Relax, Conservatives: Liberal Media is Doomed

North Star Writers Group ^ | 8/24/2009 | Dan Calabrese

[SeekAndFind]

If there is one constant among conservatives – from generation to generation – it is continued disgust with the liberal mainstream media. This is for good reason, which has rarely been more evident than today, as institutions like the Associated Press, the New York Times and major television networks cheerlead shamelessly for President Obama and his left-wing agenda.

But conservatives should stop fretting. The liberal media is doomed.

The media’s liberal bias exists because the individual practitioners who join journalistic institutions are overwhelmingly liberal. They decide to study journalism in college because they are idealistic and are intrigued by the notion of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. They dream of filing Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reports that do just that.

You’ll find your odd conservative in a given newsroom, but the newsroom’s dominant culture will almost always lean left because the lifers who have worked their way through the ranks are the true believers, and they are liberal to the core.

The culture of these institutions will never change, and that frustrates conservatives to no end, but it doesn’t matter. These institutions are dying – to be replaced by a more independent, entrepreneurial, small-d democratic model of journalism that is already emerging.

It’s ironic when you think about it, but liberal mainstream journalists depend on the largesse of their corporate masters to continue plying their trade. They score a staff position, join the newspaper guild, work their way through the beat structure and keep amassing annual pay raises and increases in vacation time. Your typical liberal journalist wouldn’t know the first thing about the revenue-generating side of the business. If anything, he or she went into journalism in part because of a deep distrust of people who sell things. They think it’s their job to protect consumers from all the salesman out there, because surely they are nothing but a bunch of scam artists.

When these journalists get laid off, most don’t know the first thing about approaching their career in an entrepreneurial fashion. They simply bemoan the disappearance of the sort of job they’ve always had.

That’s why the new media model is tailor-made for the entrepreneurial conservative – the hard-working individual who is willing to bear down, report and sell advertising or sponsorships to capitalize a low-overhead operation. The dinosaur institutions that sheltered liberal journalists, and fostered a culture hostile to conservatives, will be all but gone within five to 10 years. The new rules will not block entry by conservatives on the basis of ideology. Your opportunity to get in the game will be determined by your work ethic and your entrepreneurial prowess.

This is not to say there will be no liberal journalists. There are liberal entrepreneurs. What people like Arianna Huffington and Markos Moulitsas have accomplished with online media is impressive indeed. But no one mistakes Huffington Post or Daily Kos for anything other than what they are – left-wing web sites. By the same token, when people read Michelle Malkin’s Hot Air, everyone knows they’re getting news from a conservative perspective.

It’s all fair game, and everyone is welcome to play. But no longer will liberal journalists be able to pretend they are objective and hide behind old-line institutions.

Newspapers are the first element of the mainstream media to begin dying, but they won’t be the last. Newspapers are dying because their business model is preposterous, and they’re so steeped in self-important arrogance that they’ve been completely unwilling to change that model. They lay off reporters by the dozen while continuing to operate the printing presses and distribution systems that are relics of yesteryear. Most newspapers now have online editions, but few have figured out how to capitalize them – certainly not enough to fund the massive overhead that remains within their newspaper operations.

Radio and television don’t have the same cost-overhead issues facing newspapers, but their relevance will nonetheless be challenged by individuals who can harness the power of the web – who can report more quickly, more fairly, more accurately and more cost-effectively. This will reduce the value of television and radio advertising time, because people will increasingly understand there are more trustworthy alternatives.

I expect there will still be some large media institutions, but they will no longer dominate the game or set the rules. And the few dinosaur liberal journalists who remain will be held increasingly accountable by their new, emerging competitors. We already see this with sites like NewsBusters, which regularly lays to waste the interminable bias of old-liners like the AP.

Within 10 years, most liberal journalists will be forced into other lines of work. They will surely bemoan the loss of the institutions that once bankrolled their journalistic malpractice, but the rest of the nation will be better off for the change.

