in the media.

Not only should the taxpayers be on the hook for bailing out media outlets they clearly aren’t interested in (if they were these newspapers would be succeeding not failing) but such a cozy relationship between the government and media should never, ever exist.

It simply isn’t appropriate.

Discussion question: How long until the struggling New York Times bellies up to the federal trough for a bailout?