In a column at financially-troubled leftist British newspaper The Guardian, David Leigh, the newspaper's investigations executive editor, proposes a £2-a-month levy on broadband internet connections, with the proceeds to be given to newspapers.
"When the day comes that the newspapers are forced to stop printing altogether," he writes,
"...it will be a disaster for democracy."
Yes. If only there was some way to almost instantaneously transmit images, sound, and text electronically, through either airwaves or cables, instead of having to wait until tomorrow to read today's news.
This is exactly what the farriers and horse breeders of the 1890's needed. Where were you then The Guardian?
Where were you then The Guardian.. when the swords makers of days gone by were being shot, ShOt, SHOT, by guns, GuNs, GUNS!!!
Guardian indeed.
Sounds perfectly reasonable. Let's make it an omnibus bill:
- A levy on gasoline, to be passed on to buggy whip manufacturers
- A levy on airline travel, to be passed on to sea-going passenger ships
- A levy on iTune sales, to be passed on to vinyl record producers
- A levy on computers, to be passed on to slide-rule manufacturers
- A levy on electricity, to be passed on to people with wood-burning stoves
Other suggestions?
A levy on working families, to be passed on to bureaucr...
Hey, wait a minute...
"When no one wants to buy your product, rent seek off your competition!"
I thought www.samizdata.net/blog would have something to say about this. Strange how David Leigh thinks it would be a disaster for democracy primarily because he'd be looking for work.
Funny you should bring that up marc as I was just thiking the same thing recently. When blacksmiths found their trade passed by through the modern technology of their day, many became mechanics for the new fangled beast known as the automobile.
And many a livery stable transformed into a corner garage.
Ah! People in those days lived a closer life to reality in that they knew to rely on themselves and not expect a gov't handout.
Even the Gaurdian's idiot, Commie commenters see the stupidity of it.
The parasites are getting antsy. Could the Guardian fold? Would be a step forward.
"...it will be a disaster for democracy."
No more hillbilly toilet paper, box stuffing, and bird cage liner, whatever will we do?
I democratically vote that we just sell the paper without all the expensive ink.
I think we should pay the £2 broadband fine,
remember it is not a tax.
If the papers go broke,
millions of parakeets will lose their sh!t house floors.
Besides,
my bird is learning to read.
He walks around the cage all day squawking about 'Prince Harry Naked.'
It's an idea that's stupid enough that it will probably get adopted in some form in England. Thus far that country has shown itself to be crazier than a Monty Python skit.
Newspapers are dying as people don't want to read crap. There's far more investigative journalism on blogs than in any newspaper. Blogs deal with matters in far more depth than any newspaper ever will. Also, there's feedback from the readers which is limited to a very few heavily censored letters to the editor in the dead tree daily issues.
I expect that there will be an objective news organization that will take the place of newspapers. The only thing to be said in favor of newspapers is that once one prints a few million copies of a story, it's far harder to make the story "disappear" than in the case of electronic media where the future of the past is shaped by political exigencies of the present.
It wouldn't bother me to pay a small fee to maintain some non-political organization such as the Wayback machine whose only job would be to permanently archive the internet. Of course, the obsolete reporter mentioned nothing about the transience of digital information which would probably be the best argument to have newspapers.
For some reason my comment got caught in the spam filter and can't figure out why. So, here it is a paragraph at a time.
It's an idea that's stupid enough that it will probably get adopted in some form in England. Thus far that country has shown itself to be crazier than a Monty Python skit.
My paragraph about blogs being far more in-depth sources of information seems to have offended the spam filter.
I expect that there will be an objective news organization that will take the place of newspapers. The only thing to be said in favor of newspapers is that once one prints a few million copies of a story, it's far harder to make the story "disappear" than in the case of electronic media where the future of the past is shaped by political exigencies of the present.
It wouldn't bother me to pay a small fee to maintain some non-political organization such as the Wayback machine whose only job would be to permanently archive the internet. Of course, the obsolete reporter mentioned nothing about the transience of digital information which would probably be the best argument to have newspapers.
Kindle edition subcriptions?
No?
Too hard for the bolshy bronto to understand?
Of course you save a huge revenue-sucking "News factory" with million dollar presses and daily pulp and ink expenses and labour, distribution costs - nawwww easier to be "entitled" to a chunk of your successful competator's action.
Lefty media will just never get it.
