Media critic Dan Kennedy on Nichols and McChesney

Speech story (around 750 words, include the word count) due Monday.

Here is media critic Dan Kennedy on Nichols and McChesney, who spoke at Northeastern University on Feb. 2. Kennedy writes:

"To their credit, they do not propose taking taxpayer funds and handing them to (publishers) Rupert Murdoch and Arthur Sulzberger. Instead, they would like to see a variety of initiatives that, properly implemented, would bolster journalism without raising the specter of government interference: greatly expanded support for public broadcasting with an arm’s-length funding mechanism; an AmeriCorps for young journalists; even a $200 tax credit for every family to spend on the news media of their choice.

And they are correct in asserting that other Western democracies, particularly the Scandinavian countries, subsidize their media to a far greater extent than we do without suffering any loss of freedom.

Yet I still worry that theirs is the wrong solution."