| As local newspapers collapse all over the country, political operatives are going to have to rethink how to run races. I actually think this could be good for progressives, though that's only a tentative thesis.
One thing you learn pretty quickly in participating in local political races it that newspapers often operate effectively as interest groups, with the owner of the paper injecting his political agenda into the coverage to privilege certain types of candidates. The most obvious example this cycle is Darcy Burner, who faced a crushing political hit job from the Seattle Times after costing its publisher tens of millions of dollars. But that's just the political hit job that was actualized; for every Darcy, there are twenty candidates and officials who shy away from progressive positions for fear of annoying their local political reporter. I've talked to many Congressional candidates who support unpopular policies like free trade, the bailout, or keeping troops in Iraq because they are afraid of their local paper and its associated elite groups, like the local chamber of commerce.
These media outlets are often just part of the conservative good ole boys network, and yet, that newspapers and more broadly the media is owned by very wealthy people seems to be overlooked as a possible motivator of bad coverage. It's not like it isn't understood - Citizen Kane and The Insider are both cultural examples of how the public understands that power corrupts our media. It's more that it isn't even considered in discussing the future of media. Take this column from journalist James Suroweicki at the New Yorker, who writes.
For a while now, readers have had the best of both worlds: all the benefits of the old, high-profit regime-intensive reporting, experienced editors, and so on-and the low costs of the new one. But that situation can't last. Soon enough, we're going to start getting what we pay for, and we may find out just how little that is.
Matt Yglesias points out the problem with this line of analysis, noting that "the problem newspapers are having with online isn't that the readers won't pay, it's that the advertisers won't pay." Media outlets are like any other institutions - they are responsive to their stakeholders. And with modern American media, you are the product, and you are sold to advertisers. Just watch the advertisements on Meet the Press; it's literally all huge corporations with government contracts. Is this connected to the lack of skepticism around the national security state on that show? I don't know, but the possibility has to be considered. It's certainly clear that auto dealers get incredibly angry at liberal comments on talk radio, and pull their advertising if they hear it. This has a strong effect on content.
At any rate, once you pull the advertising dollars away from traditional media, you pull these institutionally conservative stakeholders away from the table, and remove conservative lines of propagandizing to the public. I mean, if the Seattle Times didn't exist, Darcy Burner would have won in WA-08. So broadly, I don't know if newspapers cause more harm than they prevent, whether an awful media is better than no media. But it is definitely worth considering, even if you like your New York Times every Sunday. |