This is not to say we’ll be ushering in an era of conservative propaganda accepted as straight news reporting. The Sean Hannitys of the world are not going to be taken seriously as journalists. But conservatives who know how to report news, source information and present it in a timely fashion are already getting their chance, and will soon get it all the more so.

Conservatives would be wise, therefore, to stop whining about the liberal media and start getting in line to replace it – because its days are decidedly numbered.

[screaminsunshine]

I was thinking of starting a local paper with actual truth in it.

[Kansas58]

How about we get someone in Congress to propose a TAX!

A TAX on NEWSPRINT!

Whereas the production of newspapers causes trees to be cut down, hauled by polluting trucks to polluting paper mills, and hauled from paper mills to publishers and

Whereas the production of newspapers requires toxic ink and solvents and energy wasting machinery and

Whereas the distribution of newspapers requires the use of dirty internal combustion engines and

Whereas a large portion of every landfill is used for discarded newspapers,

Therefore:

Be it resolved that a Newsprint tax, of $1,000.00 per pound, be charged to EVERY newspaper with a daily subscription, within the United States!
________________________________________
We should get some Republican to propose THIS as an amendment to any “cap and trade” or “carbon tax” proposal that comes up!
Maybe we can make it like “Cap and Trade” and use the revenue generated, from this tax on dirty dinosaur newspapers, to subsidize a tax credit for home computers and digital devices?
Or, we could use the money to subsidize talk radio! Well, those guys really don’t need any help!

[SeattleBruce]

Oh Fox News is not bad. They are center right though, clearly from their evening programming. That whole outfit though - Fox (including all their other programming) - is a bit too salacious for my blood.

But Fox News provides an important current balance with the leftist media, and it’s fascinating and fun to watch their success and hear libtards moan about it!

[SeattleBruce]

I was thinking of starting a local paper with actual truth in it.
+++++++++++++++

I bet a lot of conservatives would support you. I would certainly! I bet you though, you’d be slandered up and down as a secret organ of the GOP, and all the name calling, etc.

But who cares. You could show your stripes by being equally hard on both sides.

That would be the kind of paper that could succeed again - you should start online and experiment with print editions, as needed.

Print editions are hard to make succeed anymore.

You may need them though, to build up your business.

[SeattleBruce]

Or, we could use the money to subsidize talk radio!
+++++++++++++

Can you imagine the HOWLING then? Wow!

[screaminsunshine]

I would do it free and charge for ads. Hopefully some biz would want to be boycotted by the Obamans. Keep away the riff raff ya know. Also shoplifting would be reduced.

[SeattleBruce]

Moveon.org, Democrat Underground and the Huffington Post?
+++++++++++++

Newsmax, Politico (?), Real Clear Politics, Drudge Report, Free Republic

[SeattleBruce]

I would do it free and charge for ads.
++++++++++++++

Interesting - you might be able to bootstrap it, and make a go of it. Would you have an online version of it too? You should do both - increase your advertisers exposure also.

[Mogollon]

Barack is their greatest achievement to date.

Right. And 0bama will be their waterloo.

[screaminsunshine]

No only print an no news wire propaganda. I figure to get ahead of the electronic media takeover.

[bray]

Day Old News is getting Stale.

Pray for America and Our Troops

[SeattleBruce]

No only print an no news wire propaganda. I figure to get ahead of the electronic media takeover.
++++++++++++++

Well the internet hasn’t yet been taken over by the socialists..

[faucetman]

Fox news is better than nothing, that’s about how far I’ll go

[LiberConservative]

I’m not celebrating yet. One last gasp of the “Fairness Doctrine” is looming.

[rockrr]

Perhaps, but would you admit that their ranks have been thinned considerably?

[wintertime]

why do the MSM, “higher” education, and so many other institutions tend left?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Ask Antonio Gramsci and the former KGB spy Yuri Bezemov.

