Hoystory

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.