And he wants you to pay for it. As they say, idle minds are the devil’s workshop. Here’s an idea so dumb that only a journalist could have thought of it. David Scharfenberg, recently laid off from A.H. Belo’s Providence Journal, writes today in the Boston Globe that $100 million of the stimulus package should go to “young journalists” much like, well, David Scharfenberg:
The cash would seed low-cost, Internet-based news operations in cities large and small – combining vigorous, professional reporting with blogging, video posts, citizen journalism, and aggregation of stories from other sources.
Wait. Would FrontBurner qualify? We blog. We do video posts. We have citizen journalism. We aggregate stories from other sources. As for “vigorous, professional reporting,” well, four out of five ain’t bad. David, my new buddy, I think you might be on to something. Forget about that fussy old First Amendment. Give me a call. Â
