Update: our research did NOT show what I thought-—a sudden lurch during or after JFK. Rather, it showed a very steady but consistent move further left by ALL major papers every year. The implications are that you cannot tie this leftward lurch to a specific event, but rather to larger forces that are more difficult to quantify. It is across the board-—At. Constitution, Cleveland Plain Dealer, NYTimes, WaPo, and LA Times moved at about the same rate.
Very interesting.
Perhaps the shift leftward is a result of the collectivists purposely going into journalism to co-opt the trade.
That Luce was not well thought of amongst the “elite” media is quite evident in some of the biographies that I’ve read. The pejorative term they used (and still do) is LucePress.
Wonder if the growing access to college and j-schools played a part. As those who spent time at college instead of working their way up the foodchain at a paper began to assume editorial control it could work to explain it. But as you said that still leaves a lot of factors that are hard to quantify.