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Ezra Klein: Better to Subsidize Big Media Than Let Them Experiment
Over at the Washington Post, omniscient child pundit Ezra Klein attempts to solve the inevitable underlying economic context behind the Post getting caught last week trying to peddle its own ass to health care lobbyists:
The question, then, is whether we want newspapers (and magazines, and so forth) so agonizingly vulnerable to these pressures. The news, after all, is not a market good. Among other things, it is not profitable to sell it.
Can I just interrupt this fascinating analysis with a
disproportionate complaint about an irritating writing tic endemic
to Washington's
Juice-Box set, of which Klein is a kind of Planeswalker in
Chief? It's the thens, the so forths, the
after alls, the (not pictured, but equally deadly)
insofars, all of which are kissing cousins to master
linguist Noam Chomsky's insufferable of
courses. Of course, insofar as these words and phrases
have any content, after all, it's to convey a chin-stroking
authorial authority, while breezing right past highly debatable
subjects as if they were settled issues. For instance, the curious
notion that news "is not a market good."
What is a "non-market good"? According to the quickest definition I
could find, over at GreenFacts.org,
a non-market good or service is something that is not bought or sold directly. Therefore, a non-market good does not have an observable monetary value. Examples of this include beach visits, wildlife viewing, or snorkeling at a coral reef.
I think we have all observed, and participated in, the buying
and selling of news products (speaking of which,
subscribe to Reason today!), and the accumulation of
monetary value in the news-producing hands of (to name one popular
hate-bear)
Rupert Murdoch. Furthermore, to assert that "it is not profitable
to sell" news demonstrates not just historical
ignorance, but a misreading of present day balance sheets as
well. The much-maligned and bankrupt Tribune Co., to pick one
wobbly newspaper/television company out of a hat, has actually
earned a higher net profit margin this year than Wal-Mart–an
estimated 8
percent to around
5.5 percent. The news remains profitable, but the provision
thereof by companies using expensive 20th century models of
staffing and deliverance is being questioned, and rightly so, by
the same capital markets that once provided scores of billions to
once-fattened newsrooms.
Having confidently misdescribed the problem, Klein charges on to a
familiar, if dangerous, solution:
Thankfully, society has developed models for funding things we deem important but don't entirely trust to the private market. We have public universities and public centers for disease research and public firefighting departments and a public military and public roads. Why should news be different?
You can argue that it must be oppositional to government, of course, and so government funding is a conflict of interest. But many European countries have solved that problem by developing automatic funding structures free of government influence. Meanwhile, it's not as if NPR or the BBC seem particularly concerned about criticizing their respective governments (nor, for that matter, do professors at public universities seem particularly cowed). And those funding mechanisms can, at the least, be transparent, predictable, and partial, which would be better than newspapers quietly trying a thousand things, many of them far from the public eye.
Italics mine, to demonstrate the soft sophistry of low absolutism. Follow that link on "solved," and you get an October 2007 Ezra Klein piece in the American Prospect, whose only evidence for that claim is A) a paraphrase from a 2007 Columbia Journalism Review column by a recent journalism school grad trumpeting Sweden's newspaper subsidies as "encouraging reportorial competition," B) a quote from a UC San Diego communications professor saying that Swedish subsidies "don't lead journalists to be timid," and Klein's own claim that the BBC produces with its $7 billion subsidy "credible, adversarial journalism that need not compete on grounds of sensationalism."
I will let actual Swedish taxpayer and current BBC subscriber Michael C. Moynihan address the truthiness of those specifics (read some of his thoughts on the subject here), but from my experience covering media policy in Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, and (more pertinently to the discussion) having been married to a longtime contributor to (and defender of) the French and Swiss national public radio systems, I can say that any notion of those five countries having come anywhere close to "solving" the conflict-of-interest problem is laughable. With every new election in France comes new, more politically aligned heads of public broadcasting. The current French president in particular is notorious for applying successful pressure on his media mogul pals for more flattering coverage. And wherever you see a dominant, subsidy-fueled national television network, you will also see a long history of suppressed competition, followed by an all-too-brief recent era of overstaffed broadcasters scrambling after an audience that finally has some other choices.
