Monday, October 30, 2006
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The MSM Bleeding Out, With The Lost Angeles Times Leading The Way
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Posted by:
Hugh Hewitt at
4:53 PM
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From the new circulation figures for the six months ending 9/30:
The Los Angeles Times reported that daily circulation fell 8% to 775,766. Sunday dropped 6% to 1,172,005.
The San Francisco Chronicle was down. Daily dropped 5.3% to 373,805 and Sunday fell 7.3% to 432,957.
The New York Times lost 3.5% daily to 1,086,798 and 3.5% on Sunday to 1,623,697. Its sister publication, The Boston Globe, reported decreases in daily circulation, down 6.7% to 386,415 and Sunday, down 9.9% to 587,292.
The Washington Post lost daily circulation, which was down 3.3% to 656,297 while Sunday declined 3.6% to 930,619.
Circulation losses at The Wall Street Journal were average, with daily down 1.9% to 2,043,235. The paper's Weekend Edition, however, saw its circulation fall 6.7% to 1,945,830.
Daily circulation at USA Today slipped 1.3% to 2,269,509.
The Chicago Tribune showed slight declines. Daily dropped 1.7% to 576,132 and Sunday decreased 1.3% to 937,907.
Losses at the Miami Herald were steep. Daily circulation fell 8.8% to 265,583 and Sunday fell 9.1% to 361,846.
While daily circulation stabilized compared to past reporting periods at The Sun in Baltimore, down 4.4% to 236,172, Sunday took a massive hit. Circulation on that day dropped 9% to 380,701.
The Hartford (Conn.) Courant’s daily circ was down 3.9% to 179,066 while Sunday dropped slightly, 1.5% to 264,539.
At The Philadelphia Inquirer, daily fell 7.5% to 330,622 while Sunday declined 4.5% to 682,214. Daily circulation at its sister pub, The Philadelphia Daily News, dropped 7% to 112,540.
The Star Tribune in Minneapolis reported declines. Daily was down 4.1% to 358,887 while Sunday dropped 6.3% to 596,333.
At the Orlando Sentinel, daily circulation decreased 2.5% to 214,283. Sunday fell 4.2% to 317,226.
Daily circulation at The Arizona Republic declined 2.5% to 397,294 and 2.6% on Sunday to 503,943.
The Plain Dealer in Cleveland showed daily circulation almost flat -- a small victory -- with a decline of 0.6% to 336,939. Sunday was down 2.3% to 446,487.
Nothing wrong there at all, is there? Great product by unbiased reporters enjoying the trust and confidence of the public, right?
For an insight into the collapse of old media, listen to my interview with Mark Halperin, ABC News' political director, on today's program.
You know, what these papers need are more agenda journalists and more lefty columnists.
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The elite journalism schools are dominated by white females with a feminist (anti-male, anti-child, anti-American and CERTAINLY anti-republican) agenda, so we shouldn't be surprised that the MSM is such a repository of DNC (and Al-Qaeda) talking-points. Anyway, they're a joke - but a joke that is FINALLY going stale.
Now we need to target feminist studies departments.
BTW, no wonder the lovers of the MSM also love illegal immigration and human cloning: it allows them to replenish their numbers (so they think). |
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You're right and I'll another two things that doom them; they are aborting their future voters before they are even born and they aren't having enough babies to replace themselves. |
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Liberals will soon be a thing of the past. The liberal population is made up of aging hippies, naive college students, welfare recipients and sexual deviants.
- The hippies will all die soon
- The students eventually gain wisdom and life experience
- Welfare recipients won’t leave the couch and "Judge Judy" to vote
- The deviants are too small in number to matter.
It will be so nice when the liberal candidate will have as much clout as the Green Party, Socialist Party and the Nazi candidate.
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Snap dink writes:
....for example, instead of quoting Bush's slander that Democrats are "the party of cut and run," the MSM should report that Democrats are in fact proposing actual plans for Iraq (redeployment, partition)..."
Hmmm- "redeployment and partition" vs. cut and run. How again is this slander?
A rose is a rose is a rose, dude. Or more to the point- you can put as much lipstick on it as you want, that's still a pig. |
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Great product by unbiased reporters enjoying the trust and confidence of the public, right?
