Daily newspapers are closing across America. Washington bureaus are
shuttering; whole areas of the federal government are now operating with
no press coverage. International bureaus are going, going, gone.
Journalism, the counterbalance to corporate and political power, the
lifeblood of American democracy, is not just threatened. It is in
meltdown.
In The Death and Life of American Journalism, Robert W. McChesney, an
academic, and John Nichols, a journalist, who together founded the
nation's leading media reform network, Free Press, investigate the
crisis. They propose a bold strategy for saving journalism and saving
democracy, one that looks back to how the Founding Fathers ensured free
press protection with the First Amendment and provided subsidies to the
burgeoning print press of the young nation.