The following is a video of an interview with Yuri Bezemov in 1984:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x32cxf_yuri-bezmenov

Solution:

We must get the nation's children into tuition-free conservative private schools. We must shut down the government K-12 indoctrination camps ( ALL of them!)

If our nation's classrooms were filled to the brim with young people well prepared to defend their faith and American values their Marxist professors would wither before them. The same is true as these young people entered the professions, took their place in industry, the arts, and in teaching positions in the universities. In just a few short years we could turn this nation around.

On the very first day of kindergarten a child learns to be a socialist. Every day in a government school is an object lesson that the government can take money from his neighbor to pay for a service his parents want for free. His Marxist teachers teach the child for 13 or more years that education is a **right**! Well?...If education is a right why have government for your neighbor to pay for other things that you want: free retirement, free disability, free transportation, free health care,free food, free housing, free babysitting, free medicines, free college, free entertainment..etc.?

[Terpfen]

You've heard about it for years because it's a slow death. It began with Drudge breaking the Lewinsky story, continued with the rise of blogs, and now it's continuing with plummeting advertising revenue plus the advent of business models for blogs.

They're still kicking because they've gotten loans from unsavory sources. But don't confuse those kicks as a sign of virile life. Think of them more as desperate thrashing as the walls close in.

This article is dead on. Pun intended.

[Terpfen]

What do people think of Politico? Or Newsmax (pretty Conservative, but not bad)?

Politico is simply yet another left-wing outfit, albeit more tech savvy than the traditional rags. The people who run Politico used to work for the Washington ComPost. On the other side, Newsmax is just amateurish. Same with WND.

Try Cybercast News Service. And of course, FR.

[Two Kids' Dad]

Next week I start two classes to learn how to build websites, so I may just become one of the innumerable new sources of information coming from a conservative perspective.

We’ll always be held to a higher standard than our liberal counterparts, but that’ll only serve as an additional impetus to get our facts straight and report the verifiable truth to any and all who’ll pay attention to it.

I’d encourage other FReepers to expand your bases of knowledge in all forms of communication so that we can be a stronger voice in the future.

[ForGod'sSake]

The overriding problem as I see it, and the author does take a swipe at it, has more to do with the mindset of libtards vs conservatives. Libtards are essentially spoiled brats that want to change the world to their liking, whereas conservatives generally are willing to take on the world as it comes. Conservatives therefore don't have the same drive to push their "agenda" on others. This of course leaves conservatives at a distinct disadvantage in any war of words. Conservatives want to go about their responsibility of providing for themselves and their families without incessant busybody libtards telling them how it should be done. Conservatives generally expect the same from others.

The Sean Hannitys of the world are not going to be taken seriously as journalists.

I'm not so sure the author has is right here; in fact his assertion may be counter productive. I'll submit that "news" from a conservative perspective is a bit prosaic and not something the average prole would get excited about reading or watching. In broadcast media FoxNews has done very well capturing conservatives who want to stay somewhat informed along with a few fence straddlers. Even so, 4 - 5 million viewers on a good night barely scratches the surface.

But conservatives who know how to report news, source information and present it in a timely fashion are already getting their chance, and will soon get it all the more so.

This may be where the rest of the story should go. I think people invariably would prefer to be entertained along with their ration of red meat. It's only been within the past year or so I have become a big fan of Glenn Beck. I would watch him if I was around the teevee and happened to think about him. Then I began to make mental notes to myself to try to watch. I now have an alarm set on my phone to alert me 15 minutes before he comes on so that if I'm not around a teevee, to find one since I don't have Tivo or a DVR - yet. It may come to that. Although I used to think he was a bit goofy, Glenn is as much an entertainer as he is a political commentator. He is just damn fun to watch!

So, the point(if there is one) is, it may serve even conservative pundits well to consider when the lights come on not so much as "it's news time", but "it's SHOWTIME"! Oddly enough I heard Glenn say as much on O'Reilly's show a few nights ago.