74% Oppose Taxing Internet News Sites To Help Newspapers

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It would seem that most people do not favor taxing internet news sites to help newspapers. An even larger number oppose taxes on cell phones and consumer electronic items to subsidize the ailing newspaper business.

84% oppose a three percent (3%) tax on monthly cell phone bills to help newspapers and traditional journalism. Similarly, 76% oppose a proposed five percent tax on the purchase of consumer electronic items such as computers, iPads and Kindles to help support newspapers and traditional journalism. Seventy-four percent (74%) oppose the proposal to tax web sites like the Drudge Report to help the newspapers they draw their headlines from.
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The only two legal taxes in the USA are import duties and sales tax on non-edible goods, all others are aggressive theft at gun point.
 
if you no longer have a marketable product, then make a marketable product. I for one still enjoy getting a newspaper I can read, but I suspect I am the last of a dying breed.
 
74% against, well thats plenty of reason for the gov to implement a tax right there
 
Nanan said:
The only two legal taxes in the USA are import duties and sales tax on non-edible goods, all others are aggressive theft at gun point.
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Agreed 100%

Shocking that people don't want their money taken by the government. Strange, ain't it? lol
 
This whole story is so much ado about nothing.

This wasn't a proposal. This was just one commissioner who was throwing out ideas he knew to be ludicrous, and someone in the media pounced on it and now it's a firestorm about how the big bad government wants to bail out the newspaper industry by taxing the Drudge Report.

What irresponsible journalism...And thanks to the Internet, now everyone thinks it's real!

Online journalism isn't killing print journalism. Journalism is killing itself.
 
I just don't understand why we should want to save a dying industry. It's not even arguable that the newspaper is an essential service anymore, with the penetration of internet media... A much more cost effective solution!

Also, a 3% tax on cellphone bills can range from 1$ to 6$ a month if you're a heavy user with multiple (aka business) accounts... Which is lame as hell.
 
Rupert Murdoch can suck it. Either adapt or just die. There are very few people who still read printed newspapers.
 
Nanan said:
The only two legal taxes in the USA are import duties and sales tax on non-edible goods, all others are aggressive theft at gun point.
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My only question is, if we could get rid of all the other taxes, I wonder how happy people would be without roads, sewage systems, or general infrastructure.

Would we be prepared to go back to the old horse and buggy days, with dirt roads made from inches horse shit, crapping in a hole their back yards, etc. :p
 
There were only a handful of well written newspapers in the US, the rest were collections of articles written by other newspapers and some badly written local information. Papers had a long time to adapt to the new media model and find new ways of generating revenue, but they continued in their old model and waited for people to come back to them, while not offering their advertisers anything new. Most of these papers are managed by large conglomerations, so they could have pulled their resources to create great things, but they waited and failed. I am sad to see some of them go, but I am tired of our government bailing out every corporation that can't adapt to change.

Just for sh*ts and giggles, here are a few suggestions.
1) Focus your media coverage. By not covering every subject under the sun, you can better optimize your journalist resources. Plenty of places cover Paris Hilton's latest nipple slip, focus grassroots political movements, focus on the social impact of laws past in towns, focus on news that matters because not too many people do anymore.
2) Stop hiring journalists because you need someone to fill words on a page. I stopped reading most papers because, they didn't spell check, grammar check or fact check their articles, even though they were just paraphrasing another paper's article. The Economist, is a successful journal, because they pay top dollar to their writers and they have good editors.
3) Stop trying to copy social media, because you think that is where people are turning for their news. You don't need to be the fastest, you need to be correct. Social media is the noise, you are the filter. Once you become part of noise, we just tune you out.
4) Offer your advertisers targeted advertising that can't be matched by any place else. If someone want's to advertise to young, black, republicans who make over $100,000, you should be able to offer them that. Your failure to be able show your advertisers your targeted demographics and understanding of your own audience was a huge factor in your demise. This isn't hard to do, but you need to upgrade your technology.
 
Pretty amazing that someone would actually suggest utilizing government power to cripple one business sector for the benefit of another. Not shocking, but certainly amazing.

UrielDagda said:
My only question is, if we could get rid of all the other taxes, I wonder how happy people would be without roads, sewage systems, or general infrastructure.
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State sales tax is intended to cover these bases, which it could, if it weren't for governmental bloat. Funding for transporation-related projects usually comes from state gas tax revenue, which is effectively just a reduced-rate state sales tax.
 
UrielDagda said:
My only question is, if we could get rid of all the other taxes, I wonder how happy people would be without roads, sewage systems, or general infrastructure.

Would we be prepared to go back to the old horse and buggy days, with dirt roads made from inches horse shit, crapping in a hole their back yards, etc. :p
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Raise sales taxes. Combined with the politicians spending less and we would have a winner. Plenty of money left over for sewer and roads if they quit wasting it. No need to go back to the stone age.

Newspapers printed on paper had their run. They need to transition to delivering their content via smart phone and PC or they will prolly die in coming decade.
 
We link the stories and let our readers decide what they think of it. I am pretty sure that almost everyone that comes to the [H] are able to read on their own. ;)

With that said, the article in question was simply a report on poll numbers. People were asked what they thought of "ideas suggested for consideration in a recent FTC report" and they responded.


Cutriss said:
This whole story is so much ado about nothing.

This wasn't a proposal. This was just one commissioner who was throwing out ideas he knew to be ludicrous, and someone in the media pounced on it and now it's a firestorm about how the big bad government wants to bail out the newspaper industry by taxing the Drudge Report.

What irresponsible journalism...And thanks to the Internet, now everyone thinks it's real!