Most relevantly of all to a discussion about news organizations' profitability and quality, the largely unsubsidized U.S. newspaper industry has long been the envy of its European cousins, precisely on grounds of profitability, quality, and quantity, both of staffing and output. It is interesting that that model is now under threat, but it is not cause to spend my tax money propping up incumbent billionaires and otherwise aping a European system that on balance has produced inferior results.
hmm|7.6.09 @ 2:03PM|#
Cute boy like him. The post might be able to peddle his ass out and make a dollah. Get on the corner ho and get mah money.
anarch the Anglo|7.6.09 @ 2:06PM|#
Noam Chomsky's insufferable of courses.
Of course, I have to ask you to review that link or lynk, or lunq,
thonqw eew.
Matt Welch|7.6.09 @ 2:10PM|#
Of course, I have to ask you to review that link or lynk, or
lunq, thonqw eew.
Click on the underlying PDF, and go to pages 22-23. A TREASURE WILL
BE YOURS!
|7.6.09 @ 2:12PM|#
I think we have all observed, and participated in, the
buying and selling of news products (speaking of which, subscribe
to Reason today!)
Smooth, Welch... very smooth.
|7.6.09 @ 2:13PM|#
What was that German word for punchable face,
again?
Backpfeifengesicht
Welch... well frickin' said.
Kyle Jordan|7.6.09 @ 2:14PM|#
Damn Welch! You need to write like this more often. Reading this I started to hear "With Odin on Our Side" ringing out and what not. Raping and pillaging stupidity.
|7.6.09 @ 2:16PM|#
We have public universities and public centers for disease research and public firefighting departments and a public military and public roads. Why should __________ be different?
|7.6.09 @ 2:16PM|#
Come on now, Matt.
We all know that if it's European, especially Swedish, it's got to
be better and fairer and more sophisticated than what us Amurrikun
rubes do.
|7.6.09 @ 2:17PM|#
Also, "of course" and its cousins is fine in moderation. These phrases give needed context to the rest of the sentence from which we may determine certain things about the author's intent, in this case that he thinks the following sentence is somewhat in opposition to what was written before.
hmm|7.6.09 @ 2:20PM|#
Come on. He's just trying to save his job. All the talented
smart rats have jumped ship and the old dying rats are riding the
turd as it swirls. What's a young up and coming turd with the logic
of a high school senior to do?
If he wants to work for government I hear the Obama administration
has a pretty hefty media organization going on.
Shannon Love|7.6.09 @ 2:21PM|#
I would point out that the push for socialized news results in
part from the weak property rights for digital information.
Whenever we have weak property rights, we create a variant of the
tragedy of the commons and people usually respond politically to
TOCs with socialization of the common resource.
As it becomes easier and easier to consume intellectual/information
products without paying for them, we will see increasing pressure
to socialize the production of those products. In a couple of
decades we could see the entire news, entertainment, artistic and
academic industries effectively under complete political control.
The state won't have to restrict anyone's first amendment rights,
it will just be that state supported media will have huge budgets,
much wider distribution and much louder voice than anyone
else.
Property is the heart of a free-market and a free-society. People
have been so obsessed with downloading music for free that they
have ignored or rationalized away the property rights of anyone who
creates a product that can be digitized. Now it's time to pay the
piper.
Russ 2000|7.6.09 @ 2:21PM|#
Does the FCC rule prohibiting cross-ownership of newspapers and TV/Radio still exist? I kinda lost track when the Tribune Company bought the LA Times.
Timmy|7.6.09 @ 2:24PM|#
From da librul:
Corporate ownership of da news bidness puts bias into da news
product.
Government ownership of da news bidness puts FREEDOM into da news
product.
Hold your head sideways and squink a little bit, den you see it
too.
Warty|7.6.09 @ 2:26PM|#
Reading this I started to hear "With Odin on Our Side"
ringing out
NOW YOU'VE
DONE IT!!!!
