Posted on 08/15/2009 7:27:25 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The New York Times is generally loathe to dignify conservative-leaning books with an official review.
That stance is getting dicier these days, especially since the newspaper’s own nonfiction bestseller chart is chockablock with conservatives luminaries like Michelle Malkin, Dick Morris and Mark Levin.
President Barack Obama has only been in office for roughly eight months, but he’s already inspired multiple conservative bestsellers.
Malkin’s Culture of Corruption sits atop the list, followed by Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny in the two slot and Catastrophe by Morris and Eileen McGann at number four.
Marji Ross, president and publisher of Regnery Publishing, isn’t surprised by the newspaper’s stance against these like-minded books.
“Very rarely do they review conservative books,” Ross says. “What they sometimes do is mention a book that is conservative on their “Inside the List” feature. It’s a way to defend themselves against the accusation they ignore these books.”
The New York Times did see fit to print reviews of major liberal books from Michael Moore (Dude, Where's My Country?), Eric Alterman (What Liberal Media?) and Al Franken (Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them) but has yet to examine the aforementioned right-leaning bestsellers.
Having one’s book reviewed in The New York Times meant something up until recently.
“Traditionally, most publishers and authors are very eager to get in the New York Times to review their books,” Ross says.
Now, readers take their cues from talk radio and the Internet.
“People tend to trust what they hear on talk radio rather than what they might read in the New York Times,” she says. “They develop a relationship with a talk radio show and what the host likes and is interested in.”
The runaway success of Malkin’s book is opening media doors that once seemed closed. The author recently appeared on the far-left talk show “The View” as well as “The Today Show.”
“They wouldn’t have been interested in her at all if not for the huge surge of interest in the book,” she says, adding Matt Lauer on the “Today Show” barely kept himself in check while allowing Malkin to expound on her book’s arguments.
Ross doesn’t fear left-leaning interviewers tearing into Regnery authors.
“Our authors are almost always folks who can hold their own in a debate. They can defend their point of view in hostile territory,” she says.
Roger Kimball, publisher of Encounter Books and author of Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education, says his company stopped sending its books to the New York Times last year. The paper rarely analyzed its product, and the few times it did the reviewer trashed the tomes in an ugly fashion.
Yet the newspaper saw fit to call What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News by The Nation’s Eric Alterman “impressively researched and documented.”
“The Times has always been a liberal newspaper, and that’s fine,” Kimball says. “Increasingly, it’s a paper whose entire coverage has been determined by ideological litmus tests.”
Book readers seem to care less and less about what the newspaper thinks of a particular book, he says.
“You can do very well without the imprimatur of the New York Times,” he says. “The dirty little secret is that the Times doesn’t matter anymore, or it matters less and less. Many other outlets beat the Times to the stories and provide much fuller coverage.”
A chapter in Harry Stein’s new book, I Can’t Believe I’m Sitting Next to a Republican, is dedicated to the culture wars flaring within the publishing industry. Republican recalls how mainstream publishing houses turned down future smashes like Bernard Goldberg’s Bias simply because they couldn’t relate to its themes -- or preferred not to even try.
Kimball says the recent surge in conservative book sales means people are starting to realize the full extent of “Hope and Change.”
“The relationship between the individual and the state is up for re-negotiation in this country,“ he says.
President Obama promised a fundamental transformation of this country, he says, which presently stands as the wealthiest, most militarily powerful and freest country on the globe.
“Which of those things would you like to change?” he asks.
“That burgeoning awareness accounts for the popularity of these books,” he adds. “The grassroots concern and irritation you see at town hall meetings across the country, the spontaneous eruptions from ordinary citizens -- our very basic freedoms are being negotiated away.”
Ross agrees, saying the tidal wave of conservative best sellers reveals “a hunger in the marketplace for books reflecting what the majority of Americans are worried about,” she says, a movement that isn’t solely conservative in nature.
“They feel they have no voice in Washington, no voice in the political power structure, and they’re looking for an alternative,” she says.
-- Christian Toto is a freelance entertainment writer and contributing film critic for The Washington Times. His work has appeared in People magazine, MovieMaker Magazine, The Denver Post, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and Scripps Howard News Service. He also provides movie radio commentary to three stations as well as the nationally syndicated Dennis Miller Show.
““They feel they have no voice in Washington, no voice in the political power structure,...”
....and no voice in the MSM.
LOL - The New York Times isn't what it once was... now they "suck more"...
Doesn’t matter. TThe soon to be padlocked and boarded up NYTs, is no longer part of the “Mainstream”, just a fetid cesspool of Liberal Socialist Loserism.
““They feel they have no voice in Washington, no voice in the political power structure,...”
....and no voice in the MSM....and that’s the way the Left wants to keep it....look for Limbaugh to be silenced within the year...ditto with Glen Beck.
If the New York Times isn’t publishing reviews on conservative books I certainly wouldn’t know it because I do not read the New York Times.
Seems fair.
I think I have found common cause with my tree hugging friends; destroying trees in order to manufacture newsprint to be used to publish the New York Times is bad for the environment. They should do us a favor and fall upon their sword.
Imagine generations hence trying to explain what was meant by the phrase “New York Times Bestseller”.
They probably try to but just can’t find anyone who would consent to actually read such a book.
They should interview Adrian Zachheim.
I am a non-intellectual conservative, can you please tell me what a New York Times is. Maybe when I get edumicated I can read it for my daily laugh.
Dick Morris s not a conservative luminary
I wonder how protective the Times is of Hillary Clinton. Andrew Zackheim is publisher of The Sentinel, a conservative imprint within Penguin. There, he published The Truth About Hillary, a controversial biography about the current secretary of state who seems to be on the verge of a breakdown.
Formerly MSM. Now more properly identified as State Run Media (SRM).
Who cares? The books are already selling and it isn’t as if the NY Times would give a conservative book a fair review in any event.
I think she has been broken down for years from the way she looks & sounds.
“President Obama promised a fundamental transformation of this country, he says, which presently stands as the wealthiest, most militarily powerful and freest country on the globe.
“Which of those things would you like to change?” he asks.”
Indeed!
Actually, I'm not bothered at all that they don't review (i.e., attack) my book. What's the point? Will I gain a SINGLE NEW READER by them reviewing my book? Would I lose any? No and no.
Levin was at the top for weeks!
Morris has seen the light.
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