While I wouldn't doubt that excessive debt is bad for any company, I think the recent collapse of advertising and broad decline in circulation are the most prox

While I wouldn't doubt that excessive debt is bad for any company, I think the recent collapse of advertising and broad decline in circulation are the most proximate causes of newspapers (and lots of other print media outfits) losing money. A-and I'm not sure there's much the President can do to avoid right wing papers calling him a socialist, subsidy or not, but at least under this scheme a paper's right wing (or left wing) editorial board could then plausibly claim that their opinions reflected a considered take on the news, and that they were paid only (mostly?) by the blind subsidy rather than by some corrupting influence like a right wing (or left wing) political machine.