In this editorial note published on Salon.com, Dan Gillmor argues that the best support any government can give to its journalists is a free, fast, fair and open Internet. Journalism should stay away from multinational telecommunications companies and media empires.

Direct subsidies for journalism are the wrong way to go, even dangerous. But we absolutely could use the kind of indirect help [...] This would be essential infrastructure, aimed at beefing up all 21st Century commerce and communications, including but not limited to journalism.

Second, if we got serious about broadband in this way, entrepreneurs would almost certainly come up with the journalism, including a variety of business models to augment or replace today's, that would provide the public good we all agree comes with journalism and other trustworthy information.

(via wired.com)

Dan Gillmor is director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication.
Picture by Doing Media Studies on Flickr.