- Been thinking about this one most of the day, Billy, and I must say,I can’t say I disagree with any of it. The Dinosaur media is sinking because of one major factor: Their bias. McClatchy is just one more in a series of such. Trust me, I won’t mourn at all. By the way, it looks like the rats are jumping from other ships, too.
- And while I have you, Billy, I’m reminded of all the twisted types on the street corners saying the world is going to end, repent, etc. I’ve come to understand that this twisted ‘environmentalism’ is just one more religion, with it’s meaning and thereby it’s conclusions twisted by twisted minds.
- Wind Turbines, suppsoedly kill birds and bats. You know, it’s almost like they don’t want us using energy at all. Doesn’t it make anyone wonder why?
- Speaking of which, Hey, Nancy… You’re currently enjoying a 14% approval rating. Are you sure calling the vast majority of the American voters, even including 70% of members of your own party, who want us to be drilling NOW, idiots, is really the way you want to go?
- How the hell did THIS happen? I wuld think data security at the Space station would need to be tighter than this. Apparently some IT heads need to roll here. Sheesh.
- Apparently, America isn’t alone, in calling Ahmadinejad ‘major threat’… Imams in his own country are now doing so.
- I said I doubt it’ll change minds, that speech of Hillary Clinton’s last night? Looks like I called it.
Outside the DNC…. well, Boortz looks out his Hotel window and says:
The demonstrators … OMG! You wouldn’t let these dirty, bedraggled bums take your daughter out for lunch, but we’re supposed to listen to their grand ideas on governance?
- McCain, meanwhile is planning a huge, three state rollout for his VP choice… which increasingly is looking like it’ll be Kay Bailey Hutchinson. Seems a reasonable choice, and one sure to look in a number of Clinton supporters.
- Another less than savory link from Obama to a radical Islamist. Jonah speaks to the idea that the left simply doesn’t understand why this stuff is problematic for Obama, and the Chicago Boyz take it from there.
As I have noted before, the real troubling aspect of the Obama-Ayers relationship is that Obama comes from a political subculture in which Ayers is an accepted and unremarkable individual. Looking at Ayers, one is forced to ask exactly what kind of leftist extremism would be considered unacceptable by Obama and his cohorts.
Exactly so. I have to wonder for example, if Ayers had blown up, say IRS offices, instead of the Penetgon, would the Democrats be quite so accepting of Obama’s relationship with him? Would that threshold be crossed? I have to tell you… If such a threshold exists, there is no evidence of it. But… good lord… don’t question their patriotism.
- While I agree that John McCain shouldn’t be pulling a John Kerry, by changing his middle name to ‘served in Vietnam’, (I’ve said so in these spaces several times in the past two years) I wonder a bit at the over-sensitivity displayed by some o the left about this issue… particularly those who didn’t seem to think it was a problem back in ’04. Can it be that they understand that McCain’s refferences to his service are more convincing to the American people than Kerry’s were? And perhaps that difference in perception is affected by the ideas n the story above?
- I started working at this office I’m at a few months ago. I noticed what was obviously a new Hyudai that was a regular in the parking lot, here. I’ve never been much on Oriental cars, but I had to admit this one looked pretty good. Paint was all right, styling cues were all there… just seemed a nice car to drive. In the time since then, I’ve begun to notice increasing numbers of dents, scratches a broken tail light lens, and just plain abuse on this poor thing. In only a few short months, it looks like hell. It’s sad to see, really.It’s at that point I started looking around at other, similarly priced cars. They too, to a larger degree than their more expensive counterparts, regardless of their country of origin, are not well-maintained, and look like they’ve been through a life of abuse. Now, in fairness, it must be said that Hyundai, initially had quality control issues that would have crippled most car companies. Issues, as I gather it, they’ve solved for the most part; their product today is quite respectable. But, as if to prove build quality is not the point here, I don’t tend to see that among larger American cars, with larger price tags, and about whom there’ve been quality complaints for decades. American cars, Oriental cars, or German, Swedish, or whatever. It’s not the upper levels, or even the medium levels. Just the lower priced ones.I wonder a bit at what that tells us about the Human condition… things that cost us less dearly, we’re more likely to take for granted and treat it like it was a pile of crap, even though it’s really not.I wonder what lessons that holds for this election. Obama, for example, and his approach to Democrat voters, particularly Hillary Clinton supporters. Those voters he gets form the Clinton camp, he’s going to get fairly cheaply. Low cost. Similarly, John McCain, whose conservative bone fides are at least questionable, will get a whole pile of true conservative voters who, he figures will see him as the better alternative to Obama… or Clinton… and that’s certainly a fair assumption; he is a better choice.Yet, cars have a tendency to break down… even the well made ones, after a certain level of abuse, and they become less reliable. Similarly, voters have a tendency to rebel, their loyalty and dependability breaks down. One wonders if Obama and McCain are both wise enough to avoid that threshold? There’s some evdience that Obama has already gone over that line, and to a lesser degree, so has McCain.
