Does Journalism Need Government Help?

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Lee Bollinger, the President of Columbia University, and author of a new book, “Uninhibited, Robust, Wide-Open: A Free Press for a New Century,” wrote an op-ed article calling for a new media-industry business model that relies on government funding. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704629804575324782605510168.html

Mr. Bollinger says, “The proliferation of communications outlets has fractured the base of advertising and readers [of what he calls “the U.S. press”]. He proposes that without government funding, journalists in the United States will not be able to compete with news agencies around the world, such as XinHua News, CCTV, BBC, and Al Jazeera. Mr. Bollinger, a lawyer, points to the U.S court system and how the government provides defense attorneys to defendants as an example of how government can play a paternalistic, unbiased role in society–presumably similar to the other news agencies he mentioned. For example, XinHua removed the words “Falun Gong” from its vocabulary, not because it had the potential to organize into a powerful political coalition, but because exposing citizens of the People’s Republic of China to a dangerous cult was not good for them. Read more

Jeffrey Hayzlett, former CMO of Kodak, Talks Tough on Business

Jeffrey Hayzlett, celebrity judge on Donald Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice TV show, and author of the best-selling book, The Mirror Test, recently appeared on The Actuation Zone radio show, hosted by Brett Clay, author of the award-winning book, Selling Change. In the interview, Hayzlett asks the tough business questions and suggests the changes that executives and business owners need to be making, right now, to grow their businesses. Read more