We were pretty nervous, earlier this year, when an FTC report with ideas on how to “save” journalism appeared to focus mainly on saving newspapers, rather than on actually saving journalism. It had a number of really troubling and potentially dangerous ideas. The FTC is now planning to release a report by the end of the year that details its proposals for helping journalism, but at least one scary suggestion appears to be off the table: granting newspapers antitrust exemptions. FTC chair Jon Leibowitz dismissed it, saying “I’m not sure that would be a good policy,” and then clarified that the “government shouldn’t be picking winners and losers and should be platform neutral.” Hopefully the plan really does stick to that idea… though it’s still not clear why the government needs to be involved in “saving journalism” in the first place.

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