Ace Of Spades HQ wrote: Connecticut lawmaker Frank Nicastro sees saving the local newspaper as his duty. But others think he and his colleagues are setting a worrisome precedent for government involvement in the U.S. press.

Nicastro represents Connecticut's 79th assembly district, which includes Bristol, a city of about 61,000 people outside Hartford, the state capital. Its paper, The Bristol Press, may fold within days, along with The Herald in nearby New Britain.

That is because publisher Journal Register, in danger of being crushed under hundreds of millions of dollars of debt, says it cannot afford to keep them open anymore.

Nicastro and fellow legislators want the papers to survive, and petitioned the state government to do something about it. "The media is a vitally important part of America," he said, particularly local papers that cover news ignored by big papers and television and radio stations.

http://minx.cc/?post=280444

Comrades, we must hop on board this bandwagon and demand vital people's servants like the NY Times ("All the agitprop that fits, we print") be rescued from the ignorant scourge of the capitalist reactionaries who would savage it by their insouciance! Without our brave progressive warriors in the newspaper industry, we might still be stuck in the Dark Ages of Bush-Hitler instead of basking in the Light of Comrade Obama! We might still be sweating under the heat of Global Warming if journalism did not bring us the green mind of Algore! We could still be drowning in a sea of offshore oil if these courageous MSM warriors did not throw us the lifeline of alternative energy! We would be blaming noble-intentioned kindly benefactors like Chris Dodd and Barney Frank for the mortgage collapse if our ink-stained saviors did not righteously deflect the blame to John McSame and the Rethuglicans. And how would we have found out the truly important information like how much Sarah Palin's wardrobe cost or how many houses McSame stole from the people? Now, comrades, these selfless saints of the news need our help! We must demand with a loud voice that Congress provide TARP funds to place the newspapers no one wants to read in the front seats of the cars no one wants to drive. We must act now for as our guardians of progressive democracy, the newspapers, would say, "THIS IS A CRISIS!"

Yep, I've been predicting a media bailout for at least two years now. With The Party and The Beloved One now in power, I suspect that little time will be wasted in moving to "save" the national media from 8 years of Bush's economic deprivations. I fully expect that by 2010, much of the old-line major media will be a corporatist "public/private" organ with funding provided by the taxpayers. Even if you don't subscribe to the New York Times, you'll be paying to keep it alive.

All of this will, of course, be blamed on Bush and the evil RethugliKKKans (as well it should be. Counter arguments that the media has only itself to blame for bad choices, financial mismanagement, and overt advocacy will be shouted down by arguing that the media should not be forced to behave as a profit making corporation. And besides, since the media IS corporate, they are automatically right wing since all corporations are, by default, minions of the right (bolstering the "no such thing as a liberal media" argument). The brilliant twist here is that the failure of the media and the need for a bailout and assumption of government control will be construed as yet another example of the inherent failure of right-wing capitalism.

Some related out of character thoughts:

I have suspected that the media's utter bias for Obama and other Democrats in this election cycle was more than just their usual leftist agenda prattle. I believe that it was a desperate "go for broke" moment where they willingly traded any miniscule remaining shred of "journalistic integrity" they might have had for pure survival reasons. Let's face it, even a pretty "namby pamby" Republican president and/or congress wouldn't likely bail out the NYT or other big media powerhouses while Obama and a Democrat congress almost surely would. They played the old corporatist-fascist game of showing the Democrats what good and loyal subjects they could be and it will probably pay off. Just think about this the next time you're working over time and busting your hump. The money are earning and not receiving is going to help people you fundamentally oppose recover from their own stupidity.