Addendum: Please see my more serious columns on this issue:
"Is the Decline of Newspapers a Market Failure?" published by The Foundation for Economic Education, and
"Decline of Newspapers is a Sign of Market Success," published by The Heartland Institute.

Original post begins here:

I have been thinking of Jackie Gleason lately. The elder Jackie Gleason. The one who's lived and learned, who's seen fads come and go, who is solid as a rock in his convictions, and who has little tolerance for a brave new world. In his second most endearing role, as the old-timey Sherrif Buford T. Justice of the Smokey and the Bandit franchise, Jackie's character once lamented: "Give me the old days when a pair of boobs was a couple of dumb guys." Be thankful, good Sherriff, that you are not an economist in today's world.

Or a carmaker. Or a banker. Or a homebuilder. A health care worker, an oil fracker. A fisher, a learner, a cigarette burner. A teacher, a trucker, an oyster shucker.

Or, as of today, a journalist.

In a federal government report whose title has been aptly described as the nine scariest words in the English language today, the Federal Trade Commission has issued, "Potential Policy Recommendations to Support the Reinvention of Journalism." Potential, indeed. According to Andrew Malcom at the Los Angeles Times, here's a sample what your hard working foks in Washington have in mind:

Would you believe: major changes to the copyright law, including government licensing provisions; government pilot programs to investigate potential new media business models, antitrust changes to allow media companies to unite on imposing online pay walls, establish a journalism division of AmeriCorps with government underwriting the training of young journalists, tax incentives per news employee, increased funding of public broadcasting, a 5% tax on consumer electronics and/or assessments on users of public airwaves.

Another idea would be to allow taxpayers to direct a portion of their taxes — perhaps up to $200 — to a specific media institution as payment for media services rendered. (Now, if taxpayers could direct such sums to individual bloggers…. )

For the moment, let's leave to one side the very deep First Amendment implications. Let's instead ask, "Wow! On what grounds would Washington enact such ideas?" If you're an old-timey economist like me, brace yourself. Paragraphs 14-15 of the paper invoke market failure theory.

14. There are reasons for concern that experimentation may not produce a robust and sustainable business model for commercial journalism. History in the United States shows that readers of the news have never paid anywhere close to the full cost of providing the news. Rather, journalism always has been subsidized to a large extent by, for example, the federal government, political parties, or advertising.

15. Economics provides insight into why this has been the case. The news is a “public good” in economic terms. That is, it is non-rivalrous (one person’s consumption of the news does not preclude another person’s consumption of the same news) and non-excludable (once the news producer supplies anyone, it cannot exclude anyone). Because free riding is usually easy in these circumstances, it is often difficult to ensure that producers of public goods are appropriately compensated.

These days everything's a failure. Market failure this, government failure that. Science failure, top kill failure, bubble failure, climate failure, soccer failure if the USA doesn't bring home the World Cup. And now? Journalism failure.

Of course! Why didn't I think of that? When something goes wrong in the world, that must mean that something went wrong in the world! What do we do with all this failure? We fix it of course. Let the best and the brightest figure it out, and make sure it never ever happens again. Just give them the tools they need. They're smart enough and they mean well. Trust them.

Failure, it seems, is the new success in America. Horatio Alger doesn't need to work hard and dream big. He just needs to trust Washington. Bill Gates doesn't need to quit school and found a startup. Just take these fabricated incentives: stay in school (we'll pay for it), and fill out this form to get some juicy funding for your new business idea (if we like it, that is). You see, only Washington has the power to undo all this failure in the world. Now generalize from there to the rest of your life. No need to worry. Just don't allow your household to bring in more than $250,000 in a year and you're okay in our book. Washington will work hard for you and dream for you -- just sign your name here, please. This new American dream is a nightmare. Give me the old days when a pair of boobs was a couple of dumb guys.

Okay, so what notion of market failure does an old-timey ecoomist endorse? As Sherriff Justice might say, "Junior, let me explain." A market failure is the experience of real net losses in society as a direct concequence of purely self-regulated voluntary exchange. Market failure theory outlines the very specific conditions under which market failure exists. There are approximately four catergories of market failure: externality, public good, monopoly, and imperfect information. I say approximately because: a) these four categories are not mutually exclusive on a conceptual level; and b) there are sub categories such as the holdout problem that have characteristics of them all.

To their credit, the authors of Reinventing Journalism at least purport to advance a legitimate market failure argument. But it's wrong. Here is why: the supplier of a good can find indirect ways to charge the users of a good, thus converting it from non-exclusive to exclusive (in which case, it does not matter that the good is non-rivalrous). The classic example is a lighthouse. Whoever sinks the money into building and running a lighthouse cannot prevent anyone from seeing its light. But the nearby port can easily prevent any non-paying vessel from coming in where the waters are safe. And so, in experience, we see lighthouse makers contracting with nearby ports, and nearby ports charge a little extra for vessels that come in. Of course, ships don't rely on lighthouses any longer. GPS has rendered the lighthouse business model obsolete. That doesn't make a lighthouse a public good, it makes it no longer a good.

These same patterns exist in the production of journalism. It is stating the obvious that producers of journalism charge users of journalism indirectly through advertising. It is also stating the obvious that the old business model of journalism is dying, just like lighthouses died. To an old-timey economist, it is anything but obvious why the best and the brightest in Washington cannot or will not grasp the obvious. Give me the old days when a pair of boobs was a couple of dumb guys.

Mandatory FTC disclamer: the only thing I got in exchange for this post is a frickin headache.