The Last Public Good

Both Starr and Gilens cite the waning role of print newspapers as a factor in the current diminished level of political information, although only Starr views this to have deep political ramifications. His compelling expression provides key insight for why printed news is such a valued public good. While papers have always been commercial, privatized entities, they have effected acted as a 4th branch of government, demanding transparency and accountability from leaders and agencies. Due to financial restraints, papers have been restricting the scope and amount and availability of news. While contemporaries would argue for the information revolution of the internet, the bias, capacity and lack of legitimacy deem the internet an unreliable candidate to offset the losses of print. His basic conclusion holds that news should be eligible for non-profit status, or must rely on private donations.
What Starr doesn’t touch on in great detail are the implications on scope that non-profit status would create. You cannot fight a declining consumer demand curve with non-profit status and expect much. Viewership is permanently changed in the short run. Non-profit status is a desperate attempt to lower costs for papers, but it could very well save original stories that focus on local and national politics. What I would assume Starr is arguing is that no one will seriously miss the weekly crossword, but if we have to change the way papers are financially structured to keep huge headlines and op-eds, it is worth it.
Gilens agrees with Starr in holding that the “political information environment” has been declining since the 40’s. Popular among political scientists of the past twenty years is the desire to demonstrate citizen competency in the wake of perceived shortcomings. Education and party polarization may help account for this inverse relationship, but political ads? Outrageous. To their credit, Gilens and company simply regress data to test for relationships and provide little commentary regarding the consequences of this truth. But the tone suggests that it may not be a bad thing, as voters are “more likely than not” to cite actual political reasons for their vote. Political ads have been improving since their inception and focus more on past records and politically relevant information (usually cited from a reputable source such as a big newspaper) but there will always be gross slants that are blown out of proportion.