September 2012

[Commentary] Journalism has a shortage of many things: capital, advertisers and, in some instances, readers. But certainly its most precious commodity is innovation. Again and again, the business struggles to get out of the rut that put it on a road to ruin in the first place. Setting aside the issue of whether foundations should finance profit-making organizations, it is worth noting that many promising journalistic operations have foundered on the regulatory shoals of the Internal Revenue Service, with its bizarre standards for deciding whether an organization qualifies for nonprofit status. A broader question lurks as well. Shouldn’t financing meant for journalistic innovation go to the green shoots and not be used to fertilize giant dead-tree media?

This fall, Mercer University, a 179-year-old former Baptist school, is starting an ambitious $5.6 million project to try to save local journalism by inviting both the Macon newspaper and a Georgia Public Radio station onto its campus.

Reporters and editors for the 186-year-old paper The Telegraph and the radio station will work out of the campus’s new journalism center, alongside students whom the university expects will do legwork for newspaper and public radio reports, with guidance from their professors and working journalists. It’s a plan born in part of desperation. Like many newspapers, The Telegraph has lost circulation and advertising revenue in the last decade, and the public radio station was forced to trim down to one staff member during the recession.

The stretch run for the November elections has begun, and local television stations in swing states are already assured they will come out winners.

Ad rates in most contested areas are sharply higher, compared with last year, while states firmly in the red or blue camp generally aren't seeing as much change. Political parties and outside groups will pay an extra-heavy tab in October and early November because of heated competition for limited commercial slots. Wells Fargo media analyst Marci Ryvicker raised her estimate on all political ad spending to $5.2 billion, up $300 million from a previous forecast, after spending in August on political ads on local TV stations jumped 77% from July. That compares to $4.2 billion in 2008, the last presidential election year.

[Commentary] To everyone planning to spend the entire weekend on their smartphones, their laptops, their tablets or their various other electronic gadgets in order to shop at Amazon before Sept. 15, when the mammoth online retailer starts collecting sales tax on California purchases: You do know, don't you, that you already have to pay sales tax on your online purchases?

Yes, it's officially called a "use tax" rather than a sales tax because Amazon is an out-of-state company. But that's only a technicality. You owe the same tax, whether it's called a sales tax and your online seller calculates it for you (and adds it to your bill), or it's a use tax that you have to add up yourself and send in to the Board of Equalization (right away) or the Franchise Tax Board (on your state income tax return at the end of the year). So even if you hurry up and buy all your stuff now, before Amazon begins adding the tax to your bill, you still have to pay it. You've had to pay it all along. Retail sales didn't magically become tax-free when they moved from Main Street or the mall to the Internet.