France's birthday gift to 18y-olds: A subscription to the newspaper of their choice

I've connected (like many around here) to many alternative news sources, and the fact is that newspapers have become superficial, fad-driven, fail to report on anything if it's "hard" (witness the lack of staffing of foreign offices), and incredibly beholden to narrative, which you can already see in Obama's coverage. (I don't know if the media is liberal-biased but it sure as hell is Obama-biased. The clearest example of this has been the treasury secretary nomination, which would have caused screams of outrage if Bush did it but a collective and fully conscious "meh" from an Obama nomination.)

There's a blogger ( http://michaeltotten.com/ ) who takes user donations and embeds himself with militaries in Iraq and more recently, Israel. He does better reporting than any newspaper or professional media organization, because they have zero such reporters. Zero. I always find it interesting when people criticize his reporting, because he is there and he is the only one there; nobody has any standing to criticize him. (I'd actually feel much better if there was.)

This has not always been true. Look at the beginning of Dan Rather's career. He wasn't the only one, either. Nobody does that anymore. Nobody from a newspaper, anyhow.

There are just so many stories they pass on because they don't want to report them (scandals in the wrong direction, mostly), or fundamentally can't understand them anymore (science reporting, I'm almost glad CNN dropped out because they were awful anyhow). Punditry has largely replaced facts (24-hour coverage may get eyeballs but it's a fundamentally bad, distorting idea). The media, as a whole, is simply awful. They are propaganda machines, and I'm not even just talking politics. Every time they write an article based on a press release (which is all the damn time), they're just propagandizing, not reporting.

It is possible that it is no longer possible for such entities to sustain such reporting, in which case the Totten model is probably the only hope for actual reporting going forward.

Certainly, print+internet reaches more people than internet alone. However, I would suppose that print's exclusive reach is increasingly toward an audience that does not matter. http://www.google.com/search?q=%22not+on+the+internet+you+do...

informed citizens on public transportation

Increasingly, they (citizens on public transportation) use portable internet-enabled information devices. I would think that smartphones and Kindle readers would work well on a crowded subway. http://www.ilounge.com/gallery/iphone_asia/Tokyo-Subway-iPho...

http://www.iphonesavior.com/images/2007/08/07/ftrain1.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3202/2677315976_94a9b2122b.jp...

Actually, the banlieues (suburbs) are the most subsidized areas of the country. The infrastructure there (schools, libraries, sport clubs, etc.) has a mysterious tendency to spontaneously consume itself, but usually it's promptly rebuilt thanks to the generous taxpayer.

The thing is, those cities were planned and designed from the ground-up by progressive, visionary social engineers as part of a social experiment (in collectivism, it goes without saying) funded with money from the Marshall plan. And the result of this experiment seems to be that, no, people really don't like living in cities that look like Brasilia.

But that's just one part of the problem. The big picture is gloomier and it reveals a massive failure of the French socialist-minded government in economic and social policies. The most rigid labour laws in the world prevent employers from hiring anyone but the most productive and qualified workers. Everyone else (too old, too young, not qualified enough, etc.) is excluded from the job market and lives on welfare.

The social policies are probably even worse than the economic policies. They say racism is evil and we should all live together and love each other and so on, yet they don't seem to really believe in what they preach since they have this nasty habit of forcing people to integrate; which, of course, only results in more racism, hatred and violence.

Oh, I forgot about justice. It's very humane. After all, criminals are themselves victims of society and should be treated as such, aren't they?

You're right about the word time-bomb, but it's far from being as simple as a clash between two classes. The government has generated hundreds of antagonist interest groups. The CRS is extremely efficient at dealing with random bursts of violence (it's one of the most efficient European police force when it comes to dealing with urban violence). But of course it can't prevent or control a civil war.

Anyway, let me quote Krugman on the french economy:

"let's ask how the situation of a typical middle-class family in France compares with that of its American counterpart. The French family, without question, has lower disposable income. This translates into lower personal consumption: a smaller car, a smaller house, less eating out. But there are compensations for this lower level of consumption. Because French schools are good across the country, the French family doesn't have to worry as much about getting its children into a good school district. Nor does the French family, with guaranteed access to excellent health care, have to worry about losing health insurance or being driven into bankruptcy by medical bills. Perhaps even more important, however, the members of that French family are compensated for their lower income with much more time together. Fully employed French workers average about seven weeks of paid vacation a year. In America, that figure is less than four. So which society has made the better choice?."

Most french people still want to believe in communism. If you remind them of the disastrous failure it was everywhere it was tried, they certainly won't disagree with you, but nevertheless add something in the form of "yes, but if we really..."