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Well, while I've been here about this blog for other reasons, maybe I'll stay a while. At least Hugh is accepting comments, even if he doesn't appear to read them. :-)
Why is the statement above bad journalism?
Because it is too close to an opinion masquerading as a fact (even moreso, when you consider the context of what the rest of HH biased assessment of the MSM today).
With some luck, sooner or later the public is going to get tired of this *political* assault on the media. Having started to politicize the judiciary, which such detrimental flair, the GOP machine turns to the media, the last check on unfettered political say-so.
The whole "bias of the media" charge might not appear so hollow if the Right had put together its own unbiased set of media outlets. Instead, they have FOX, which is just hopeless, sometimes.
Bill O'Reilly is so swept up in his own ideology (if we can dignify it that way) that he end up being the guy that most soldiers in Iraq label as having no clue about what facts on the ground really add up to.
You know, what these papers need are more agenda journalists and more lefty columnists.
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I'm not sure if this came from HH or from Halperin, but is arguably dead wrong.
How can more 'freak show' be good? If admitted sensationalists like Ann Coulter are the way the pendulum is desired to swing, then truly the American model is the light of the World ... gulp. |
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Point 2 first You are so right in your assertion that the white liberals are disappearing and you NAILED the reasons. Somewhere here on the internet, I read that just based on the demographics of birth rate that in 2050, if I remember right, that even in Kalifornia the conservatives will be equal to the liberals. Liberals are having children at the rate of 1.83 per couple and the conservatives are having 2.47 per couple. The liberals also abort 2 babies for every 1 that the "conservatives" abort. Since kids usually grow up to follow the political leanings of their parents, the liberals are 18 years down the road losing 2 voters for every 1 the "conservatives" lose.
Point 1 now I think that the liberal homosexual crowd are too busy doing their thing with as many partners as possible, to have any time for such a mundane thing as read a newspaper. The remaining people of SF who are not homosexual are SO disgusted with the open perversion that they are leaving SF and therefore no longer buy the SF Chronicle. I used to live in Kalifornia and 40 years ago as a college student, I already knew that the SFC was a liberal rag paper. There may be another influence at work there as well. Maybe a lot of the homosexuals and even some normal people are part of the Green Party and therefore are doing their part to preserve the environment by using the internet to get their news instead of using paper. One other thought is that no one who's still in SF cares about the news at all. |
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1. What about the decline of leftwing SF Chronicle in leftwing San Francisco? Hard to blame that on anti-liberal revulsion (as another student mentioned above). Discuss.
2. The racial/ethnic angle has been ignored. White liberals, the natural readership of the MSM newspapers, are declining in numbers (via feminism, abortion, contraception, career-worship/infertility, and going gay). Most functioning liberals in this country are spanish-speaking or Black, and these groups have their own newspapers and other outlets. Can this be part of the explanation? |
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Has this biased liberal slanted media existed for more than just the last six months? Has it been around as long as the internet? Are you then really going to argue that it is the main cause of this recent drastic decline in circulation?
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Look - you can dismiss the reality of these numbers but the simple fact is that the LA Times and some of the other papers mentioned are losing subscribers far faster than the average. I again ask if you read the article - or just decided to jump to the comments to argue against others. If the LA Times was sinking in the 2-3 percent range (as most others) then you would have a point about the problems with newspapers in general. But they are bleeding.
I live in the Southern California area (as does Hugh) and am well aware of the Times and their problems. You ask about the internet's duration, but keep in mind that around here the Times sets new lows continually in their coverage of the war, and/or Arnold (all relatively recent news figures of a couple years). Every person has their individual tipping point when they get sick of giving money to an organization that is blatantly leftist.
The problems with USA Today, the Wall St Journal and a few others on that list are no doubt technology related - I agree.
But not the LA Times (and a few others on that list). The Times is a joke around here, among the independents as well - not just the dreaded 'right wing'
Oh yeah - and how about the population increases in the Times circulation area these last few years too. That makes the decline all the more severe. |
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Certainly not the LA Times.
Snap & Co., let's face it -- if newspapers offered a a stimulating exchange of ideas relative to our lives (i.e. issues of politics, religion, culture, poetry, art) we'd read them every day.
