Good stuff as usual cIc. I’ve never been able to find a plausible explanation to the question of what happened to the “conservative” media; fishwraps in particular. Did “yellow” journalism make a contribution in some way? Did the mix of (professed)readership/advertisers play a part? Since ads pay the bills, what are the odds of collusion between fishy fishwraps and major advertisers? Was “conservative” media too straight laced to play the sensationalism game? The answers are out there....somewhere.
You know my position; journalism inherently sells bad news. Bad news naturally casts doubt on how well society works. Cast doubt on how society works, and the implication is always that government should fix it.That is bad enough, but the wire services put pressure on all newspapers to conform. So any paper that goes against the flow is disadvantaged - and falls into line eventually. The problem fundamentally is that journalism is superficial (deadlines guarantee that), and so conservatism cannot get a fair shake in journalism. Rush Limbaugh et. al. are frankly conservative, and they are the closest thing we get to “conservative journalism.” But they are open about being conservative, and that leads to their being marginalized by sophists who claim to be objective.