I’ll bring up David Simon again, both because I’m obsessed with The Wire and he’s been pretty outspoken on this. He’s proposed granting non-profit status to newspapers and relaxing anti-trust laws in the industry. A couple quotes:

“But a nonprofit model intrigues, especially if that model allows for locally based ownership and control of news organizations. Anything the government can do in the way of creating nonprofit status for newspapers should be seriously pursued.”

“Lastly, I would urge Congress to consider relaxing certain antitrust prohibitions, so that the Washington Post, the New York Times and various other newspapers can openly discuss protecting copyright from aggregators and plan an industry-wide transition to a paid online subscriber base.”

The second one strikes me as a pipe dream; I think the content horse is out of the barn, and paywalls will only work for highly specialized materials (like what the Wall Street Journal has done). Also, I’m not sure that creating non-profit status does much to circumvent the problems Tim pointed out with the direct bailout scenario. Is preferential tax and regulatory status much different from a cash payout?

Ultimately, like most things, I think the best approach is to leave it the hell alone and let the players decide the game.