It's the Communist way...consolidate control, curtail free speech

How not to save news

By JEFF JARVIS

The Federal Trade Commis sion says it wants to save journalism. I'm not sure who asked it to.

In a just-released "staff discussion draft" of "potential policy recommendations to support the reinvention of journalism," the agency only circles its wagons around old newspapers and their fading business models.

If the FTC wants to reinvent journalism, perhaps it should align with news' disruptors. But there's none of that in this report. The word blog is used but once in 35 pages of text--and then only in a parenthetical mention of soccer blogs. Discussion of investing in technology comes on the last page in a suggestion about tools for "improved electronic note-taking."

I testified before these untechnocrats and told them about my research at CUNY's Graduate School of Journalism into the emerging ecosystem of news. We found profitable hyperlocal bloggers selling $200,000 in ads per year. And we built new, less expensive business models for news (at newsinnovation.com). But that's not mentioned, either.

Instead, the FTC staff declares defeat in the search for business models so it may explore many government interventions, including:

* Expanding copyright law and restricting the doctrine of fair comment to benefit legacy publishers.

* Granting antitrust exemptions to allow publishers to collude on pricing to consumers and to business partners.

* Giving news organizations tax exemptions.

* Subsidizing news organizations by increasing government funding to public broadcasting; establishing an AmeriCorps to pay reporters; giving news companies tax credits for employing journalists; creating a national fund for local news, and giving the press an increased postal subsidy.

To its credit, the FTC does ask how to pay for all this. So the staffers speculated about what I'll dub the iPad tax -- a 5 percent surcharge on consumer electronics to raise $4 billion for news. They also consider a tax on broadcast spectrum and even on advertising.

Most dangerous of all, the FTC considers a doctrine of "proprietary facts," as if anyone should gain the right to restrict the flow of information just as the information is opening it up. Copyright law protects the presentation of news but no one owns facts -- and if anyone did, you could be forbidden from sharing them. How does that serve free speech?

The FTC's one suggestion I can salute is more government transparency -- making agencies release information in standard formats, enabling us all to become watchdogs. But that's about responsible government, not saving journalism.

The good news in all this is that the FTC's bureaucrats try hard to recommend little. They just discuss. And much of what the agency staff ponders are political impossibilities. If there was grumbling about bailing out General Motors, imagine the hailstorm about raising taxes to save newspapers.

The report quotes my testimony to the FTC, where I said I'm "optimistic to a fault about the future of news and journalism." That's because the barrier to entry into the media business has never been lower -- and that means news can grow.

The government should favor neither incumbents nor newcomers, but rather create a level playing field by helping every American get open, high-speed access to the Internet. That is the gateway to the real future of news and media.

I believe that future is entrepreneurial, not institutional. The industry's institutions have had 15 years since the start of the commercial Web and we've seen how far they can come. What we need now are innovators -- like my entrepreneurial journalism students -- to invent new forms, structures, efficiencies and business models for news.

But those entrepreneurs don't need government help. They need to be left alone with the assurance they won't be interfered with by the FTC -- or the FCC, which has its own hearings and reports on the future of journalism.

"Get off our lawn," I testified to both agencies in Washington. That didn't make it into the report.

Jeff Jarvis, author of "What Would Google Do?", teaches at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.