DOD Thinking of Cutting Funding to Stars and Stripes?

If you read Wounded Times or follow on Google+ you are well aware of how many reports come from Stars and Stripes. Had the national press been interested in what is happening the way Stars and Strips does, then there would be no reason to be upset with the prospect of the DOD cutting funding of it. 

When I am in work on breaks or lunch, I check Stars and Stripes to see what is going on and then link to their reports so no one misses the news.  It is the first place I look when my time is limited because I know I'll find something worth sharing.  With the national news the way it is, all too often, they just don't seem to be able to even make time for our troops or our veterans.

Don’t rush to judgment on Stars and Stripes funding
Stars and Stripes
By Tobias Naegele
Stars and Stripes Ombudsman
Published: April 21, 2016

The Defense Department is considering a proposal to stop funding Stars and Stripes.

Such a cut would likely kill the newspaper. It must not be made in haste or in secret.

Stars and Stripes receives about $12 million a year in appropriated funding. That’s about 40 percent of its overall budget, according to Stars and Stripes Publisher Max Lederer, with the balance coming from advertising and circulation sales. Of the appropriated funds, $7 million comes from the regular defense budget and $5 million from overseas contingency operations funds — the war budget — mostly to pay for printing and distributing the paper downrange.

Some might argue the Pentagon would save money by shuttering Stripes and instead delivering a commercial newspaper to our troops overseas. But those papers won’t come without a price and they won’t be tailored, as Stripes is, to the interests of military readers. The beauty of Stars and Stripes is not just that it’s a daily paper available overseas, but that it’s a daily paper written and edited for military members. Its blend of staff-written articles and news culled from the nation’s leading providers — The Washington Post, The Associated Press, The Los Angeles Times — is unique, and provides depth and balance to military readers.

Another difference: Most newspapers endorse political policies and candidates, creating political baggage in the process. Stars and Stripes doesn’t take political positions.
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