Ezra Klein: punchable, or most punchable?
|7.6.09 @ 2:28PM|#
"Craigslist is what's killing the newspapers."
I heard this, just the other night. The person who uttered it did
not seem to be bothered in the least that the newspapers have been
mercilessly price-gouging classified advertisers for eons.
EJM|7.6.09 @ 2:32PM|#
Does the FCC rule prohibiting cross-ownership of newspapers
and TV/Radio still exist? I kinda lost track when the Tribune
Company bought the LA Times.
The rules been
loosened a bit (especially in the largest DMAs), but...
(As far as Tribune itself goes,
I think the company is still depending somewhat on
waivers.)
|7.6.09 @ 2:39PM|#
Also, "of course" and its cousins is fine in
moderation.
I view them as signals that the assertion immediately following is
highly debatable, at best, and likely completely wrong, which is
why the writer wants to speed past it.
So I like 'em. They're useful.
Paul|7.6.09 @ 2:47PM|#
It's the thens, the so forths, the after alls, the (not pictured, but equally deadly) insofars, all of which are kissing cousins to master linguist Noam Chomsky's insufferable of courses. Of course, insofar as these words and phrases have any content, after all, it's to convey a chin-stroking authorial authority, while breezing right past highly debatable subjects as if they were settled issues.
It's like talking to my mother. Any conversation with my mother
(which is pretty much one sided coming from her) is a long
stream-of-consciousness set of proclamations peppered with:
As you know; one must realize; of course; it's just not done;
surely; truth be told; it's well established; one never; one
always;
Of course she's European, so as you know, one must realize it's
surely cultural.
heart_naomi|7.6.09 @ 2:55PM|#
You've gotta admit, Ezra Klein is pretty fucking cool. I want to hang out with him and be his friend. I bet he knows how to please a woman.
|7.6.09 @ 3:03PM|#
Oh, naomi... haven't you learned to spot a premature ejaculator yet? Even with baseball stats to run in his head, Ezra's got "two pumps and a squirt" written all over him.
Warty|7.6.09 @ 3:03PM|#
Throw problematic onto the authority pyre as
well.
I can keep
this up all day
Warty|7.6.09 @ 3:11PM|#
Ezra's got "two pumps and a squirt" written all over
him.
Nah, he's a sensitive modern man. He ineptly wiggles his tongue on
his woman's unkempt mound for hours at a time and then cries tears
of pride when she fakes her orgasms.
Xeones|7.6.09 @ 3:12PM|#
Ezra's got "two pumps and a squirt" written all over
him.
The only time a dude like that gets laid is when one of his
overweight female friends feels bad for him and throws a mercy-fuck
his way.
Warty|7.6.09 @ 3:17PM|#
I mean womyn. Forgive me.
X, don't forget how he keeps his mind focused on listening for the
sounds of withdrawn consent. It is a womyn's right to say no!
Brian Lockwood|7.6.09 @ 3:20PM|#
Nah, he's a sensitive modern man. He ineptly wiggles his
tongue on his woman's unkempt mound for hours at a time and then
cries tears of pride when she fakes her orgasms.
Followed by two pumps and a squirt of course.
|7.6.09 @ 3:39PM|#
Ezra usually tries putting on two condoms to last longer, but mostly he jizzes trying to get the second one on. If he had a decent refractory period, this might not be that big of a deal, but it takes days for his body to scrape together enough testosterone for a single erection.
Xeones|7.6.09 @ 3:52PM|#
You know those three DVDs that Ezra couldn't figure out how to return to Netflix? Two of them were You've Got Mail.
|7.6.09 @ 4:05PM|#
Resolved: Ezra Klein is unlayable.
On to his greater sins: What really drives me nuts is that people
like Ezra Klein--who went from college to think tank without
spending even ten minutes in the for-profit marketplace--are taken
seriously as experts on ANYTHING.
I'd love to hand this guy the financial statements of the
businesses he pretends to understand and see what genius analysis
he arrives at.
heart_naomi|7.6.09 @ 4:08PM|#
oh he was the netflix guy? anyone that stupid had better be well-versed on the subject of cunninlingus else they are just useless.
