I'm a huge fan of newspapers, and really want the newspaper industry to survive. However, it's extremely difficult to feel bad for the industry when you read something like this:*
Former U. S. Sen. Rick Santorum is collecting $1,750 a shot for the columns that appear every other week in the Inquirer, according to documents filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. The checks are sent to a post office box in Great Falls, Va.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, which is published in the overwhelmingly Democratic city of Philadelphia (the city that quite literally voted Santorum out of office), is paying lunatic fringe conservative has-been Rick Santorum $1,750 per column**...and the paper now is shocked to find itself facing bankruptcy.
I'm not saying that there is a one-to-one correlation - that is, I'm not saying that the paper is bankrupt because of this one column contract. But I am guessing that kind of absurd spending decision is emblematic of other absurd spending decisions.
I've always believed it has been a bad business decision for papers representing overwhelmingly Democratic towns to nonetheless disproportionately stack their editorial pages with conservatives. It's not that I think there shouldn't be any conservative voices on the page, I just think there shouldn't only or mostly be conservative voices. Doing that in overwhelmingly Democratic towns seems to me to be about the easiest way for a newspaper to repel readers.
In that light, I've always wondered why the Inquirer devoted any newsprint to Santorum. I mean, only a few years ago, there was literally a poll of the entire city called a Senate election, and in that poll, Philadelphia made overwhelmingly clear it hates Rick Santorum. And yet, now it comes out that the city's paper is not only spending newsprint on him, but $1,750 per column...that's just a mind-bogglingly bad decision both in terms of repelling readers and in terms of wasting money. It's as if the Inquirer's desire is to lose readership and burn cash.
* By the way, I'm guessing a lot of hardworking Philadelphia Inquirer journalists feel the same disgust - if not more - about Santorum's wingnut welfare as anyone else.
** As a comparison, I don't make $1,750 in two months worth of columns - and that's total (ie. at the end of two months, for all the columns I write and that are published in more than 50 publications, my total paycheck is less than $1,750). Now, fine, I'm not a former fringe conservative U.S. Senator living off of wingnut welfare. But still, $1,750 per column is absolutely silly. That's money that could be going into local reporting. |
