A friend objected to my post Subsidizing the Style section on the grounds that I was discounting the social value of newspapers’ cultural content. Fair enough. The Times, and newspapers more generally, obviously contribute to our cultural conversation and that’s important.
But if tomorrow newspapers disappeared entirely which would suffer more: our civic discourse or our cultural discourse?
To me the answer is clear. Newspapers are much more central to civic life than to cultural life, though their role in the latter is not to be discounted.
Consideration of that hypothetical has to include consideration of which types of content would be easily replaced by other sources. I think in the case of culture-oriented feature content the web would likely provide ample replacement for the loss of newspapers. In the case of beat reporting, investigative reporting, war reporting, etc. I’m not convinced. Hence my focus on subsidizing those areas.
beyond the times 