One of the more annoying aspects of Huffington Post is Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington using it as a vehicle for promoting herself. She testified the other day before a Senate subcommittee about the future of journalism. This raises a whole host of questions:
1. What is the government doing wasting time on the state of a profession? That is for the folks in that field to decide, not the government, especially as how government and media are supposedly adversarial (okay, I'll wait while you finish laughing).
This is a far different issue from net neutrality, which the government does have rightful input on because it is of grave public concern.
2. What can the Senators who hear this testimony do about it? Nothing. I don't want a government bailout of newspapers. The newspapers shouldn't want that, either for a whole host of reasons, one of which is that it would effectively put newspapers and the government in bed together. That is not healthy for the state of objective journalism.
3. If certain media outlets decide to require subscriptions for access to their content, well, that is their business. I think the subscription approach is hopelessly wrongheaded for a mass market product like the news because it inherently shrinks the available audience for that product, but the companies take the risk. The marketplace will speak. Don't intervene in it.
4. Is any of this testimony stuff we haven't been hearing the last two years? No.
Consequently, this hearing won't change squat and is little more than a kind of lowbrow kabuki theater.
But hey, Arianna never met a tv camera she didn't like.
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