Here you and I greatly differ. My view is that commercially successful journalism has its own perspective--if you will, its own culture--just like every other profession. The culture of journalism is transmitted by such aphorisms (I really should look up the word to be sure it literally means "pithy dictums") as,
"If it bleeds, it leads."
"There's nothing more worthless than yesterday's newspaper."
No News is good news (because good news "isn't news")
I am saying that a certain perspective is ingrained in journalism, the neglect of which will cause your journalistic enterprise to fail to entertain--and, having failed to entertain, will fail to sustain itself as a business. And that is an--I believe the--explanation for the utter nonexistence of conservative journalism.
Conservative journalism cannot succeed economically; it cannot attract enough audience. In fact, if you are conservative you will not believe that whatever happened yesterday must perforce be as significant as what happened ten years ago. But if you write about what happened ten years ago it is not journalism but a nonfiction book. A book which, not having a trivially short deadline, will almost inevitably be far less superficial in its treatment of the subject than were even the best of contemporaneous journalistic accounts of the event.
[shrugs] We differ, but -- in cases like this -- diversity doesn't hurt.
Actually, we agree on some points even with our differences. The notion that journalism has its own perspective is certainly true, but incomplete. Journalism has dozens of perspectives. The culture of journalism -- even if we limit the discussion to US journalism -- is incredibly wide. It's not a monolithic culture at all. That's why college kids who think that "yellow" journalism is _representative_ of journalism overall are so goofy. (And that's why teachers who pick and choose examples from very visible manifestations of one particular type of journalism and pass those examples off as representative of journalism _overall_ are misleading students -- but, to be fair, any student who doesn't recognize that many academics have a cultural/political bias is going to have trouble sooner or later anyway.)
The *best* discussion of modern media and bias -- both cultural and the inherent-in-the-medium type of bias -- is found in a great book written by a former advertising wizard who dropped out of the Establishment. It's called, "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television," by Jerry Mander.
It's great stuff, as detailed as can be, and about as inclusive as can be. (It's written specifically about TV, but the principles he discusses are applicable to any medium.)
If you haven't yet read the book, I really envy you -- I still remember how wonderful it was to get into it and just kick back. It's thick, but really fun to read. Mark W.
How true this is and how right you are. I worked in a television newsroom for a number of years and I saw this kind of thinking firsthand. In fact, our station once paid big bucks for their consultants to conduct a thorough study of what viewers want to see in newscasts. The number one item was "more positive news". "Stories about issues of faith" was in the top ten.
The station management totally ignored their own pricey survey. The news director did make a half-hearted attempt at starting a weekly segment dedicated to "hometown heroes" but it was corny and canned. He was forced to give attention to one of the primary anchors when she asked and later had to demand to be able do a worthwhile segment about issues of faith and hope in our community. She was relentless in her pursuit of the "good and hopeful news" and personally interviewed Mother Teresa. Her weekly specials became the most popular and talked about reports by viewers statewide.
Even with the knowledge of what viewers want to know about, the news department continued to follow the "if it bleeds it leads" philosophy and "what can we scare people with today" investigations.