Comments on: I Do Not Think Those Words Mean What You Think They Mean

By: Josh

Josh — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 00:35:57 +0000

Yes, I understand the concept. I’m a blogger afterall :)

But that is clearly not what Waxman has in mind (I.e. the threat to the business model that has sustained them, the danger of an uninformed public, etc.).

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 22:26:40 +0000

Unless you think that efficency has skyrocketed, the fact that newspapers have gone out of business, the widespread elimination of foreign bureaus (and even domestic bureaus outside of a newspaper’s hometown), and staff layoffs must have some effect on the output of news. All these laid off journalists are not just reporting and publishing news on blogs instead of getting paid by a traditional newspaper.

There’s no doubt a lot of “news” out there, but much of it is just republished from other sources(or commentary on news others have gathered, which is a perfectly fine thing).

None of this means that the right solution is government subsidization, let alone subsidization of newsprint delivery. But I think there are externalities — societal benefits exceed willingness to pay.

By: Josh Wright

Josh Wright — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 18:48:19 +0000

This has testable implications. Do you think that the output of “news” has increased or decreased over, say, the last decade? My hunch is that competition has increased, price has fallen, and output has gone up. And of course, the Waxman and the FTC are not talking about subsidizing the dissemination of a particular type of information (says, investigation journalist) but the dissemination of that particular form of information in a particular form, i.e. printed on paper and sold at coffee shops or delivered to your door.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 18:33:02 +0000

I think there are externalities. The societal benefit of, e.g., investigative journalism exceeds aggregate willingness to pay for the costs of newsgathering and publication. My individual benefit from discovering the next Watergate (or even the next government mismanagement of a multi-billion dollar defense contract) is small, so as the newspapers’ advertising revenue declines I’m not willing to pay $2 for a newspaper instead of $0.50, particularly with news widely reproduced (lawfully or not) online. This leads to the production of less news than is socially optimal.

By: Donald Alexander

Donald Alexander — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 14:48:31 +0000

What is Waxman talking about? If anything, the Internet has increased the flow and diversity of information to more people than ever before.