Online journalism isn't killing print journalism. Journalism is killing itself.
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Steve said:
Last century, people used them for all kinds of stuff:

Fish wrapper
Bird cage lining
Packing material
Masking paper for paint
Comics

Was gonna say cleaning glass but phide beat me to it! :cool:
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Oh! I've seen some of that!

I'm trying to wrap my head around passing around something that is a basic variation of buying the Dead Sea Scrolls to get their news :p

I've been getting mine online since The Onion had a website (that's all real, right?)
 
Cutriss said:
This whole story is so much ado about nothing.

This wasn't a proposal. This was just one commissioner who was throwing out ideas he knew to be ludicrous, and someone in the media pounced on it and now it's a firestorm about how the big bad government wants to bail out the newspaper industry by taxing the Drudge Report.

What irresponsible journalism...And thanks to the Internet, now everyone thinks it's real!

Online journalism isn't killing print journalism. Journalism is killing itself.
Click to expand...

LeninGHOLA said:
Oh! I've seen some of that!

I'm trying to wrap my head around passing around something that is a basic variation of buying the Dead Sea Scrolls to get their news :p

I've been getting mine online since The Onion had a website (that's all real, right?)
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Well... it's not really a stretch of the imagination to think The Onion is more legit than some news sources.
 
Newspapers are wasteful. You can get the news anywhere other than paper that is printed. Its something that is printed on a daily basis, now just full of ads and stories of how some lady had 8 kids at the same time.
This is where my line of thought has gone. If we cut back on printing newspapers we can cut back on the paper its printed with and spare the trees that it comes from.

Did newspaper companies really think we would need newspapers in the year 2020 when it was invented in the early 17th century?

If so, I have fire that I'm willing to sell. Get it while its hot.
 
the newspapers deserve this money, they totally destroyed any credibility they had helping the government with the terrorism propaganda :D
 
nowadays, anybody that surfs the internet regularly knows where to get the news for free. so why pay for it? traditional newspaper companies need to join the digital age and produce news/content that's worth paying for, if they wish to stay in business.
 
go digital for pete's sakes make digital subscriptions for newspapers so they will be sent to your phone/notebook when a new issue comes out
 
Few want to pay for digital subscriptions either. As far as I can tell, internet ads is the only way to go. There will always be a few who will pay. ..... and fewer who want money from their paycheck to go to the newspapers whether they read or not (idiots) .... but I can't imagine most people walking away from free reading with advertising.
 
How bout abolish the federal tax in favor of a consumption tax? Flat 10% I know mathematicians aren't good politicians but if you stop taxing production it will increase! Might even make a few jobs!

If they weren't so drunk on spending non existent money in DC.
 
Parmenides said:
Few want to pay for digital subscriptions either. As far as I can tell, internet ads is the only way to go. There will always be a few who will pay. ..... and fewer who want money from their paycheck to go to the newspapers whether they read or not (idiots) .... but I can't imagine most people walking away from free reading with advertising.
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The problem is that advertising revenue on the web is much less profitable than print ads (and people don't have to buy the newspaper either). Additionally, although I see many people refusing to pay for news when they can get them for free elsewhere, I'm not sure those people are the same who bought newspapers in the first place.

Digital subscriptions have their place and I expect (hope?) they continue to gain momentum in the next few years. Especially as technology evolves and we start seeing high-tech e-book readers.
 
UrielDagda said:
My only question is, if we could get rid of all the other taxes, I wonder how happy people would be without roads, sewage systems, or general infrastructure.

Would we be prepared to go back to the old horse and buggy days, with dirt roads made from inches horse shit, crapping in a hole their back yards, etc. :p
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The federal government was never meant to pay for these things. Infact the feds use the income taxes on the states to get them to do what they want. basically bribe them for basic moneys.

The feds cannot constitutionally tax income of a citizen. the state can do this.
Simple as that
 
Parmenides said:
Few want to pay for digital subscriptions either. As far as I can tell, internet ads is the only way to go. There will always be a few who will pay. ..... and fewer who want money from their paycheck to go to the newspapers whether they read or not (idiots) .... but I can't imagine most people walking away from free reading with advertising.
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However, the fewer that pay, the worse the content is and the blurrier the line between advertisement and content gets. This is reason people absolutely need to pay for quality content.

I think we need to make the distinction between two things to carry on this conversation: print media (i.e. paper newspapers) and editorial quality (veracity and value of content). Print news is in a bad situation on both front because a) they're publishing and distributing using a dying media and b) they're battle an increasing tide of garbage news (read bedroom bloggers who canibalize and critique, ironically, the newspaper's own sourced and researched content.)

Coincidentally, a good friend of mine (who writes professionally about the PR and Advertising world) just published a manifesto of sorts on this topic. It's a moderately long, but very well informed and reasoned read. I agree with the steps he lays out at the end and had adopted them all a while back.

http://www.jongingerich.com/?p=93

Be sure to click on his adsense links ( :) kidding... they're aren't any)
 
Adapt or die. Economy is not the same as ecology. We don't need certain species in the economy. Did the government institute a tax on rubber tires so wagon wheel manufacturers could stay in business?
 
Who cares what the people think? The people are stupid.

Hell, 60 years ago you could replace this with segregation laws. 10 years ago you could point this to people supporting the crappy Patriot Act. And just a few weeks ago, you can use the same numbers for people who are flat-out racist in Arizona.
 
harmattan said:
However, the fewer that pay, the worse the content is and the blurrier the line between advertisement and content gets.
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You say that as if today's news is of the highest journalistic integrity and isn't sponsor-driven already.
 
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