The death of the 'classified ads' have had a tremendous impact on the deadtree media.
Now, we can post anything, on Craigslist, and other similar websites, for NADA.
The rates the papers charge are blackmail. They had it coming, and they still don't get it.
When the former president Clinton's dog was run over, and the story made page 2, I KNEW it was over.
Haven't READ any rag since, that would change that opinion.
"Fnck - right - off!"
Copied from the comment section 'neath Wanker Leigh's drivel.
(Also warmly translated for our Gracious SDA host from it's.....,er, crisper "British" spelling)
And they'll get that levy too with the next labour government.
If the news is free on the net, why would you pay for the printed form ? Also, when they chose sides and stopped printing news without bias, as well as climbed on the politically correct bandwagon, it was the beginning of the end. There are two sides to every story so why pay for only one side. True investigative reporting died about 40 years ago. That's why we have the global warming hoax, the green at any cost mentality, Al Gore's hockey stick graph, Suzuki's drowning polar bears and tingles up certain legs because there is a certain black inept President they support no matter how incompetent the man is. They deserve to go under if for no other reason than they traded their credibility for personal misguided ideals. The truth is now on the net and why would we pay to perpetuate the garbage they try to feed us in printed form ? As Mulder said, "the truth is out there"...and it's free.
OK I'll take your word for it, I'll not dignify the snotty nosed fascists with a visit. Just like trolls best to ignore them, deprive them of acknowledgement they even exist.
Unfortunately the Biased Broadcasting Corporation won't face the same fate.
What does Leigh know about quality newspapers? He writes for the Guardian.
"...it will be a disaster for democracy."
And what does he call what was done to elect Obama?
and what Obama is doing to the USA?
So consumers have voted with their wallets and chosen the internet over the newspaper. So we have to tax the people who have not chosen our product in order to save our business. It is no wonder the Guardian is foundering if it employs someone who is this daft. He is also deluded in referring to the Guardian as a 'quality' newspaper.
Innovation has brought forth many new technologies which replaced older, less efficient ones. Mr. Leigh is in his 50s and is not yet wise enough to realise that he is trying to stop the sun from rising.
V10 re your request for other suggestions.
Let's tax the owners of Fords, Toyotas and Hondas and give the money to Government Motors. Let's tax them new-fangled 'motion pictures' to support vaudeville & the theatre. Let's tax TV to support radio stations. Let's tax telephone users to support telegraph operators. Let's tax light bulbs to support the makers of lanterns and candles.
Proving once again that humour is all on the right, lots of great laughs in the comments above -- and it's particularly delightful to see The Manchester Guardian get what needs to come to it.
But before we get too giddy, just remember that this proposal is exactly the sort of "lefty-subsidy" levy that keeps the CBC (through your taxes) and CanCon (through fees embedded in your cable and satellite bills) afloat. In addition, everybody in the UK who watches television pays a licence fee (I think it's called; my knowledge of this is sketchy, so if anyone knows more, do tell, do tell) to support the BBC. Public Broadcasting in the US gets the same kind of support, but at least PBS and NPR aren't quite as ubiquitous as these others. So Loki's opening remark is entirely apt.
Ever notice how these guys dress these things up? A bit of bait and switch, I'd say. The CBC subsidy is dressed up as promoting the Canadian identity ("Canada Lives Here"); same with CanCon. Now, The Guardian is draping itself in the flag of democracy -- which is another great bit of irony, don't you think?
Conservatives always sort of lose when we play defence -- we should go over to offence on this one: I think we ought to use our collective "no" to Mr. Leigh as a rallying cry to push for some consistency in public policy on this issue -- "no" to Mr. Leigh, "no" to the CBC, and "no" to CanCon.
I wonder how they reacted back centuries ago when Guttenburg and the replacement of parchment with cheaply produced paper, put millions of scribes out of work and ended the monopoly on publishing?
How, I wonder, did it change life, because of the reduction of cost of printing? How many more people then had available to them a reason to learn how to read?
How many at that point, no longer had to depend on elites to read the news to them?
Coincidentally that change is what helped kick start the end of the middle ages.
Don't forget we put a tax on buying cd/dvd's just in case someone copied songs onto them. We can't have Ann Murray or Tragically Hip going without.
Like I tweeted to Andrew Coyne about this subject the other day - It would make more sense to have an internet tax to support the porn industry, which arguably has been more affected by people getting access for free, and the workers are more deserving.
