President Obama calls himself newspaper junkie

By DAVE MURRAY

Survival of newspapers and investigative reporting is critical to our democracy, the president said.

Saying he is a “big newspaper junkie,” President Barack Obama expressed hope on Friday that newspapers can find their way through the financial crisis most are now mired in.

In an Oval Office interview with editors from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The Blade, the President talked about the vital role journalism and newspapers play in American society.

“Journalistic integrity, you know, fact-based reporting, serious investigative reporting, how to retain those ethics in all these different new media and how to make sure that it’s paid for, is really a challenge,” Mr. Obama said. “But it’s something that I think is absolutely critical to the health of our democracy.”

Across the country, newspapers are struggling to maintain readership and advertising revenue that has been lost to the Internet. Thousands of journalists have been laid off, and over the last year several newspapers have closed.

The Rocky Mountain News in Denver ceased operations, the Seattle Post Intelligencer now publishes only on the Internet, and several large newspaper corporations have filed for bankruptcy, including the Tribune Company, owner of the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times.

Mr. Obama said he noted the trend.

“I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding,” the President said.

“What I hope is that people start understanding if you’re getting your newspaper over the Internet, that’s not free and there’s got to be a way to find a business model that supports that.”

Several bills have been introduced in Congress to aid the newspaper industry, including a Senate measure that would allow newspaper companies to restructure as nonprofits with a variety of tax breaks.

The President was noncommittal about the legislation but said: “I haven’t seen detailed proposals yet, but I’ll be happy to look at them.”