Doing it French

Sarkozy has announced plans to provide government support for print journalism in France.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/24/business/media/24ads.html?_r=1&ref=business

Sounds like a typically European approach, but one unlikely to succeed in my view as it doesn't address the underlying problems with the business model. It's hard to see how government support will not taint the public's perception of newspaper independence and without public confidence in the independence of the press they will disregard the print paper and turn even more to the Internet.

The French experiment will bear watching but seems to have little relevance over her.