This past March U.S. Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD) introduced The Newspaper Revitalization Act; a proposal that would essentially allow newspapers to opt-in to a federally-funded program that would require them to be non-profit organizations. The press releases from the Senator's office notes the demise or drastic reduction in publishing frequency of a number of newspapers. These include the now Web-only Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Rocky Mountain News, the Baltimore Examiner and the San Francisco Chronicle. A number of these are well-respected publications with long histories and they have, like a number of smaller papers, either ceased daily publication or ceased entirely.

The proposal suggests that newspapers could choose to operate under non-profit status, and compares such papers to NPR. Where it starts to get a little tricky is that those newspapers would then not be allowed to make political endorsements, nor would writers or staff be allowed to endorse candidates even in op-ed pieces or columns. The newspapers would be allowed to report freely, and advertising and and subscriptions would be tax exempt, and contributions to support coverage or operations would have federal tax deductible status.

While the general idea to support local newspapers and the community functions they provide, I'm a little bit leary of the idea. I fear that it would be far too easy to subvert the neutral status. I'd rather a clear statement about political support for proposals or candidates that adhere to the basic values of old fashioned journalism, than what sounds suspiciously like a "don't ask don't tell" policy. There's a press release here, and the very lengthy full text of the proposal is available as a .pdf here.