Newspapers are too Liberal
The Ombudsman for the Washington Post, Deborah Howell, wrote her weekly article yesterday about why newspapers are losing money. The reason: they are too liberal. Glenn Greenwald wrote a great post about this yesterday.
The entire thesis of this article is wrong. Newspapers may be losing readers for all of the reasons that she mentioned, but the most influential reason they are losing readers (in print) is the internet. Very few people under the age of 30 read any newspapers in print. Nor, do they have a land-line phone (only cell phones). And, as these people age, this is going to continuing growing. Newspapers as is are a dinosaur and are dying. If News organizations use ad revenue from print as their main business model, they will not make enough money to turn a profit. In fact, the trajectory is downward on revenue, so they may not even make any revenue let alone profit.
And, how did Deborah Howell determine that the Washington Post is too liberal? She came to this sound scientific reasoning on the number of emails she gets complaining about the liberal bais the Washington Post has. You would think she would alread know that there are very well organized PR campaigns to flood the inbox of the likes of Deborah Howell with emails where the sender writes how liberal the WP is. Just using the number of emails that one gets on a certain topic is not scientific at all. That is the same as using all of my friends or coworkers as a scientific survey. It is not reality.
And, this idea that for a newspaper to be objective and correct, it should offend people on the left and right doesn't make any sense. What about the Iraq war coverage? And, not the lead up to war, but the actual coverage, especially in 2004. The right basically was highly critical of "objective" coverage and publishing pictures of the dead or their names. People on the right (or a very vocal small percentage of people) seem to be upset when the truth is printed about the right and it's not favorable. People on the left (or a very vocal small percentage of people) get upset when stories are printed about the right and they aren't truthful.
Progressives are willing to hold all sides accountable and publish the truth. Think about it.
The entire thesis of this article is wrong. Newspapers may be losing readers for all of the reasons that she mentioned, but the most influential reason they are losing readers (in print) is the internet. Very few people under the age of 30 read any newspapers in print. Nor, do they have a land-line phone (only cell phones). And, as these people age, this is going to continuing growing. Newspapers as is are a dinosaur and are dying. If News organizations use ad revenue from print as their main business model, they will not make enough money to turn a profit. In fact, the trajectory is downward on revenue, so they may not even make any revenue let alone profit.
And, how did Deborah Howell determine that the Washington Post is too liberal? She came to this sound scientific reasoning on the number of emails she gets complaining about the liberal bais the Washington Post has. You would think she would alread know that there are very well organized PR campaigns to flood the inbox of the likes of Deborah Howell with emails where the sender writes how liberal the WP is. Just using the number of emails that one gets on a certain topic is not scientific at all. That is the same as using all of my friends or coworkers as a scientific survey. It is not reality.
And, this idea that for a newspaper to be objective and correct, it should offend people on the left and right doesn't make any sense. What about the Iraq war coverage? And, not the lead up to war, but the actual coverage, especially in 2004. The right basically was highly critical of "objective" coverage and publishing pictures of the dead or their names. People on the right (or a very vocal small percentage of people) seem to be upset when the truth is printed about the right and it's not favorable. People on the left (or a very vocal small percentage of people) get upset when stories are printed about the right and they aren't truthful.
Progressives are willing to hold all sides accountable and publish the truth. Think about it.
posted by Bryan Samolinski at
10:16 AM
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