1. You can see what the authors consider to be mythology in the comments themselves. Some people don’t consider government-required public notices, postal discounts or tax breaks to be subsidies. Jeff Jarvis made the same point this week. So have the many others who urge the government to refrain from subsidizing the press. We argue it already has, and already is.

2. The postal system’s discount system is a good topic for elaboration, which we’re doing in a longer paper on this topic.

3. We don’t quarrel with the origins of public-notice publication requirements. Government wanted to make sure the public was properly informed. That doesn’t mean that public-notice requirements don’t amount to subsidies today. All government subsidies arguably have public purposes, but they nevertheless work to the benefit of one industry or another. Indeed, the movement of public notices to online space would be a financial nightmare for many newspapers, especially small ones. Yet that movement is under way.

4. We also are interested in a national tabulation of public-notice expenses incurred by local, state and federal agencies. $2 billion sounds high, but there’s little doubt it’s a big number, and that whatever it is going to decline, perhaps quickly.

5. Whether you call them subsidies or prefer another term, the money the government has directed toward commercial media has been reduced significantly in recent decades (through higher postal rates), and is certain to decline more (public-notice revenue and tax breaks based on newsprint and ink, for example). Our view is it’s a good opportunity for policymakers to ponder what role this money has played in the past, and whether government should play any kind of comparable role in the future.

Bailouts, on the other hand, will lead to censorship and destruction of the First Amendment. Remember the Golden Rule — “he who has the money makes the rules.” Anyone who thinks the American press would be nonexistent without the government is grossly uninformed and should never be allowed to vote, a useful idiot for the forces who would care to tear down the free market.