Robert McChesney & John Nichols: Bail Out the Newspapers

We've lost the printed Post-Intelligencer; daily newspapers are closing in Denver, Cincinnati, and Albuquerque; and even the venerable Boston Globe is at risk. "Surviving" newspapers are shedding reporters, shuttering bureaus, and ignoring entire areas of coverage. Journalism, the counterbalance to corporate and political power, the lifeblood of an informed citizenry, and the essential underpinning of American democracy, is not just threatened; it is in meltdown. Robert McChesney and John Nichols, authors of The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers, believe the federal government should intervene to save newspapersand journalismand they have history on their side: The same people who wrote a free-press protection into the First Amendment provided subsidies to the burgeoning print press of the young nation. Presented by Town Hall's Center for Civic Life. Series supported by RealNetworks Foundation, the Brown Foundation, and the Otto Haas Charitable Trust.