Media failures
Instapundit Glenn Reynolds noted yesterday that Colorado Democrat Sen. Ken Salazar had done what he characterized as the "world's quietest Sister Souljah moment," when he denounced the MoveOn.org "General Betray Us" ad to the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, circulation 30,000.
This prompted a missive from Gary Harmon of the Daily Sentinel:
Prof. Reynolds: Here I sit, damned with faint praise re Salazar’s Sis Souljah? Did you have to mention the size of the readership? Now I feel like the freshman on the first day in the locker room with the seniors. Again.
Actually, we won’t apologize for the size of our readership. It’s actually growing and not many can say that in this business. What is interesting is that the comments were made in a phone conference involving almost all Colorado media, including the big dailies and AP.
That it made it to our paper might explain why we’re growing and, well, they’re not. [emphasis added]
This says something about the cluelessness of too much of the media. Maybe they thought the MoveOn ad wasn't a big deal. It probably wasn't a topic of discussion around the newsroom watercooler, so it must not be anywhere else.
Only it was a big deal in at least two places: the blogosphere and talk radio. This goes back to the problem most mainstream media outlets have as they have tried to diversify their newsroom only by looking skin deep. Do you think that if the Rocky Mountain News or Denver Post had an editor or reporter on their political desk who read Instapundit, Powerline or Captain's Quarters regularly; or listened to Hugh Hewitt, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Dennis Prager or Laura Ingraham that day, that they'd find some way -- even if it was only in some political roundup story -- of getting Salazar's denunciation of MoveOn in the paper.
Why should people come to newspapers for information, when they don't contain information they want or need?
Wound. Self-inflicted.
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did the UT cover it? Doubt it, but would like to be proven wrong. My memory and UT search jibe that they didn't....
It is well past time that the newsrooms are prosecuted under Title IX fro "lack of diversity". If I were the AG that is exactly what I would do. I would require all hiring to be drawn form a the populations such that over time the newsrooms would approximate the voting patterns of the USA or a the least the district tin the last elections.
I would do this for every area that is serviced by a single newspaper at first since those are th most egregious s examples of lack of diversity.
I'm 50, and was an addictive newspaper reader. On Sundays there was no greater joy then getting every paper. I used to love when I was driving around the country to get papers that I only read of. I still like getting the small papers with the cattle news, and kids, and stuff.
Now I hardly buy a paper at all. There is a convenience store with tables, and sometimes I get a coffee and a paper, and sit and read. The only people buying papers are my age, and older. I can not blame the kids for not buying papers that read just like how their years of schooling by mentally low rent liberal harridans sound like. No wonder they are repelled.
Anyways, the Internet, YouTube is only getting better.
Does anybody remember the BIG story in the Washington Post the week of Sept. 11, 2001?
It was that then Attorney General John Ashcroft held Bible study sessions with like-minded members of the Justice Department prior to the work day. The WaPo flipped.
The idea that the Attorney General of the US could actually be a practicing Christian needed to be investigated and the WaPo was the paper to do it.
Of course the events of Sept 11 ended the "investigation". Do you suppose the Washington Post or the New York Times has even one practicing Christian on their staffs besides, perhaps, the Religion Editor?
Anyone think that the big MSM organs would squander valuable funds paying a Religion Editor? Those funds could support article after article extolling the ACLU's spirited efforts to purge public life of evidence of Christianity. And the Political Editor assures that suitable (positive and frequent) reporting is carried on CAIR's efforts to plant 'culturally appropriate' footbaths where once stood the Ten Commandments.
And Mather, don't forget that on the morning of 9/11 the NY Times had an article by some Johnson guy who wrote that terrorism isn't a threat anymore. Of course, to this day I see him on TV and in the MSM cited as a "terrorism expert."
Enough with the 30,000 already! Can't that mean a small paper influentiual beyond its circulation numbers? I mean, would Sally Field like it if you published her IQ? And hey, we make it on more than good looks.
In fairness to the RMN and others, it isn't as if Ken Salazar is a household name, even in Colorado. To the extent he is known at all, most people think of him as a slightly more scenic version of Phil Gramm. Beyond Colorado, forget it. I live way out-of-state and nobody I know has even heard of Salazar. So wasting space on what some nobody thinks of an ad in a paper in New York is a justifiable exercise of editorial judgment, at least to me.