The liberal conspiracy theorists that fear the Koch Brothers as much as they fear “right-wing terrorists” are certainly going to have a field day if the Kochs actually succeed.
You have to be a real Liberal DoucheCrat to fear the Koch’s....they support Illegal Alien Amnesty, Homosexual rights, Globalism, and other leftist ideas.
All Koch is...is “Soros” in German. Not much difference between them
Koch will make it profitable and put another newspapers out of business. Wish they would give the sagging TNYT an offer they can't refuse.
The Koch brothers have the right idea.
This country will continue to drift left as long as the left controls the media. That is because a majority of people who decide close elections still get their “news” from the MSM. Another reason is that the leaders of the opposition party, that is, the GOP, fear the media much more than they do the conservative grass roots.
Talk radio and the internet are good for side, but it accomplishes little more than preaching to the choir.
Only when the current media stranglehold is broken will we have a chance to veer back toward our founding Constitutional principles.
What are the odds of this happening and when will it happen? :) My local paper is the Orlando Slantinel and I would LOVE for it to be taken over by an entity that actually appreciates truth.
The Koch brothers could lead a media renaissance. People are starving for good, unbiased reporting. I recall learning in one of my early ‘60’s classes that a journalist must present both sides in a fair and non-judgmental way. The journalist was supposed to report the facts without editorializing or inflammatory wording. This was in the days of Edward R. Murrow. None of the mainstream journalists then came to the profession from college, but found their way to it from real life. Their writing was clear and seemed fair and balanced. The Koch brothers would have a difficult time finding such reporters today and they’d have to fire everybody who came to the profession through the swamp of the education system.
My own personal tin foil hat theory..they are fueling these rumors to encourage liberal billionaires, like Burkle, Broad, to jump in and toss billions down the crapper..
If the Koch’s want to buy the Hartford Courant (a.k.a. The Hardly Current) just make sure they don’t pay more than the $.75 newsstand price. At that its overpriced.
The Kochs are going to have to create their own journalism school, just so they can have competent staff. Currently journalism schools only crank out incompetent leftists.
The Koch school should offer the equivalent of three degrees. The “Bachelors” should be for objective reporters. The “Masters” should be for opinion writers, reviewers and junior editors. And the “PhD” should be for editors and the newspaper publisher.
It’s sad how these old billionaires from the last century waste hundreds of billions on dying print media that have only one way to go: total annihilation.
Newspapers in particular used to be profitable only because they existed in an environment in which they had a total monopoly in their local market for advertising due to inordinate costs of setting up a printing plant and delivery routes, along with no effective alternative media. With such a monopoly, there was no were else for most advertisers to go and the newspapers could pretty much charge however much they wanted to. News was just the hook to get subscribers to PAY for privilege of having the advertisements delivered to their doorstep.
Of course, that’s all gone now with the advent of the Internet, which destroyed the local monopolies for advertising, as well as providing massive benefits when compared to print advertising.
Our local rag, which used to be a vibrant propaganda platform for the local owners (and which has now been swallowed up by one of the giant conglomerates) is on the verge of becoming nothing more than a delivery vehicle for the weekly advertising inserts.
Discounting legals and obits, there’s now less than two pages of classifieds, and a quarter of that is the Service Directory. I counted a single large display ad in the rest of the paper, along with three tiny ones. That was it for advertising. There was ONE locally-written news article and ONE locally-written sports article, and the rest were wire service articles or articles replicated from nearby “sister” papers. That was it for “local” news.
In other words, our local paper is near-moribund. Additionally, since being taken over, the daily editorials have become so stupidly, insanely and ridiculously liberal, it looks like Obama himself (or at least one of his less-educated flunkies) wrote them.
We and the Koch’s would be so much better off if they were to use their money to buy a marginal satellite channel and convert it to true hard-hitting, yellow journalism and conservative-oriented news and entertainment.
Such a channel would start by hiring James O’Keefe, and put him in charge of training another 100 of himself and send them out on the streets with hidden cams and disguises. I’d have a conservative Candid Camera Show. A program called “Liberals Say the Darnedest Things” and a Conservative Saturday Night Live, this latter disproving the lie that conservatives don’t have senses of humor. I’d do a show geared towards nothing but outrageous youtube videos, including some of the Hitler ones. In fact, I’d have a weekly segment called, “What Would Hitler Say?”. I’d have numerous other shows that fed off of various activities on the Internet. A “Facebook Show”. A “Twitter Show”. I’d have a “Crackpot Show”, with fools like Kevmo debating ecat. A “Conspiracy Theory” show. An “Urban Legend Show”. A “Worst Internet Dates Show”. A show about common Internet frauds and how to avoid them. And my personal favorite, “The Freeper Show”. Oh and for “balance”, “The Democratic Underground Show”. Quite frankly, the possibilities for this kind of entertainment are virtually unlimited.
While these might seem redundant with the Internet itself, they would represent a slick, packaged version of the most outrageous stuff with a bit of background research and commentary, and this would all work because people are tired when they come home from work, lazy, and really just want to be passively entertained without having to work at it. You know, plop down on the couch in front of the tube, kickback with a beer, click on the “Outrageous Channel”, and absorb the chaos.