Tags: Ayers, Billy, Boortz, Chicago, Clinton, clinton supporters, DNC, environmentalism, Hillary Clinton, Hutchinson, John Kerry, John McCain, Jonah, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, mcclatchy, Nightly Ramble, Radical Islam, using energy, wind turbines
August 28th, 2008 at 8:28
“The Dinosaur media is sinking because of one major factor: Their bias.”
The media is sinking, and the media is biased, but the media isn’t sinking because of bias. The media is sinking because the Internet exists and has transformed the economics of information dissemination.
If the “bias” argument were true, newspapers would have fewer readers than ever. They don’t. In fact, they have far more readers than ever. But the reading is taking place on their websites, where nobody has figured out how to command the sort of advertising dollars that were commanded when the same work happened to appear in print.
This is all very simple. I don’t know why it trips up so many people. Look, I’d love to enjoy newspapers’ struggles as much as the next bias-hater, and rejoice about “just desserts,” but it’s just not the reality of the situation.
August 28th, 2008 at 16:12
Actually, no, that’s not totally true either, LT.
Witness for example the paid-for pages that the NY Times tried to psuh for a while. That fell on it’s butt, too.
And a comparison to Talkradio seems a point as well. Left wing bias doesn’t sell there, either.
The content, not the medium, is the real issue.
August 29th, 2008 at 10:10
I’m not sure why you say “that’s not totally true,” when it’s easy to demonstrate that newspapers’ websites pull in far more reader traffic than their print products ever did.
Also, I’m not sure how TimesSelect serves as any counterexample. In fact, it meshes precisely with what I wrote: that “the Internet … has transformed the economics of information dissemination.”
Look, I too would enjoy BELIEVING that the press is simply getting its just desserts after all the leftist bias. That would feel good. But it’s just not borne out by the reality on the ground. The work of the New York Times draws MILLIONS of readers to its website every day. It’s the print part that’s struggling — because of that same Internet — and web advertising still hasn’t caught up enough to make up the difference.
And on the flip side, conservative papers such as the Washington Times, Detroit News and Chicago Tribune have print products that are struggling just as much as anybody else. Subscribers are abandoning those print editions too, in favor of reading online.
It has nothing to do with ideology or bias, and doesn’t even have anything to do with readership numbers. The media problem right now really is about MEDIA — about the print form versus the digital one, and the associated advertising models for each.
August 29th, 2008 at 17:14
Again, that’s true. But even those websites are not pulling what websites with a without the leftist bias are pulling. I more than grant the medium is part of the problem, but that can be overcome with CONTENT, you see.
I’m going to suggest to you that the reason the web took off the way it did was that the content isn’t found elsewhere.
August 31st, 2008 at 18:56
I’m going to suggest to you that the reason the web took off the way it did was that the content isn’t found elsewhere.
That’s all fine and well. But my argument isn’t about that. My argument is merely about your contention that “(t)he Dinosaur media is sinking because of one major factor: Their bias.”
Implicit in that is the notion that newspapers are losing readers. They’re not. Their readers are merely online now, where advertising is not nearly as lucrative as it is in print.
Newspapers’ print editions are losing subscribers, and thus advertising dollars, not because of bias. They’re losing subscribers because those subscribers — and many other people, on top of it — now read the work online. This phenomenon would be taking place even if every single newspaper read like the Rush Limbaugh newsletter.
It’s not clear how “content” would change anything. None but a few very, very high-volume content providers, of whatever ideological stripe, are making money online. It really IS about the medium: Even the most heavily trafficked conservative sites — a Free Republic, for example — do not take in the sort of cash that could support a small functioning newsroom, let alone the sort of heavily staffed, extensively resourced operation needed to cover the news in a typical U.S. city.
So I’m not sure what you’re proposing, exactly, when you contend that this problem could be “overcome with content.” Making news content more balanced — more conservative — is going to make newspapers more profitable online, how?
The bottom line: bias is not the reason for the media’s troubles. It was interesting speculation, I suppose, but it’s simply not true.
August 31st, 2008 at 22:29
@LT –
But they are. The number of readers, particularly LOCAL readers for local papers, isn’t nearly as high as it once was when the paper was a… well, a paper. And again that comes down to a credibility issue… one that’s only partially wiped out by the higher number of exposures due to out of towners reading what’s offered.
It comes down to a credibility issue.