Reviving the deadline

Readers tend to develop personal relationships with their daily newspapers, and this can create consternation when their newspaper undergoes change. A lot of papers, including the Star Tribune, have undergone change in recent years, changes connected in part to deep financial problems.

The Star Tribune is one of many dailies in mind when commentators proclaim the near death of serious journalism. The leading causes, they say, are the rise of corporate ownership and the siren call of the Internet.

And yet, these same doomsayers say, depending solely on bloggers for responsible journalism is dangerous. Democratic rule will wither because those in power will take advantage of the disappearance of trained journalists.

Why read "The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution That Will Begin the World Again" -- an entire book about such a depressing topic?

Here are reasons:

•Most of the discussions about causes and effects come from intensely self-interested parties. But authors Robert McChesney, a University of Illinois communication professor, and John Nichols, a Washington, D.C., journalist, are about as independent of special interests as possible.

•McChesney and Nichols present their case at book length, which allows for details and nuances.

The solutions involve government assistance. Quite a few commentators avoid that path because they believe government should never be given an opportunity to control journalists or journalism organizations. McChesney and Nichols suggest that such thinking is outmoded.

Readers who want to proceed directly to the solutions would miss these chapters:

•Chapter One: The Internet has contributed to the collapse, but that is not the whole story. Greedy owners of journalism entities began hurting themselves long before the easy accessibility of the Internet. Those owners shunted aside the guardianship of democratic values in favor of a fatter financial payout.

•Chapter Two: It is too late for longtime owners of for-profit media to revamp their business model to squeeze money from new online operations. Journalism is a public good, and not all public goods -- such as lending libraries and food safety inspections -- are commercially viable.

•Chapter Three: Potential government censorship should not be the beginning and end point of discussion about systemic repairs. The authors' research persuaded them that government created the free press in the U.S. through aggressive policies and subsidies -- among them, favorable postal rates, copyright protection, allocation of airwaves for broadcast news, and funding for public radio and public television.

It will be interesting to observe whether the McChesney-Nichols recommendations become part of a serious discussion among policymakers, or fade into oblivion.