This hearing is going to be very interesting. In the wake of news that the Boston Globe is close to shutting down (negotiations are still ongoing at this time), John Kerry, chairman of the Commerce subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet called for a hearing on newspapers. Notably, the hearing is called "The Future of Journalism", an acknowledgement by this Senate subcommittee that newspapers are not the point. It is the reporting and standards of journalism excellence which is at stake. I honestly was not sure whether this hearing was going to "get" that using old rules for dead trees on the internet will not work; given certain names on the panel as well as what has been released of Kerry's statement, I think it will.
The Politico reported:
Wednesday's first panel, beginning at 2:30 pm in the Russell Senate Office Building, will include Sen. Ben Cardin, who recently introduced a bill to allow certain newspapers to apply for non-profit status.
The second panel includes some well-known names in the media world: Arianna Huffington, David Simon (The Wire, Baltimore Sun), Marissa Mayer (Google), Albert Ibarguen (Knight Foundation), Steve Coll (New America Foundation), and James Moroney (Dallas Morning News).
The one I want to hear from the most? David Simon. Any "Wire" fans will probably agree with me that this guy will no doubt have something to say about why newspapers are dying. The Atlantic had an interesting expose on Simon back in 2008:
The Angriest Man In Television
Behold the Hack, the veteran newsman, wise beyond his years, a man who’s seen it all, twice. He’s honest, knowing, cynical, his occasional bitterness leavened with humor. He’s a friend to the little scam, and a scourge of the big one. Experience has acquainted him with suffering and stupidity, venality and vice. His anger is softened by the sure knowledge of his own futility. And now behold David Simon, the mind behind the brilliant HBO series The Wire. A gruff fireplug of a man, balding and big-featured, he speaks with an earthy, almost theatrical bluntness, and his blue-collar crust belies his comfortable suburban upbringing. He’s for all the world the quintessential Hack, down to his ink-stained fingertips—the kind of old newshound who will remind you that a "journalist" is a dead reporter. But Simon takes the cliché one step further; he’s an old newsman who feels betrayed by newspapers themselves.
For all his success and accomplishment, he’s an angry man, driven in part by lovingly nurtured grudges against those he feels have slighted him, underestimated him, or betrayed some public trust. High on this list is his old employer The Baltimore Sun—or more precisely, the editors and corporate owners who have (in his view) spent the past two decades eviscerating a great American newspaper. In a better world—one where papers still had owners and editors who were smart, socially committed, honest, and brave—Simon probably would never have left The Sun to pursue a Hollywood career. His father, a frustrated newsman, took him to see Ben Hecht’s and Charles MacArthur’s classic newspaper farce, The Front Page, when he was a boy in Washington, D.C., and Simon was smitten. He landed a job as a Sun reporter just out of the University of Maryland in the early 1980s, and as he tells it, if the newspaper, the industry, and America had lived up to his expectations, he would probably still be documenting the underside of his adopted city one byline at a time. But The Sun let David Simon down.
I think it is also important that Google is included and Arianna Huffington. The Huffington Post has some pre-buzz:
WASHINGTON — Layoffs, closings and cutbacks have turned the nation's newspapers into an endangered species as readers and advertisers rush to Web sites and blogs, a top lawmaker said Wednesday.
Hours before a Senate hearing on struggling newspapers, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said steps must be taken so the news media can stay diverse and independent.
"As a means of conveying news in a timely way, paper and ink have become obsolete, eclipsed by the power, efficiency and technological elegance of the Internet," Kerry said in prepared remarks. "But just looking at the erosion of newspapers is not the full picture; it's just one casualty of a completely shifting and churning information landscape."
Kerry, chairman of the Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, said newspapers resemble an endangered species. The panel was scheduled to hear from Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., who has proposed allowing newspapers to choose tax-exempt status and operate as nonprofits similar to public broadcasting stations.
Papers would no longer be able to make political endorsements, but could report on all issues including political campaigns. Advertising and subscription revenue would be tax-exempt, and contributions to support coverage could be tax deductible under Cardin's plan.
Cardin has said his bill is aimed at preserving local papers, not large newspaper conglomerates.
Watch the hearing here. Right now!