A Reminder of Precedents in Subsidizing Newspapers

American newspapers have relied on government subsidies since Washington's day, but that support has dropped sharply in the last four decades, according to a report to be released Thursday by the University of Southern California.

In the last year, the industry's financial woes have prompted much debate about what government can do to support the news media — and much hand-wringing about the risk of journalists being beholden to government. But the authors of the new study say government support is nothing new, though even many journalists are unaware of it. "We think it's important for people to understand that the government has been involved from the beginning, and that the subsidies were much larger in the past," said Geoffrey Cowan, dean emeritus of the university's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. He and his co-author, David Westphal, the school's executive in residence, said that in today's dollars, government support for newspapers and magazines had fallen to less than $2 billion from more than $4 billion in 1970. The federal government has discounted postage rates for publications since 1792, but in the last 40 years, the discount has fallen to less than $300 million from almost $2 billion, adjusted for inflation.