@old duffer,
however those blacksmiths actually had a skill--they could fashion things from metal or repair broken metal parts very useful in the days before Canadian Tire. "Journalists"...well anybody who can write at a grade 6 level can pretty much do their job...Bloggers (at least the conservative ones I've been reading) do a much better job of reporting real news, conservative blogger rants (editorials) tend to be based on reality versus unicorn farts and fairy dust.
Uh, didn't Athens in the fifth century BC have democracy without newspapers?
David Southam, of course the Guardian is all about democracy. They've got equal-misery totalitarian socialist solutions for everyone. Don't you know? They're the Platonic Philosopher Kings going to lead us all to the land of enlightenment and kommisariats and Green Energy Solutions.
Yes, all British television set owners pay a licence fee which goes directly to the BBC. Now Leigh wants the same model for his Outhouse Accessory. Claims rightly so that it cripples his ability to charge for his Groaniad dreck. I've a better idea; cut the BBC off instead.
Now Leigh's real problem is not the death of print journalism. It's the death of HIS kind of print journalism. You don't see the British tabs suffering. No, what's suffering is the effete leftist pablum dished out by people whose noses are elevated somewhere above their eyebrows. What's even more lame in all this is that it appears that the British public will pay for news it wants.
Don't you get it, Leigh? It's YOU the public doesn't want. I await eagerly the day when Leigh's unemployed balls are kicked to the kerb.
cgh, 8:49a.m. --
Your point on the tabs is completely on point: I was thinking earlier about suggesting another alternative to Mr. Leigh, et. al.: how about, ah, studying successful newspapers and emulating and/or improving on their strategy? But then I thought, why bother? They aren't capitalists.
Plus, EBD is right: news is now a paperless and instantaneous business (which has the added value of being both true and environmentally-friendly). And folks who have disposable income to buy newspapers aren't going to buy anything Mr. Leigh's got to sell, anyway.
Remember when fax machines were going to be the death of the newspapers?
I say give them the levy, right after they settle up and pay all those Town Criers they put out of business.. its gotta be in the trillions by now.
Simple solution, "STOP LIEING", if newspapers stopped the lies and trying to drive a leftie narrative, they might have a chance, but I'm afraid all the decent journalism schools are long gone and re-capitalized with commies like Jack Layton and many other commie professors, to bad so sad you live on 1800 a month while trying to ruin peoples lives with your drivel like the Don Braids and Jeffrey Simpsons, we don't and won't read your garbage any more.
Redistribution.
Redistribution.
I find it very upsetting and wrong that newspapers and the media in general keep telling the rest of us that they, and they alone, are the guardians of true democracy. This is such bullshite. They are journalists! Lower than lawyers. This paper says it, the CBC beats the chest about it.. but no one ever voted for or elected anything to with journalism - ever!
Hmmm, what would happen to this link farm called SDA - full of bloggers who link to articles that start in legacy\dinosaur media - if there was nothing to link to?
Surely you wouldn't want to see endless posts about prize winning bitches?
Fp.. still no reason to keep the CBC. Try again you clever progressive you!
"still no reason to keep the CBC".
The CBC is a link farm, do they have any serious investigative journalists outside of Harper bashing tabloid journalism? So called original stories for the CBC is Liberal leftist spew, mostly based in multicultural one-world garbage that no one but the most serious loons actually buy into.
Did I mention the CBC?
Take a gander through the stories posted on the SDA link farm. Most of the blogs where all this amazining information comes from, tend to originate in primary source material: old media.
A blog that begins with "Obama spoke to 60 minutes and said this!" And then links to another blog using primary source material from an established media outlet.
Makes for fun reading, but don't pretend there's no value in what dinosaur media - and journalists - gather for link farms like SDA.
Try hard enough, Fp, and you, too could be a prize-winning bitch.
A £2-a-month levy on broadband internet connections, to be given to the newspapers in the name of democracy?
What a great idea!
But don't stop there: all British newspapers should be required to pay every UK household £2 a month to assist in the cost of paper recycling in the name of the environment.
How could The Guardian, of all newspapers, argue against such a noble gesture, one that would support not only ordinary working-class Britons but also a cleaner environment?
fp, feel free to contribute to the dead tree media at your own expense.
