Newspapers Get White House Support

Good news, journalism students who cling dearly to print media. President Obama does too. In an interview with Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editors and The Blade, Obama called himself a "big newspaper junkie" and called newspapers' survival "critical to the health of our democracy."

"I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding," the President said.

While I would argue that online newspapers are no less accurate than their print counterparts with fact-checking, I do agree that a tangible newspaper reads differently than a digital one.

Obama said he would gladly look at legislation that would allow print newspapers to become non-profits and receive tax breaks. Swensen and Schmidt would be proud.