Warty|7.6.09 @ 4:10PM|#
Holy shit, this spindly little fuck was born in 1984. NINETEEN EIGHTY MOTHERFUCKING FOUR. He and this kid should have a debate or something.
|7.6.09 @ 4:15PM|#
And he talks about his "roommates." They don't even pay him well enough to live by himself. We should stop beating up on this pathetic half-man. It's unseemly.
Fluffy|7.6.09 @ 4:32PM|#
This isn't even about preserving some abstract concept called
"the news".
It's about preserving the lifestyles of people who went to
journalism school.
It's not about some tragedy of the commons. It's about people with
absolutely no historical perspective. There was a comparatively
very brief moment in historical time where each large city had two
or more profitable newspapers run by non-partisan "journalists" who
earned healthy incomes and were regarded as honorary members of the
professional class. But people like Klein consider that the
normal state of affairs, and regard any shift away from
that state as market failure.
Xeones|7.6.09 @ 4:50PM|#
We should stop beating up on this pathetic half-man. It's
unseemly.
It is not, and we shouldn't.
ChrisO|7.6.09 @ 5:05PM|#
I don't really care what Think Tank Intern Boy spouts off in the WashPost, as long as it doesn't actually result in money being forcibly removed from my wallet to support him and his ilk.
alan|7.6.09 @ 5:32PM|#
Nah, he's a sensitive modern man. He ineptly wiggles his
tongue on his woman's unkempt mound for hours at a time and then
cries tears of pride when she fakes her orgasms.
Oh, I would buy you a beer right now if I could!
Kim Jong Il|7.6.09 @ 5:36PM|#
"In a couple of decades we could see the entire news,
entertainment, artistic and academic industries effectively under
complete political control"
I teach you.
The Buggy Whip Review|7.6.09 @ 5:41PM|#
"It's about preserving the lifestyles of people who went to
journalism school."
Makes sense.
|7.6.09 @ 6:20PM|#
Thank you for my daily portion of MSM hate. Ezra and his fellow apologist for theft and murder are trying to get the MoMo going for transfers of wealth from me directly to them.
BeesInTheBrain|7.6.09 @ 7:09PM|#
"Thankfully, society has developed models for funding things we
deem important but don't entirely trust to the private
market."
Considering the newspapers are having a difficult time convincing
their customers of their value, who is deeming them as
"important"?
|7.6.09 @ 8:44PM|#
I would point out that the push for socialized news results
in part from the weak property rights for digital
information.
The weakness of the property right is due to an inherent weakness,
not a failure to enforce.
newspapers have been mercilessly price-gouging classified
advertisers for eons
You heard that from someone that agreed with the editorial
viewpoint of that newspaper (and who likely never used a classified
to sell something).
|7.6.09 @ 8:54PM|#
fuck it, I'd still do him if he showed up on my
doorstep
This must be the female equivalent of "I'm so horny even the crack
of dawn isn't safe".
|7.6.09 @ 11:05PM|#
My God, what is he, like fifteen?
B.P. and Solanum have, quite early on, said about all there is to
say here.
|7.7.09 @ 12:09AM|#
Mean while on NPR (that is news payed for by the government)
today i heard heart wrenching story after heart wrenching story
about people who were disabled and lost their jobs and could not
afford health insurance....
This of course being a coincidence to Obama's Health care reform
agenda and the reports ignoring the fact that the disabled receive
monies and health care from social security and medicare was only a
simply oversight.
|7.7.09 @ 12:53AM|#
The left is full of people who tell tales of a magical faroff land called Sweden, where everything is perfect. A hundred years ago Swedes told such tales about America and emigrated here; but curiously enough, the Ezra Kleins never seem to follow the pattern that far.
Donkeyhater|7.7.09 @ 12:55AM|#
Ezra Klein, media member of the Left Little League, looking to government to subsidize what the market has already declared to be his incompetence.
|7.7.09 @ 3:39AM|#
It's the thens, the so forths, the after alls, the (not
pictured, but equally deadly) insofars, all of which are kissing
cousins to master linguist Noam Chomsky's insufferable of
courses.
