Newsweek’s Daniel Lyons: ‘Don’t bail out newspapers – let them die and get out of the way’
Daniel Lyons, senior editor and columnist at Newsweek, argues on his Techtonic Shifts blog that US bailout plans for newspapers, such as a proposed ‘Newspaper Revitalisation Act,’ are pointless and stupid:
“All this hysteria has nothing to do with saving the news, or saving jobs. Nor is it about saving democracy, which is what the red-in-the-face newspaper lovers always get themselves huffed about, as if newspapers and democracy were inextricably linked. Democracy existed long before newspapers did, and it will survive without them. And plenty of countries that don’t have democracy do have newspapers. Nor would a bailout help readers. In fact, it would only slow down our shift to the internet, which is a far better medium for delivering information.”
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