"The tenets and the traditions of unfettered journalism are marrow in our constitutional system. [Independent media] matters most of all because it has been a rare American incubator of the values and the skills necessary to carry out independent reporting, and because the newspaper [industry] has continually demonstrated through its stories how the First Amendment is supposed to work."          —Excerpt from Editorial Note in The New Yorker after the sale of Dow Jones to Rupert Murdoch

As we sit back and watch the newspaper industry dutifully and objectively report on their own demise, it's kinda like watching Brian Williams reporting live from the guillotine: brutal to watch. Just this week, the New York Times Co. threatened to close the venerable Boston Globe if unions didn't concede at least 20M in benefits & pay. The WSJ, Tribune Company, The Washington Post or Hearst Newspapers are faring no better (and this is not even touching on the state of the magazine industry!).

So with all this bailout speak, why can't we give some of that economic stimulus to our beloved media industry? With the automotive industry receiving around 15 Billion, Fannie and Freddie receiving 50 Billion and the Wall Street gulping up the lion's share at some 700 Billion, can't some anonymous White House scribe slip in a few ambiguously worded sentences that divert a tiny 1-2 Billion toward the industry that our Democracy is founded upon?

Don't get me wrong, I get it. No one wants government owned media (thank god Obama's sitting in the Oval Office and not Bush/Cheney!). It's just sad because it's not as if the industry sewed the seeds of their own death by sketchy lending practices, building ineffective transportation or leveraging the crap out of bad loans. Rather, this is an industry that has been forced to deal with a rapidly changing medium with new rules and expectations—same high quality, instantly consumable and free.

In the end it doesn't matter how they got here; the demise of the newspaper industry is upon us and it remains brutal to watch.

Gibbs: No Newspaper Bailout from the Government

By Scott Wilson, The Washington Post

Newspapers are facing an existential crisis, but a government bailout? Not likely.

Asked today to assess the state of the newspaper industry, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said "there's a certain concern and a certain sadness when you see cities losing their newspapers or regions of the country losing their newspapers."

But, he added, "I don't know what, in all honesty, government can do about it."

Gibbs spoke as the New York Times Co. threatens to close the Boston Globe, a New England institution, unless its unions agree to $20 million in concessions. The company's negotiators have said they might soon file the required federal notice to shutter the newspaper, which the Times Co. bought in 1993 for $1.1 billion.

Obama, Gibbs said, "believes there has to be a strong free press." But he added that government aid "might be a bit of a tricky area to get into, given the differing roles" of the executive branch and a press that's suppose to keep its eye on it.

Despite the "certain sadness" Gibbs said he feels, he couldn't resist a dig at the press corps. Last month, the media portrayed Obama's instruction to Cabinet members to cut $100 million from their budgets as a laughably small sum given the size of the $3.4 trillion budget and the mounting public debt.

"I would note that, looking at some of the balance sheets -- I wondered how you guys didn't think $100 million meant a lot a few weeks ago, but, looking at some of the balance sheets, $100 million seems to mean a lot," Gibbs said.

The question of whether the government should bail out newspapers was asked by CNN's Ed Henry, a television correspondent.