Taxpayer cash is going to rescue so many people these days that it is hard to sort the truly awful ideas from the merely terrible. Then we heard the doozy out of Pennsylvania, where Governor Ed Rendell has discussed a state bailout of the company that owns a pair of Philadelphia newspapers, the Inquirer and the Daily News.

Philadelphia Media Holdings is in default on its loans, having missed debt payments going back to June. With no buyers knocking on the door, the Philadelphia Bulletin has reported, owner Brian Tierney went hat-in-hand to the Governor's office to talk about giving the paper some public help. Mr. Tierney won't comment on the record, while Mr. Rendell's spokesman tells us the conversations weren't specific but that state help is a possibility.

Times are tough, but as they say in Philadelphia, this is nuts in eight different ways. Starting as a business proposition: When McClatchy bought Knight Ridder in 2006, the Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News were spun off and sold for $515 million to investors led by Mr. Tierney, who made his money in advertising and public relations. The buyers put up around 20% in equity and took on some $400 million in debt, enough leverage to raise eyebrows even before the credit crunch. Mr. Tierney is now no different than thousands of other Americans who borrowed too heavily during the credit mania.

Mr. Rendell's spokesman, Chuck Ardo, plays down the possibility of the state government holding an equity share in the newspaper, but says direct state investment "is possible." Even if the bailout is designed simply to help the newspaper meet its default payments until the economy recovers, that is still a highly speculative taxpayer bet. Everyone knows the big-city newspaper business model is under pressure, to put it mildly. The Tribune Company and the Minneapolis Star Tribune have both filed for bankruptcy, while the publisher of Connecticut papers including the New Haven Register suspended its debt payments in December.

Philadelphia is a great city, but we're not sure why taxpayers in Pittsburgh should finance readers on the other side of the state. Mr. Ardo told us the state has an interest in saving the paper to protect jobs as well as a free press. Newspapers are "the lifeblood of democracy," he says.