Posted on 11/14/2008 11:18:06 AM PST by Zakeet
This campaign season The Kansas City Star passed on a parcel of the nation's most eye-popping stories. Incredibly, at least five of those stories flared up in the Star's home state, Missouri. As the reader might guess, all five stories reflected unfavorably on Democratic candidates.
This is nothing new. What is new is that by censoring such stories the Star has continued to show its indifference to the majority of its potential customers even as it struggles to stay afloat. This kind of commercial death wish may be a first not just in the annals of journalism, but in the annals of American business.
Worse, the Star is hardly alone. A score or more mid-size, mid-American newspapers are doing much the same thing, many of them owned by the Star's publisher, McClatchy.
For the record, Kansas City serves as the de facto capital of an agri-business region with a center-right disposition. In 2008, an obvious off year for Republicans, 96 of the 100 counties closest to Kansas City gave the majority of their votes to McCain-Palin. This included the three most affluent counties in the immediate five-country metro.
Yet, the Star historically has created a product, both in its reporting and in its editorial, much better suited to the residents of say, Boston or Seattle, than of than of Kansas City.
In my role as the executive editor of the region's business magazine, I occasionally point out the Star's counterintuitive marketing strategy. The Star honchos have felt obliged to respond to my queries, always patronizingly. "Bias?" they respond. "What bias? We get criticism from both right and left."
Up until recently, very recently, the honchos would add that the Star was doing quite well, thank you, and didn't really need my advice. The following came from the then-publisher by way of email in November 2005.
Just so you know, our readership/audience has never been greater. . . . The combined reach of our Website and newspaper is at an all time high and growing nicely. I'm certainly open to your ideas on how to improve the newspaper. We're always open to new suggestions. Please send them in, if you care to share them.
I did not bother. The publisher was clearly not open to any suggestions that would disturb the status quo. He should have been. Since the time of that email, McClatchy has seen its share prices drop from the $50 to the $3 range.
A recent posting on bottomline.com sums up the Star's precarious state of affairs. "More cuts in Kansas City were announced today in the newsroom," writes an insider. "Most Star reporters have been carefully selecting what stories they cover for fear of irritating editors and being next on the list. Forget journalism, this is survival."
Analysts have given McClatchy more credit for cutting expenses than the Star's staff has. Still, as The Wall Street Journal reports, "Unless revenue begins to improve . . . it is unclear how much more the company can do."
Bears repeating: In the past three years, McClatchy has seen its share prices drop about 95 percent from the $50 to the $3 range.
Many more good examples of MSM bias/stupidity can be found in the original article here.
Our only local paper is a Gannett rag, which I promptly canceled the day after it endorsed Obomba.
I cancelled my local newspaper years ago due to left wing bias. These papers deserve to die. They hire left wing journalism students. I saw this even at the Wall Street Journal years ago where a WSJ employee was a flaming lib.
IdahoStatesman is owned by McClatchy. I’d like to see them go under too.
I found how the World had been misled by prostitute Writers,
to ascribe the greatest Exploits in War to Cowards,
the wisest Counsel to Fools,
Sincerity to Flatterers,
Roman Virtue to Betrayers of their Country,
Piety to Atheists,
Chastity to Sodomites,
Truth to Informers.
Jonathan Swift (III:8;5)
That is just a crying shame:)
good for you.
I still buy the leftangelestimes duing football season and when i am going to the movies. The good news it doesn’t drive me crazy aymore because i never look at the front page or editoral page.
The KC Star was always a rag. Harry S. Truman had no use for them either.
Newspaper bailout coming?
You Betchya! The Democrats are not about to lose their propganda machine.
No doubt there's some bailout money earmarked for the "free" press...mayhap it will someday be free and we'll finally get what we're paying for.
It would be interesting to know the specific facts of those stories.
I received a phone call from our liberal rag The Seattle Times. The woman on the phone said “We noticed that you’re not receiving the Times. We want to sign you up for home delivery” ... “We noticed??????”
Being lady like I did not tell her where she could put the subscription ... I did tell her that the paper was really good for wrapping the salmon I caught .....
I used to get calls like that, and my response was to say I was already getting the home delivery, and I was simply delighted with the paper. They stopped calling.
The Tennessean has resorted to giving the paper away to boost its number of “readers”. The first time they called ad offered, I took it. But I rapidly realized that I never read it and the papers were just another thing to take to the dump so I canceled. Before I got on the Do Not Call list, they would call every couple of months trying to give their trash away.
These papers deserve to die.
For the good of the environment printing presses need to be banned. /sarcasm
Since these pinherads want to print lies and Marxist propaganda, let’s feed their stories back to them. Paper printing kills trees, destroyes forests, uses gas to transport all that stuff, not to mention the inks are a poison. So, since the printed press says all that, let’s ban the printed press. Everything must be electronic from now on.
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