Government Told It Shouldn’t Hold Back New Business Models for Journalism
The FTC and the FCC are looking for ways help the news industry fund local civic journalism but have to be careful not to pick fixes that run counter to technology such as the Internet, said Susan DeSanti, the FTC’s director of policy planning. At a Georgetown Center of Business and Public Policy event, DeSanti and other speakers discussed whether bundling news with other Web content such as sports or entertainment could help sustain civic journalism. “In general the Internet unbundles things,” DeSanti said. “Don’t fight the technology. Try to find a solution that works with it.” She said she was speaking for herself only.
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Among the solutions could be micropayments, or pay walls for online news content, DeSanti said. “The more consumers are willing to pay for news, the less need there is for a government subsidy,” she said. But government may soon have to subsidize news production more than it does, DeSanti said. Because an advertiser can communicate directly with consumers through its own website, without buying ads on other media, traditional ad sales may never return to pre-recession levels, she said. “There is really no good reason to believe that advertising will be able to support newsgathering the way that it has,” she said.
"Blogola” -- payments for bloggers to tout products online -- deserves FTC attention, said President Andrew Schwartzman of the Media Access Project. “If there is massive undisclosed blogola, a loss of trust in news distribution” in general “is a great threat,” he said. The FTC released new “endorsement” guidelines for blogs last year but had to quickly explain it wouldn’t pursue bloggers themselves for enforcement (WID Oct 15 p6).
Regulators are right to look at these problems, said Steven Waldman, an aide to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski who will be writing a report on the future of media. “We could assume the policies created before TV even existed could be applicable in a time when you can carry a TV in your pocket,” he said. “But I think that … is kind of unlikely."
There may be some role for government assistance, said self-described libertarian Adam Thierer, the Progress & Freedom Foundation’s president. But it should be limited and not interfere with the development of new business models, even some that may be unpopular and produce public backlash, he said. “Government must be willing to allow a great deal of experimentation with business models,” he said.