However, that would also require two ingredients that are woefully missing from most MSM outlets: work and diversity of opinion. This is noteworthy by Hugh because it signals end of the stagnant group-think for which newspapers are notorious. This represents the reformation of the information age.
What is comical is that the monolithic news sources are passing away because they would rather die than recognize and provide column inches to other points of view. This is a death by suicide not by murder.
Newspapers today, somewhat ironically, represent the flat earth society of information. To venture into the realm of true diversity of thought -- i.e. something that does not reflexively follow the secularist, liberal line -- is to fall off the planet.
Thanks Hugh! It's heartening to know that dogma of the left is failing rapidly. |
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The Los Angeles Times' figures sure caught my attention:
The Los Angeles Times reported that daily
circulation fell 8% to 775,766. Sunday dropped
6% to 1,172,005.
Those numbers seemed extraordinarily low to me, so I decided to do a quick search and find out the current population of the Los Angeles area. What I found amazed me. Los Angeles alone, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, had a 2005 estimated population of 9,935,475. And according to Thomas Brinkhoff's "Principal Agglomerations of the World," the population of the Los Angeles area as a whole is about 18,000,000.
Now think about that for a minute. Out of a total population of 18 million, the Los Angeles Times can only muster a daily readership of 775,000; and even the Sunday version, with comics and ads and coupons, only draws just over 1 million. Other statistics Hugh quotes are similar, though not quite as dramatic.
It boggles the mind to consider that the major papers are so attached to their agenda journalism that they are unwilling to change, even when it means they face absolute financial ruin.
Thanks for the info, Hugh.
(also posted on my blog, marcymuser.townhall.com) |
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I work for a small-market daily paper in California, one of only a handful that saw their circulation actually increase this year.
There are more things going on in the world of newspapers than Hugh's argument lets on, though it is a component of what is happening in some very egregious examples.
Our research shows us that, in some cases at least, we lose print viewers only to recoup them on-line. We also find that nearly half of our on-line readers never touch the print edition. With the market fragmented in so many ways inside and outside of the "Big media", it's hard to say with 100% certainty that there is a single cause you can point to for the decline of major-market daily papers.
Blaming bias is too easy. |
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The MSM is so bad that I only watch the 10:00 news for the weather forecast.
Mark Halperin won't disclose his views on issues because then we would know where he is coming from and wouldn't have to keep guessing what they are. If we know what the reporters views are, then we conservatives are intelligient enough to know how much of it is PURE BS and how much is actual news report. |
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Here's Time Magazine, former Wonkette, Ana Marie Cox reporting this parody anti-Ford advertisement that is clearly racist: http://time-blog.com/political_bite/2006/10/not_to_spoil_the_youtube_after.html
Here is Cox's commentary: "It's so brilliantly hamfisted I can't believe Democrats are actually behind it. Perhaps a Rove-ian triple head-fake? (Planting evidence to make it look like your opponent is planting evidence?) Then again, it is pretty hamfisted..."
The actual source of this video? Well, its from that anti-George Bush parody website http://www.whitehouse.org.
Now the whitehouse.org satire site is notorious (funny but notorious). It is obviously hostile to President Bush. You don't think a self proclaimed hipster like Wonkette doesn't know about whitehouse.org?
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Snapdigger,
You are either too far to the left to see the media's bias or are just being totally dishonest with yourself.
What would it take for you to admit media bias when they've already admitted it themselves?
If I didn't say so already I worked in the industry for 6 years and still have a ton of friends at the NYTimes, Washpost, ABC, CNN, AP and a number of papers and I follow the news very closely. I know these people's writings and them personally.
They're Democrats. The differences they have with Dems are similar to the internal differences of the Democratic party.
I also suggest you take a look at some of MRC's studies where they cite Zogby and other polls of the public's trust in the MSM and the MSM's views of themselves. You'll find some clarity there. |
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"Liberals must hide and disguise their true identy to get any form of their agenda pushed by the people."
Like what exactly? De-segregation? That was a long time ago. Nowadays it's conservatives who have to disguise their true beliefs (which is why Bush constantly fudges his position on abortion, pretends that he wants to "save" social security, etc).
"Liberals knew this when they decided to load up the bench with ACLU type judges who would then bypass the will of the majority be way of the bench."
