TIME Magazine Preview: Saving Newspapers -- And Abe Lincoln Backs Obama Stimulus Plan?

By: E&P Staff Coming from TIME magazine tomorrow is a major piece by Walter Isaacson on how to save newspapers. Excerpt below. Here is link online:

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1877191,00.html

Also, an interesting piece (not online yet) by Dave Von Drehle, declaring that Abraham Lincoln's economic policies suggest that he would have backed President Obama's big stimulus plan.

He writes: ?[After the crash of 1837], Lincoln maintained that the way to save the system was to pump more money into it. He was convinced that once confidence was restored and commerce began humming again, the public works?roads, canal routes, widened rivers and rail lines?that seemed so expensive during the slump would repay their cost many times over. In his folksy way, he compared a stalled economy to a steam engine and thus summed up the idea we now call stimulus. At the engine?s ?dead point,? Lincoln said, even a single turn is ?extremely difficult.? But jolt it back to life, and it quickly regains momentum. Then ?all will be well again.??

Also in this issue on the same subject, TIME?s Michael Grunwald writes, ?It?s hard to take Republican leaders too seriously when they criticize the recovery plans for the economy; it?s sort of like those geese criticizing the evacuation plans for US Airways Flight 1549. Their critiques seem even more comical when you see their alternatives ? The real question?is not whether Obama should push to use the stimulus to promote his long-term priorities, but whether he will. He has said repeatedly that he wants to invest our children?s money wisely, but he?s also anxious to blast money into the economy quickly, and attract bipartisan support, and let Congress work its will, so it?s not clear how hard he?ll push to fund his long-term agenda.?

Finally, noted black author and academic Henry Louis Gates Jr. tells TIME about how people should refer to Obama?as black or mixed race: ?We can?t reinvent language each day or even each generation. Obama is an African American?literally. His father was African, his mother was American. It took us all these years to get a black man into the White House. We?re not giving that brother up anytime soon.?

In the cover story, Isaacson argues that newspapers and other content companies should charge for online content to stave off the ?crisis in journalism? that ?has reached meltdown proportions,? adding, ?I am hoping that this year will see the dawn of a bold, old idea that will provide yet another option that some news organizations might choose: getting paid by users for the services they provide and the journalism they produce.?

He proposes a micropayment system, where ?a newspaper might decide to charge a nickel for an article or a dime for that day?s full edition or $2 for a month?s worth of Web access. Some surfers would balk, but I suspect most would merrily click through if it were cheap and easy enough. The system could be used for all forms of media: magazines and blogs, games and apps, TV newscasts and amateur videos, porn pictures and policy monographs, the reports of citizen journalists, recipes of great cooks and songs of garage bands.?