Now that it appears that the Detroit bailout is going to happen quite soon, let's look back on something I wrote the other week:
Entrepreneurs in this country should consider: if the Detroit bailout passes, should every businessperson get a bailout? Is that a mentality they want?
Well I didn't fully realize just how far that mentality goes until I read yesterday's piece at TNR by Mark Pinsky. Who should be the next bailout beneficiary? Journalists!
Any federal effort to put back to work the hundreds of thousands thrown out of work in the nation's hard-hit industrial, construction, airline, and financial sectors should consider displaced news media workers--including those newly laid off from the publishing industry--as well.
As a journalist, I appreciate the offer of job security. But no thanks. We should be uncomfortable about the government telling writers what to cover. Would Pinsky support this program if it was launched under an ultra-conservative administration, and thousands of laid-off writers were tasked with promoting intelligent design or covering the horrors of gay marriage? If not, then he shouldn't support it just because people he agrees with are in power.
More fundamentally, we don't need the government to employ journalists. Yes, journalism is going through turbulent changes. But the demand for news and good reporting is not diminishing. It just takes someone with an entrepreneurial mind to figure out new ways to meet that demand.
That's why this bailout mentality is so corrosive to this country's entrepreneurial spirit. It props up what is already existing at the expense of developing something new. (I wrote more about that idea here.)
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