It's like you are living in my head and can hear my thoughts. It IS
insufferable.
|7.7.09 @ 5:39AM|#
Ezra Klein has built a career on sycophantic mimicry, he's not
too bright.
The post might be able to peddle his ass out and make a
dollah.
This is not too far from the truth, although Ezra is his own best
pimp. He's got a lot of old man miles in/on him...
Joe R.|7.7.09 @ 6:33AM|#
He could seriously stand a real job for at least a summer. Installing air conditioners, for example. No one buys an air conditioner unless they need one.
|7.7.09 @ 7:36AM|#
1. Ezra has his example wrong. The amount of public funding of
ostensibly "public" universities has been in free fall for nearly
two decades to the point now where the appropriated public funding
is often less than a third to a quarter of the overall budget of
most any state university. And that funding comes with all kinds of
strings attached. Basic life rule: who pays the piper calls the
tune.
2. Take a look at any qualitative ranking of US universities.
Notice something about the first ... oh ... twenty of them? Hardly
a public university to be found. You want quality, go private. You
want lowest common denominator, go public. So too would it be for
publicly funded newspapers.
u2r2h|7.7.09 @ 10:21AM|#
Distraught over your hollow sophistry one must stutter some
sentences in a futile attempt to face the enourmity of your
cognitive deficits:
Turds, f..king, money Sweden??
.. like old housewives.
PLEASE! Think about the topic at hand:
MEDIA CONTROL.
Since many decades the US media is controlled by the
(national security-) state and the US-population is the most
mind-controlled ever! (Chomsky/Bernaise/Alex
Carey).
False Flag (google GLADIO)
How to rule? First be prepared, then exert total control.
Terror and fear controls people best. False flag terror offers the
ultimate preparation -- the timing is chosen by the people who then
control the situation. Patsies, a plausible scenario and control of
the media (Critics are unpatriotic in this time of need!). If
US-corporations want to control the whole world (pipelines)
domestic sheeple are to be convinced that they 'DEFEND' themselves.
Control the media, embed reporters, Judith Miller, shock and awe,
"catapult the propaganda" (GW Bush).
The US military operates a DEEP STATE which
is shown to have done the 911 inside
job, a super-secret-high-tech, remote control operation,
planned "to the T"! The US military is so powerful (space weapons)
and so conscious (Office
of Strategic Influence) that they even leave easter-eggs for
us: In THE MATRIX (a perfect parable of the media mind-control)
Neo's Passport Expired on 9/11/2001!
Today is the anniversary of "London 7/7" a terror attack that
happened during a rehearsal of a terror attack!
THINK!
THINK MEDIA!
HEAR Peter Power of Visor Consultants speak on
BBC! TWICE! "the hairs on the back of my neck" stood up during the
BBC interview at that coincidence.
How can you ignore SUCH BROAD HINTS?
Did I mention the NORAD live-fly exercises of passenger-plane
hijackings on the day of 9/11?
PLEASE think outside your allotted box!
Fascitis Necrotizante|7.7.09 @ 11:25AM|#
COKE and PEPSI are the
SAME THING!
WAKE UP PEOPLE!
HEEBABLAAHBABGHGHUGHAAARRRRRGH!!!
Track-A-\'Crat|7.7.09 @ 11:53AM|#
Great post, dismantles Klein with ease (and wonderful
humor).
This is also why we don't need the federal government getting any
close to the MSM:
http://trackacrat.com/time-magazine-%E2%99%A1%E2%99%A1%E2%99%A1-obama/
|7.7.09 @ 11:54AM|#
1. Is Ezra Klein related to Joel?
2. The BBC, which I watched and listened to for the first 32 years
of my life, is indelibly political (guess which way), and totally
compromised by its relationship with its "license" payers - yes,
you have to have a license to own a television in the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Guns are of course
banned.
|7.7.09 @ 1:37PM|#
babelfish translates "backpfeifend" to "bake-whistling".
