Why not bail out the writers as well as the bankers?

As President-elect Barack Obama moves nimbly towards enacting a massive FDR-style public works programme to provide employment, stimulate demand and build for the future - surely an uncontroversial and sensible reaction to economic drama that Britain, too, might benefit from – here's another New Deal idea that could be resurrected: put unemployed newspaper reporters, photographers, editors, critics and others to government-sponsored work in the service of history and culture.

The idea has been raised by Mark I Pinsky, writing for the New Republic. He argues that with thousands of media-folk already out of work and thousands more to come with the troubles at the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and many other newspapers, a revival of the Depression-era Federal Writers Project (FWP) has appeal.

The original programme, which operated between 1935-1939, not only offered employment to nearly 7,000 but gave some of the best writers of the 20th Century an entry to their craft or at least a leg-up, among them Conrad Aiken, Saul Bellow, John Cheever, John Steinbeck and Studs Terkel.

Roosevelt saw no distinction between car workers, bankers or writers

Under the direction of Henry Alsberg, a journalist and theatre director, writers were sent out to produce field guides to all 48 states, and interview and photograph 2,300 former African-American Slaves. They documented the lives of factory workers, sharecroppers, woodsmen - almost anyone they came across.

Roosevelt, whose response to the Depression was for government to adopt "...an activist role in the economy and society", saw no distinction between government programmes to aid car workers, restore the banking system or establish projects for writers, musicians and actors. "Why not?" was his response. "They are human beings. They have to live."

In the US, it's an idea that's gaining traction - or at least circulation. And with British newspapers in trouble too - more journalists have been laid off at the Daily Telegraph this month - perhaps Brown and Mandelson should be thinking along similar

lines.

In his New Republic piece, Pinsky considers that a new Federal Writers Project could begin by "documenting the ground-level impact of the Great Recession; chronicling the transition to a green economy; or capturing the experiences of the thousands of immigrants who are changing the American complexion. Like the original FWP, the new version would focus in particular on those segments of society largely ignored by commercial and even public media."

But Pinsky is realistic, acknowledging that government intervention to support the failing newspaper and magazine industries in this way is problematic. Print publishing may simply be doomed, and the media may not overall be able to support as many jobs in the future as it has in the past. But a government-sponsored writers' programme could offer "young journalists a way to get started, or displaced media workers a way to transition to new occupations... It might help - and serve the nation in the process."