Don't give the press a bailout

[Commentary] Are government subsidies the cure for what ails the news business? Why should journalists be entitled to a multi-billion-dollar batch of media subsidies? Subsidies always amount, in the end, to confiscating money from many taxpayers in order to benefit relatively few. Those who call for keeping newspapers and other old media alive with injections of public funds are really saying that if people won't support those forms of journalism voluntarily, they should be made to do so against their will. The argument for most government subsidies is that the activity they support generates a larger public benefit — a benefit that would be lost if it were left up to the marketplace. But for the better part of two centuries, newspapers flourished in the market. They are struggling now not because there is no commercial value to "provid[ing] all the news coverage we need," but because tens of millions of consumers have come to prefer other vehicles for getting that news. There hasn't been a market failure, only a market transformation.