Who are these judges? Generally speaking court rulings tend to be quite majoritarian, except in the cases of conservative activists like Scalia and Thomas. (And as for the ACLU thing, you do know that Clinton appointed Ruth Bader Ginsburg because the head Republican on the judiciary committee, Orrin Hatch, recommended her and said she was a moderate whom he could support, right?)
"meanwhile, NY Post is picking up new subscriptions; wondering why this is taking place trolls?"
Page 6? |
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"If ABC really wanted to be condescending to Democrats they could do a heck of a lot better.
"Maybe they could start by actually pointing out their positions on Iraq, the war on terror, immigration, detainee treatment"
See, that's what I'd like too. I'd like the MSM to report on Democrats' actual positions on these issues -- for example, instead of quoting Bush's slander that Democrats are "the party of cut and run," the MSM should report that Democrats are in fact proposing actual plans for Iraq (redeployment, partition) whereas Republicans have no plan except staying forever. And when the GOP says that Democrats don't want to listen in on terrorists, the MSM ought to point out that this is a lie (Democrats merely want Bush to follow the law, which already allows listening in on terrorists). And so on. If the MSM would report fairly on what Democrats believe, rather than parroting GOP caricatures of Democrats, I'd be happy.
The point is, if you think the MSM is pro-Democrat because it won't openly agree with GOP lies about Democrats, you're wrong; the MSM is anti-Democrat because it quotes those GOP lies without pointing out that they're lies. |
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You know you hit the nerve when Liberal Trolls come a running with their sarcastic worthless rant. Keep hitting the nerve Hugh & Dean; fun to watch.
Liberals make up approximately 20% of the population. America is a country with a Conservative majority population. Liberals must hide and disguise their true identy to get any form of their agenda pushed by the people. Liberals knew this when they decided to load up the bench with ACLU type judges who would then bypass the will of the majority be way of the bench. Americans became aware of this travesty and have now slammed the brakes on this tactic. Liberals control the media and push their Liberal agenda by way of TV, Movies, & news outlets; Americans are now aware of this travesty and are now slamming the brakes on this tactic. Liberals are running out of ways to bypass the will of the majority. Let's see now; NYT, WAPO, & LAT all free falling, meanwhile, NY Post is picking up new subscriptions; wondering why this is taking place trolls? |
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There is a rich and delightful irony that the influence of so many mainstream rags is precipitously waning. They have earned every bit of the skepticism Americans have for them because the collective group-think they promote is so equisitely selective that astute observers can predict headlines across the entire lot of them.
In conjunction with the diminishing viewer stats for the so-called news shows it's glaringly obvious that more Americans are turning to alternative media outlets each and every day. And, critically, when we do read or watch formerly sacrosanct sources we instinctively handicap everything they report.
The arrogance of this group never ceases to live up to our most cynical expectations so we should all raise our glasses in a toast to their marginalized status, wishing them well on their road to the hinterland of their own design.
Philip Mella, Editor
http://clearcommentary.townhall.com
http://www.clearcommentary.com
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Has this biased liberal slanted media existed for more than just the last six months? Has it been around as long as the internet? Are you then really going to argue that it is the main cause of this recent drastic decline in circulation?
And if it is due to this liberally biased MSM, why would there be such a sharp decline in the San Francisco's Chronicle, a liberal hotbed? |
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Snapdigger,
If ABC really wanted to be condescending to Democrats they could do a heck of a lot better.
Maybe they could start by actually pointing out their positions on Iraq, the war on terror, immigration, detainee treatment (terrorist bill of rights) and stop obsessing on Mark Foley.
Give me a break, conservative bias at ABC....
Good one. |
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Ummm..Pete,
Sorry, but I got fed up with the Mpls. Star Tribune's constant headline faking and unbelievably biased editors and guess what...
stopped my subscribing last year FOR THAT
REASON.
Now, To be honest, I can't remember which straw finally got me to actually do it but when I did, I called in my cancellation and whomever I talked to made a comment about the "rash of cancellations" they were getting because of it.
Certainly not the only reason for the decline but to dismiss it as you wish to, displays ignorance on a gleeful scale.
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Yes, it appears our "unbiased" media is preparing for a series of massive hit pieces on Republicans in the final days before the election with the INTENDED CONSEQUENCE OF CHANGING THE ELECTION....
