Although it should have seen this coming given controversy over
accepting its higher bid in 2010 for fiscal year 2011, The Times got a bit of a rude shock two years ago when a couple of low-circulation weekly newspapers in Caddo Parish got
the parish’s official journal business for 2012, worth tens of thousands of
dollars of business annually, when they bid at 24 cents per agate line, 3 cents
cheaper than The Times. That snub of
the declining daily newspaper got repeated last year.
Then, this decision sent The
Times into a bout of specious argumentation about how it was worth the
extra money for being a daily paper with greater circulation, confusing the
issue entirely in that it misunderstood the concept of an official journal was
to provide access to government documents, not propagate them as widely as
possible. It also, in a classic pot-meet-kettle moment, implicitly criticized
the Parish Commission for using its power in a way it saw as an attempt to
boost the small, locally-owned entities when it counted upon those same
revenues to offset its steep recent decline in them and would have welcomed
them for the identical reason of economic development.
Now, perhaps chastened by the piece in this space last year pointing
out these holes in its editorial, this year its response to the latest rebuff
came off more chastened and measured, and with a new issue to stick even more in
its craw. That’s because in last year's round of bidding, The Times actually came in 3 cents below the pair, yet still got
stiffed. This time, taxpayers suddenly became the concern of the missive,
questioning whether they were best served by the higher rate and implying that the
politics of economic development lead by government were not worth it, in
addition to rehashing the failed argument that puts reach before access.
Of course, this new angle does not avoid the inherent hypocrisy of the
effort, in two ways. First, for The Times
to drop its pricing over 22 percent in just a year, as it is highly unlikely
that printing and distribution costs fell that much over that span, shows it had
been taking advantage of the taxpayers at the old 2011 rate (which was even higher
than its bid for 2012). Second, although it intends not to, by highlighting the
issue of awarding on the basis of nonpecuniary considerations, The Times unwittingly demonstrates the
entire unclothed emperor aspect of the idea of an official journal – in an era
where access to official government documents is instantly and at any time
available for practically no cost, why is government wasting taxpayer dollars
on this? In the end, whether it’s greater waste at 24 cents per line or lesser
waste at 21 cents per line, it’s still waste and acts only as corporate
welfare, begging the question of why it even exists.
It continues because, through media interest groups, entities like The Times have prevented changes in
state law to eliminate this requirement or to blockade cheaper solutions such
as non-newspaper and/or web dissemination, no doubt because their financial
positions continue to become more precarious. This alteration could save
millions of dollars a year of taxpayer funds that get transferred to these businesses
for performing a service government could provide for almost nothing. In fact,
in such
thrall are policy-makers to continue this payola that last session state
legislators changed state law to accommodate the continued printing of legal
notices by the New Orleans Times-Picayune
as it contracts from a weekly printed publication.
No such bill has been introduced this session to end the handouts, as opposed to the past two years. There's still time to do so by a forward-thinking legislator.
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