Ken Bensinger, Andrea Chang and Dawn C. Chmielewski lead off today's roundup with Amazon.com's Jeffrey Bezos and his purchase of
The Washington Post:
The Post, like the newspaper industry as a whole, has been beset by a rapid decline in print advertising, a loss of subscribers and challenges in building up online revenue. [...] In a letter to Post employees, Bezos indicated that he wouldn't make radical changes in editorial operations and would continue to emphasize accountability journalism. But he said the paper will need to "invent" and to "experiment," focusing on the Internet and tailored content, to address the changing habits of readers.
Megan McArdle at
Bloomberg:
Should we be worried that soon billionaires will own all our major news outlets? It may come to that, but I don’t find that idea worrisome. (And yes, I know whose name is on our website.) Or at least, I don’t find it as worrisome as the likely alternative, because it’s looking less likely that most print media companies are going to survive the next decade or so as profit-making ventures. [...]
When the Internet came along, there was a bunch of idle chatter about how blogs would do away with old media. That fundamentally misunderstood the problem that old media companies faced. (In fairness, the old media companies misunderstood it too.) The big threat that old media faced from web journalism was mostly that it would make old media reporters work harder and faster. That was annoying, but not actually very threatening. No, the real problem for media came from an entirely different quarter: The web destroyed print advertising. Old media right now is like a camel, living off stored fat. But that can’t go on forever, and it won’t.
John Nichols at
The Nation says that the RNC's threats toward CNN and NBC are a bigger story than the big Bezos buy:
[A]s long as there have been newspapers, rich people have bought them as toys and tools. [...] The big deal in media this week has to do with the relationship of broadcast and cable news networks to the two major political parties. And it matters—more—because it gets to question that is at the heart of all of our discussions about the future of print, broadcast and digital media: Will we have a sufficient journalism, and a sufficiently independent journalism, to sustain democracy? [...]
The networks should have told Priebus “Good riddance!”
Seriously.
Partnerships between the networks and the major political parties are a far greater concern than the ownership of newspapers by new generations of rich people. By cutting deals with the parties to host “exclusive” primary debates, and by accepting the parameters established by the two major parties for fall debates, the networks defer to the political establishment in the worst of ways.
It’s time for the networks, wealthy and powerful entities that they are, to declare independence from the major parties.
Robert Schlesinger at
U.S. News:
It goes without saying that media companies shouldn't let political parties dictate their programming choices. But honestly, this is silly. Yes, Hillary Clinton is widely expected to run for president in three years. So are a lot of people, but she's also the biggest celebrity in the potential presidential field, and by a long shot (sorry, Donald Trump, I'm only referring to serious potential candidates). [...]
Occam's Razor (the maxim that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one) applies here: The simpler explanation – that two media conglomerates think there's a market for Hillary-related programming – is more plausible than the idea that they are engaged in a vast, collusive media conspiracy to promote the candidacy of someone who has universal name recognition and is already widely seen as the most likely person to become the next president.
More on the day's top stories below the fold.
Frank Bruni at The New York Times thinks a display of solidarity with rainbow flags during the Olympics will be a much more powerful and effective message to Russian society than a boycott:
Imagine rainbow flags or comparable symbols not just in the American delegation but in the British, French, Argentine and South African ones. Imagine what that would say and how that would feel to a 14-year-old girl watching from rural Oklahoma, where she worries hourly about her attraction to other girls and its impact on her future. Or to a 35-year-old gay man in one of the many African countries where homosexual acts are punishable with lengthy prison sentences or even death. Or to a lesbian or gay Russian of any age.
That’s an Olympic moment to rival any quadruple toe loop. That’s pure gold.
At
The Los Angeles Times,
Susan Ochshorn warns that America is squandering its human capital by not fully investing in its youngest generation:
According to the most recent "Kids' Share" report from the Urban Institute, federal spending on children fell by $2 billion from 2010 to 2011, the first dip in 30 years. The children's share of the budget pie was reduced from 10.7% to 10.4%. By 2022, the children's portion of the budget is expected to drop to 8% and their share of GDP is expected to drop from 2.5% to 1.9%, which will include significant cuts in early care and education. With the Census Bureau reporting nearly 25% of the nation's children younger than age 6 in poverty, this is not good news.
Relative to other advanced economies, the U.S. track record is dismal. Just take a look at the Social Expenditure Database from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. We're at the low end in rankings of average public spending on family benefits in the form of cash, services and tax credits. Or at the OECD's Social Justice Index, which examines, among other policies, health quality, access to education and poverty prevention in 31 countries. In the category of health, the U.S. stands at No. 23; in access to education, it's at No. 20, on the cusp of the lower third of the nations surveyed.
We now know more than ever about how to nurture human capital, with eye-popping technology offering graphic evidence of the rapid pace and complexity of brain development in the first years of life. The bottom line is that kids need time for sensitive, stimulating interactions with adults to promote growth, resilience and mastery, the foundations for their healthy development and academic success. They need access to good healthcare and nutrition, and high-quality early learning settings, not to mention viable communities invested in their well-being.
Which leads us to this thought-provoking piece by
E. Tammy Kim in
The Nation: "why do the people raising our children earn poverty wages?"
Childcare workers perform that most vital labor, rearing our young. But across the country, they are invisible and poorly paid, without healthcare, unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation or other benefits. In 2011, the median income of all childcare workers was about $19,000; 17 percent were living in poverty, and for “self-employed” in-home providers, the figure is likely much higher. Subsidy levels are based on a fraction of “market rates,” rather than providers’ expenses, and cover far fewer hours than are actually worked. Out of empathy with the families they serve, some providers charge even less to those ineligible for subsidies, who must pay fully out of pocket.
Nearly everyone agrees on the importance of high-quality childcare and early education. It’s good for child health, safety and development; it’s good for parents who work; and, as an industry, it’s good for our economy. Universal childcare seemed fleetingly possible in the 1940s and early ’70s, but today, only 2.4 million kids receive subsidized care (about 16.1 million children under 18 live in poverty), and early education is a minimum-wage job.