FWIW.
Maybe there's another word for it?
|7.7.09 @ 1:37PM|#
Why are the main contributors to this and similar blogs so
marooned in their own paranoia? It seems those who occupy the world
of finding conspiracy theories to replace just about any
coincidence mutually reinforce each other utilising the internet
with increasingly bizarre assumptions without the 'handicap' of
common sense, let alone reason.
Anyone watching the BBC series 'Conspiracy Files' on 30 June 2009
would now realise that early in 2005 Reed Elsevier, an organisation
specialising in information and publishing that employs 1,000
people in and around London, asked us to help them prepare an
effective crisis management plan and rehearse it before sign-off.
Several draft scenarios were drawn up and the crisis team
themselves set the exercise date and time: 9.00am on 7 July.
The test was planned as a table-top walk through for about six
people (the CM team) in a lecture room with all injects simulated.
Everything was on MS PowerPoint.
As there had been eighteen terrorist bomb attacks on tube trains
prior to 2005, choosing the London Underground was logical rather
than just prescient. With this in mind it was hardly surprising
that Deutsche Bank had run a similar exercise a few days before
and, prior to that, a multi-agency (and much publicised) exercise
code-named Osiris II had simulated a terrorist attack at Bank tube
station. Moreover, I had also taken part in a BBC Panorama
programme in 2004 as a panellist alongside Michael Portillo MP et
al, in an unscripted debate (we had no idea at all what the
scenario was to be?) on how London might once again, deal with
terrorist attacks, only this time it was fictional (created
entirely by the BBC).
Of just eight (8) nearby tube stations that fell within possible
exercise scope, three were chosen that, by coincidence, were
involved in the awful drama that actually took place on 7 July
2005. A level of scenario validation that on this occasion, we
could have done without.
An exercise that turns into the real thing is not that unusual. For
example, in January 2003, thirty people were injured when a tube
train derailed and hit a wall at speed. At the same time, the City
of London Police were running an exercise for their central
casualty bureau where the team quickly abandoned their plans and
swung into action to cope with the real thing.
For a surprising number of people such coincidents cannot be
accepted as such. There just has to be a conspiracy behind them,
despite the obvious point that painstaking research will always
identify probable above possible scenarios. By the way, the only
reason I was asked to speak on TV news that day, when there was
still much confusion about the real tragedies, was to encourage
more organisations to thoroughly plan their own exercises knowing
the threat of terrorism is and remains, very real. One tragic
consequence being Islam, a great Abrahamic, monotheistic faith
(along with Judaism and Christianity), has undeservedly become
vilified by some people.
Peter Power
Visor Consultants
|7.7.09 @ 1:45PM|#
When the Ezra Kleins' of the world start telling me that the
news is not a market good I do not think they are drawing the fine
distinctions such as found at GreenFacts.
No, I suspect they are merely laying the groundwork for concluding
that the news is a public good insofar as that would make
it the government's role to subsidize and ultimately control that
which the proles consume.
|7.7.09 @ 1:48PM|#
What he meant to say was it is hard to sell the uninformed and unformly leftist ramblings of a 25-year-old UCLA poli sci grad. Trying to sell that to the penniless hippies who would be interested has to be hard.
Mike DeSoto|7.7.09 @ 1:54PM|#
Who the heck is Erza Klein and why is he given space in the WaPo to mouth off?
|7.7.09 @ 2:01PM|#
"The news, after all, is not a market good."
The news, if it really is news, is information. We live in an
information economy. Since when is information not
marketable?
Of course, the problem may well be that what Klein and other
journalists are peddling isn't news at all, but a news-flavored
opinion product: not the same thing at all.
|7.7.09 @ 2:18PM|#
I'm OK with the WaPo getting federal subsidies IF all WaPo
employees are required, when going about their professional duties,
to wear hot pants, high heels and garish makeup.
Because that what working whores wear.
|7.7.09 @ 2:33PM|#
The world needs more Matt Welches and less Ezra Kleins. Thanks for taking the effort!
|7.7.09 @ 2:59PM|#
"What he meant to say was it is hard to sell the uninformed and
unformly leftist ramblings of a 25-year-old UCLA poli sci
grad."