Me, I'll keep my money thanks. I haven't bought a newspaper in ten years, except when I needed something for painting. If it wasn't for Kate linking to them, hardly anyone would read what they wrote.
fp, 10:08a.m. --
Ah, the old "chicken and egg" argument. Just a simple question for you: how do you think cars got four wheels? Would it have had anything to do with, er, horse drawn carriages having four wheels, perchance? What do you think?
If I may be so bold, just as no-one in the horse-drawn carriage business foresaw the invention of the internal combustion engine, could it just be possible that a new way of gathering and reporting the news is in the offing, on a commercially sustainable basis?
That's the thing about being, um, conservative, you know: it's an integrative and adoptive attitude, not a program. I'd suggest reading Michael Oakeshott's "On Being Conservative" (1956), if you have not already done so. Here are the money lines, for your convenience:
"...to be conservative is not merely to be averse from change...it is also a manner of accommodating ourselves to change, an activity imposed upon all [people]. For, change is a threat to identity, and every change is an emblem of extinction. But a [person's] identity...is nothing more than an unbroken rehearsal of contingencies, each at the mercy of circumstance and each significant in proportion to its familiarity."
and
"...we do not expect a designer to say, 'I must go away and do some fundamental research which will take me five years before I can go on with the job (his bag of tools is a body of knowledge and we expect him to have it handy and to know his way about it)...The carpenter comes to a job, perhaps one the exact like of which he has never before tackled; but he comes with his bag of familiar tools and his only chance of doing the job lies in the skill with which he uses what he has at his disposal. When the plumber goes to fetch his tools he would be away even longer than is usually the case if his purpose were to invent new or improve old ones."
[] - mine, to prove, you know, gender inclusiveness. Nice whack at plumbers, eh?
V10 you are definitely on to something. My son would like a levy on diesel trains to be passed on to steam train operators.
Leigh's comments illustrate the *astonishing* arrogance of left-wing media, who presume we must be force-fed their rubbish.
The guys who used to make plastic shopping bags for a living and can't afford food and electricity because of the increased cost due to ethanol, carbon taxes and green energy are inconsolable about your imminent unemployment.
@ David Southam at September 26, 2012 7:39 AM
everybody in the UK who watches television pays a licence fee
Enforcement of License Fee on evaders is done partly through sending out vans that can detect television signals.
per wikipedia:
If a business or household is not obliged to have a TV licence then TV Licensing will request written confirmation of this, even though no such information is required to be given in law.[16][63]
If a colour TV licence is not purchased for an address, TV Licensing agents—known as "enquiry officers" or "enforcement officers"—make unannounced visits to the address. Visits are made even when the occupant has declared that no licence is necessary,[52][64] or when a licence has been purchased for only black-and-white television.[50] The number of visits rose from 2.9 million during the year 2005–6 to 3.5 million during the year 2006–7.[52] The BBC Trust states that during the year 2007–2008, when people who had said that they did not require a TV licence were visited, 27% were found to need one.[65]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_United_Kingdom#Licence_fee_enforcement
-"Most of the blogs where all this amazining information comes from, tend to originate in primary source material: old media."-
Not at all. Although a lot of the information does come from the wire services: AP, Reuters, CP, etc. Strangely enough most of the information that appears in the newspapers and magazines come from...wait for it...the wire services!
"I haven't bought a newspaper in ten years, except when I needed something for painting."
~The Phantom
When I need newspapaers for such purposes I go to the nearest recycle bin and grab some. No need to buy them, plus since government is subsidizing recycling with my taxes they're mine anyway.
Ha, this was timely, I got a phone call a few minutes ago offering free home delivery of the Toronto Star. There was one attractive aspect; she said I could stop it any time I wanted.
But seriously, folks, yes, right now most blogs link to an established news source. But so what? As stated above, it's a chicken and egg situation and the model is still being created.
I spent ten years doing print journalism. Some stories require larger resources, but what is made of those resources? Does anybody think the Guardian is lamenting the demise of journalism in the sense of providing good coverage of hard news?
No, they're concerned because the bully pulpit is diminishing. Likely they will rescale and there will be more hard news and less opinion.
FP, please don't lower the level of conversation so much. This isn't about whether news distribution should cease altogether, it's whether we should be taxed to allow them to stagnate in their current delivery model. Whoever figures out how to make a buck without paper will survive, the others will die, unlamented by all but a few.