[gcruse]

Boom boom and bttt.

[Utah Girl]

Wow, great article. BTTT

[HP8753]

Liberal Talk Radio doesn't work because there are no PICTURES, Which are needed to create EMOTIONAL responses in the feeble minded supporters of Liberals.

[ffrancone]

Interesting article; but it misses the main reason conservatives dominate radio and the Internet. Both are highly competitive media. If you don't produce ratings (or hits), you are gone (in the case of radio) or you are a backwater (in the case of the Internet).

Consumers vote with their tuner or their mouse, instantly. They vote to listen to conservatives and to ignore liberals. The easier it is to vote, the better the conservatives do.

That's why the major media should be so scared. Fox News broke the monopoly of the left on televised news. Folks are voting with their remotes and, for the left, it ain't pretty.

It will be slower in TV than in radio or the Internet. The startup costs for a network are enormous compared to the cost of starting a blog or a new syndicated show. But the horse is out of the barn (even in TV) and it will never go back.

</strained metaphors> :)

[Jeff Chandler]

So true, so true.

[ffrancone]

"conservative monsters like FreeRepublic.Com"

"conservative monsters like FreeRepublic.Com"

"conservative monsters like FreeRepublic.Com"

"conservative monsters like FreeRepublic.Com"

There. I liked the way that looked so much that I thought I would repeat it a few times.

[Nick Danger]

We had been hearing noises like this for a long time, but the practical effects never seemed to materialize. No matter how many web sites or talk radio hosts there were, the liberal New York media still seemed to control the agenda.

That flipped some time in the last year or two, probably right around the time of The Great Chad Wars. The media was Hell-bent on electing Gore president, and I thought they were well on their way to doing it. All the horns were blowing the same notes; as soon as we count all the votes, Gore will win. It was the same kind of media mow-down of the truth that we've seen on so many issues. Usually it worked.

It didn't work that time, though. And it hasn't worked since. Remember the Time magazine cover with a picture of the White House and the word "Enron" plastered across the page? That whole "Let's get him with this" effort by the New York media fell flat on its face. So did the "Bush knew!" fiasco a few months later. And now Iraq.

This web site has documented the extraordinary lengths that most of the U.S. media have gone to in order to discredit Bush, to paint him as some kind of warmongering tool of the oil companies, and so on. Last week the New York Times had to fake their own poll results in order to keep up the facade. The public is just not buying their braying anymore.

The New York media is still a powerful force, but it no longer has the ability to deliver "the people" to the Democratic Party as needed to win the wars in Washington. People are on to that game, and they have sought out -- and found -- sufficient other news sources that they can no longer be fooled by spiking stories, fabricating polls, slanting the language... and all the other tricks the media have so successfully employed over the years to push this country leftward and to protect Democratic lawbreakers. Their successful defense of the scumbucket William Jefferson Clinton may be the high point of their influence. It has been going down since.

This election may be close. The next one won't be. The one after that... the Democrats will wonder what hit them. The media they choose to read will still be blowing their horn. But they'll be the only ones left reading it.

[Nick Danger]

There are no major leftist commentary sites to compete with conservative monsters like Freerepublic.com

Hey Jim, you've created a monster :)

[Zon]

The left will continue in its attempt to tear down the alternative media that the right has championed. If it can't control or compete, it wishes to destroy. But the tide has turned toward true democratization of the media.

Good article, save for one small error that makes a huge difference. What's accruing on the Internet is not "democratization". To those that look through the narrow scope of politics it appears that way. Especially since the left is the first to take a major hit. Step to the outside and look back in and the picture is that of free-market competition.

The general public isn't moved by politics of left and right nearly as much as they're moved by good and bad, right and wrong, justice and injustice, dishonesty and honesty. The general public on the Internet makes that increasingly more pronounced from one day to the next. The market for information responds to the demand.

The more fully integrated honesty the general public acquires about themselves and the world that touches them the more they scorn politics that suck objectivity out and insert irrationality in. Out with the lesser of evils. In with the better of two or three or five goods. The free-market competition of cyberspace rules with fully integrated honesty the final victor.

[Always Right]

Here's the answer: The left cannot survive criticism.

That's very true. If you ever tried to post at a wannabe site like DU they ban you in a New York minute. FR bans may ban disruptors, but not for posting real arguements but for posting disruptive usually anti-American opinion pieces from non-legit sources and never defending the crap they do post. FR overall has a base of posters who are based in reality with a sprinkling of nuts. Left-wing sites are completely overrun by the extreme wingnuts and only the most dillusional opinions stick around. They sit around and bitch about how the corporate-run newspapers like The New York Times is nothing but a mouth piece for, get this, the GOP.

[GOPJ]

bump for later...

[Bryan]

I am convinced that if it hadn't been for alternative media -- the Internet, talk radio, and the one that seem to be forgotten, direct mail -- we'd now be complaining about President Gore's lame and inadequate response to 9/11.

That election was sooooooooo close. If any one of a half-dozen things hadn't gone our way, we would have lost. The Freepers and the Dittoheads helped make a difference.

Thanks Jim.

The future looks bright. We've developed the professionals, the techniques and the audiences in alternative media, while the Left was clinging to the traditional media that served them so well for so long. It will be their undoing.

[fporretto]

Related to this, please see also:

The Verdict Of Reality

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com

[PGalt]

Bump.

[white trash redneck]

For all the talk about the success of conservative talk radio and blogs etc., I'd trade them in a heartbeat for conservative control of ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, etc.

[pollwatcher]

Liberal Dogma says that society creates it's own deviants. Of course, Rush and Drudge ARE White Males (the only ones credited with autonomy - eeeEVIL autonomy). But, indeed, these "deviants" would have NEVER gained prominence IF the Media Culture was itself more "democratic, representative, and inclusive."

[Ragtime Cowgirl]

Thank you for this post, and thank you, Ben Shapiro!

Related stories:
Reuters Shares Plunge.
'West Wing' Popularity is Slipping in the Polls.

[goldstategop]

Kudos to Ben Shapiro for that prominent mention of the mother of all bloggers' websites on the Internet, our one and only FREEREPUBLIC!!! Cheers! :-)

[Billthedrill]

At universities, professors and faculty are scared to death of the Internet, since it provides a challenge to their monopoly over student minds.

Oh, yes. The battle was long over by the time the left woke up to the fact that the stupid techies had done an end-run around their control of the print and broadcast media. Stories such as this are about two years late. But now the real battle begins on campus, and it's going to be bloody. The left declared victory in the Long March Through The Institutions about two decades ago at the university level, and is not going to give up their control without a fight. But I don't see them keeping the Internet off campus or succeeding in controlling access. The left invokes freedom and democracy constantly but when confronted with the real thing are incredibly threatened.

[koax]

sucha shame, the left got left out!

a month ago or so senator dasshole and nyt writer paul krugman bemoaned the left's inability to compete with talk radio and the internet.

they forgot to mention, of course, that the dems have controlled tv since its inception, all three and then four major networks, government financed npr and public television, hollywood, and most of the newspapers in the united states, not to mention the book publishing and distribution system, and the universities.