[fbcocq]

It is widely believed that a flourishing democracy requires an independent, diverse, and financially solvent press.

Most of Europe has a socialized independent press, in Germany it's financed by a soon to be mandatory per-household charge (currently mandatory per-TV/Radio charge) and it's been mostly working out so far. Quite frankly I don't understand how you can call a company owned newspaper like the NY Times independent.

[cdixon]

I think a non-profit press is one solution. It just doesn't seem to be the solution favored by Americans. Given that, it's probably best to have a selection of well written for profit news sites with different points of view (NYT, WSJ etc).