Political Science = History taught badly
|7.7.09 @ 3:23PM|#
What would the news organizations do differently if they were federally subsidized?
|7.7.09 @ 4:33PM|#
"Take a look at any qualitative ranking of US universities.
Notice something about the first ... oh ... twenty of them? Hardly
a public university to be found. You want quality, go private. You
want lowest common denominator, go public."
True, except during election years.
|7.7.09 @ 4:54PM|#
Peter Power,
So I guess your position is that false flag attacks have never been
used by the UK or US governments? Operation Gladio didn't exist?
USS Liberty was attacked by mistake? and the Gulf of Tonkein was a
honest misreporting of the facts?
I guess you also believe that the government and media has gotten
more honest since the days when they lied extensively to get
America into a war with Iraq and Vietnam?
I wonder why it is that you guys refused to come up with a story
until this year. I remember when I would be called a conspiracy nut
for even mentioning the fact that you were on TV that day.
|7.7.09 @ 4:57PM|#
Guys stop picking on poor Ezra he's only like 24 or 25 or something. I mean dude he's just a little baby. You'll make him wet himself.
|7.7.09 @ 5:12PM|#
Seriously, folks......The Washington Post screwed everyone
who
advertised in their classifieds, at least since 1976 when I
placed
the first ad for my business. Their rates, even for a pitfully
small
classified, were outrageous and there was no practical
alternative
for years. So, now, they're screwed and their customers, at
least
customers like me, couldn't care less about their misery.
They'd
have to pay me now to place an ad. As for Mr. Klein, he's too
freaking young to know any of this and too lazy to look it up.
|7.7.09 @ 5:30PM|#
Thankfully, society has developed models for funding things
we deem important but don't entirely trust to the private
market
Too bad nobody deems his drivel "important"
By the way, I just love watching the
"separation of church and state" crowd long for
governmental influence in their industry.
Too rich.
|7.7.09 @ 5:46PM|#
Bod @ 3:24: No doubt! But would it change what they do and who
they do it to? That, I doubt.
Brown Line @ 2:01 : "News-flavored opinion product." Brilliant.
u2r2h|7.7.09 @ 6:20PM|#
Peter Power, you are a poor cog in the machinery! Thanks for the
hint on DEUTSCHE BANK. More on how 911 was done is HERE.
For the rest of you. FOCUS ON THE HUGE LIES.
9/11 and the Bali, Madrid, London bombs are such lies.
Ask youself. How convenient is it that the BOMBERS always commit
suicide??
Imagine if there was a CONSTITUTIONAL STATE that would hold trials
and hearings?
Imagine if THERE WAS Investigative JOURNALISM (supported by the
state!)
Currently only on
DANISH TV and in
Turkish newspapaers...
investigate yourselves. Google is the greatest lie-detector
EVER.
|7.7.09 @ 6:57PM|#
Good grief. What do you expect from a UCLA "poli sci"
major.
Blather. Blather. Blather. Sounds like he ran out of money to
finance his career as a student. And now faced with the real world
he has learned that he spent all of that time and money to learn
something that no one gives a rats ass about.
Dude. I'd rather the government subsidize you with food stamps
rather than a pen and a printing press.
|7.8.09 @ 4:59AM|#
"As you know; one must realize; of course; it's just not done;
surely; truth be told; it's well established; one never; one
always"
Ah yes. Reminds me of the faculty in "That Hideous Strength" by
C.S. Lewis.
|7.9.09 @ 10:13AM|#
Is Reason profitable, or does it exist at the whim of a couple rich benefactors? I just ask because it would be awfully silly to mock the discussion of new revenue streams for the news industry from a glass house, supplied by a sugar daddy, where you have never had to worry about such trifling matters.
!</|7.14.09 @ 3:13PM|#
Doesn't Ezra Klein coordinate the local Rachel Corrie Pancake Breakfasts in Dupont Circle?
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