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Editor s Note: The Moral Economy is a new series that tackles key economic topics through the prism of Catholic social teaching and its care for the dignity of every person. This is the fourth article in the series.
The United States, a nation built on newspapers, has journalism in its future.
Thousands of digital startups. Billionaires backing nonprofit news. The emergence of working subscriber models, from Substack newsletters to America Media.
Two dark clouds hover over this promising terrain. One consists of Facebook, Google and Apple, tech companies worth trillions of dollars that dominate access to the internet and dwarf the biggest news companies. Instead of a handful of newspapers and magazines, we can now read over a billion websites, fracturing our attention, enabling conspiracy theories and fueling media illiteracy.
Why buy a yacht when you can buy a newspaper?
21 Apr, 2021 07:56 PM
9 minutes to read
One arena in which the billionaires can still win plaudits as civic-minded saviors is buying the metropolitan daily newspaper. Photo / 123RF
One arena in which the billionaires can still win plaudits as civic-minded saviors is buying the metropolitan daily newspaper. Photo / 123RF
New York Times
By: Nicholas Kulish
Billionaires aren t usually cast as saviours of democracy. But one way they are winning plaudits for civic-minded endeavours is by funding the Fourth Estate. Billionaires have had a pretty good pandemic. There are more of them than there were a year ago, even as the crisis has exacerbated inequality. But scrutiny has followed these ballooning fortunes. Policymakers are debating new taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals. Even their philanthropy has come under increasing criticism as an exercise of power as much as generosity.
Richard A. Sprague, a prominent Baltimore-born Philadelphia lawyer who prosecuted murderers, won high-stakes civil lawsuits and was deeply influential in state and city political and civic affairs, died Saturday night, his family announced.
A livestreamed service at Joseph Levine and Sons Memorial Chapel Inc. is planned for Thursday. Survivors also include a daughter and eight grandchildren.
Sprague served as chief counsel and director of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Select Committee on Assassinations, which probed the killings of President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“He had such incredible curiosity about so many things, his son said. “He would love to read about anything from astronomy to science, and before 6:30 on most mornings for many, many years, he had already read all of these newspapers and sent around press clippings from the New York Times and other publications to a whole list of family and friends.”