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1728725/posts
And Wolf Blitzer had the gaul to say CNN wasn't partisan the other day.... |
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Great post on Mark Halperin's right-wing bias and why all liberals consider Halperin, ABC News and The Note to be right-wing: http://tinyurl.com/uavho
"[The Note is right-wing because of] its insistence that the media is a liberal institution. And, again, The Note's basis for endless reiteration of this rightwing talking point is that the 'actual opinions' of the bulk of the people producing political journalism are liberal. As best I can tell living and working in this town, this is, in fact, fairly accurate. It's also completely irrelevant. Journalists' 'actual opinions' about things don't matter at all. What matters is what they write, what they say, what they broadcast...
"What matters is what you do and what the impact of what you do is. The impact of what The Note does is to help the Republican Party win elections. I don't really know why The Note is so deeply invested in doing that, but that's what they're doing and, at the end of the day, that's what matters."
I'll add that Halperin, like a lot of MSM journalists, is essentially apolitical and more of a power-worshipper. His nauseating hero-worship of Karl Rove (see Halperin's Slate exchange this week) is entirely based on the fact that Bush and Rove always win. Well, yeah, but politics isn't sports and a journalist really ought to have some other criterion for a political figure beyond "winning" and "losing." But most MSM journalists only care about sucking up to winners and mocking losers, which is why the MSM is always belittling "losers" -- be it Republicans in the '60s or Democrats today. (The way the MSM treats Democrats now is basically the same way the MSM treated Goldwater et al in the '60s -- condescending and unfair coverage.) |
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You were in front on this years ago. You have shown a way out for them - report the news in transparently balanced ways. they would rather sink the ship than look at their business models differently.
And their arguments that they are in fact not sgenda driven are simply not credible by any reasonable measure. |
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As an aside, if this has nothing to do with ideology - then wouldn't the cable news channels all be seeing vastly increasing audiences, as the former newspaper buyer tunes in? Not just Fox?
Wouldn't Air America be able to stay in the black? |
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Nobody is arguing the internet is not a major reason for newspaper declines over the last many years - but how long has the net (and cable news etc) been around by now?
Its not like people are just discovering the joy of 100 free hours of AOL online anymore. These declines are quite steep in some places. Are you really going to argue that the last 6 months are showing a marked growth of alternate news consumption that did not exist last winter?
And you missed this nugget apparently..
In New York, however, a 5.1% surge for the New York Post allowed it to leapfrog past its rival, the Daily News -- and The Washington Post -- into fifth place in daily circ.
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The first step is admittng you have a problem. Denial is a bias in itself. I will look to my higher power (God) to help you in your quest to become free of your denial. |
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This has nothing to do with any supposed MSM bias or agenda journalists. This is strictly a case of more people getting their news from the internet and 24-hour news programs. |
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To paraphrase Steve Martin's rant from "Planes, Trains and Automobiles": "....here's an idea: next time you say something, have a point...."
Help us out here.
Are you blowing the lid off the fact that technology is making newspapers in general obsolete? Look who just caught up. The Jack Benny and Mercury Mystery Theater radio shows are probably suffering precipitous declines as well. Factoid, please....
Or are you relating the circulation declines to a public withholding its newsbox quarters and checks to circulation departments across the USA because the headlines and editorial pages are driving on the left side of the double-lined road of truth? Get over yourself. Newspapers are dinosaurs good for 3 things: sports, crossword/sudoku puzzles, and comics for the aging population that hate these newfangled computers. The rest of us get it all at ESPN.com and (insert favorite financial markets info page here)....
Lastly, does your glee stem from the nervous schoolboy anticipation that GM, Proctor & Gamble and Levitra will be moving their billions in advertising to these quaint, erudite blogs and websites? With very few exceptions, you preach to choirs on both sides that barely move the needle for salivating advertisers - except for that shirtless push-up guy....
Alas, another yawn. Nice blue box though.
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Haven't subscribed in years... I used to love the Food section, though. I've never found a newspaper that could match it. Charles Perry's "Forklore" column alone made it worthwhile for me to put 35 cents (as it was then) into a vending machine once a week on Wednesdays.
The rest of the paper? Not fit to line the catbox with anymore. |
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