France's President, Nicolas Sarkozy, announced this week that he would not only increase the country's financial support of print media, but he would also give out free newspaper subscriptions to french youth on their 18th birthday.
Read the AP article on Sarkozy's announcement here.
The idea is very interesting - although I wonder with how much success it would be met here in the U.S. For one thing, while many other industries are believed to merit financial support from the government, I hardly think that the media fits into this category. Because writing is something most people can do, and no explicit degree is required to be a journalist the profession is often viewed as a joke. There's an ad for some show on IFC that I've seen repeatedly in the subway that says "Now it can be revealed: THE NEWS IS MAKING YOU DUMBER." I understand there are a lot of faults to the media, and - here's where my bias comes in - especially with television news. But every time I see that ad I just want to yell at it, 'Listen! We're already dying! Please don't kick us while we're down!'
Anyway, I think it will be interesting to see what happens with the additional support to the media in France - will the 18-year-olds start reading the paper, now that they have the option of receiving it for free? Will the papers use the additional funding to create innovative new ideas to make the media fresh and interesting? It should be interesting to see. As Sarkozy noted:
"None of the proposed measures ... will be useful in the end if the profession doesn't meet its challenges. The industry has a future to reinvent. ... Time is running out."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I feel like his proposal is a good one, because when newspapers are there, people read them. Oregon just began subscribing to the NY Times and the Eugene Register-Guard this year. I read that there are like 1000 copies of each delivered to campus each day. And, at least for the NY Times, you have to get to campus really early in the morning or else they are all gone. I guess this is similar to 18 year olds receiving free newspaper subscriptions in that 18 year olds here are receiving them free from their schools. Even at the law school, where everyone takes notes on their computer during class and thus has 24/7 access to NY Times online, all of the copies of the print edition in the law school are gone by the time I get to school at noon.
I think that is evidence that college educated folk read newspapers. I think that apathetic 18 year olds are less likely to do that. It's not that it's a bad plan and it's worth a try but I think this won't really pique most 18 year old's interests.
Post a Comment