Moveon.org Isn’t Going to Rescue America’s Newspapers
By Richard Davis (12/07/05)
You probably haven’t read about this in your local paper since the odds are you no longer subscribe to a local paper, but America’s newspapers -- virtually the house organs of liberalism and the Democratic Party -- are in trouble. Barely a week goes by without fresh reports of newspaper layoffs and buyouts from New York to California. One venerable chain, Knight Ridder, has gone to the auction block, a portent of things to come. Many analysts predict newspapers will disappear altogether in a decade or so.
Alarmed that its fellow travelers are in peril, Moveon.org announced Friday it was coming to their rescue. In what Moveon promises to be the first stage in an “in-depth campaign,” it has launched a petition and e-mail drive to protest staff cutbacks at four Tribune Co. newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, one of the nation’s most liberal publications.
A spokesman said Moveon wants to send a “strong signal” to corporate owners that they must not abandon their “responsibility to deliver strong watchdog journalism to the public.”
Moveon’s targeting of the Tribune Co. may actually be payback for recent staff shakeups at the Times, including the axing of ultra-liberal columnist Robert Scheer. Those moves were interpreted generally as an effort by the Tribune Co. to right the paper’s increasingly leftist slant. Moveon hasn’t protested recent cuts by The New York Times, liberalism’s national flagship.
The campaign might also be timed to curry favor with print journalists before the upcoming midterm and presidential elections. Though print journalists are the most liberal and partisan of mainstream journalists, Moveon may be attempting to moderate its radical image and further neutralize conservatives, whom journalists already blame for their drop in fortunes.
Whatever its motives, Moveon.org appears to be the first liberal entity to recognize that the demise of newspapers directly threatens the liberal establishment. Though the influence of newspapers has waned considerably the past 30 years, they remain a powerful champion of liberalism, practically a mouthpiece for Democrats and multiculturalists alike. They are the watchdogs of political correctness, tireless promoters of abortion, diversity, homosexuality, affirmative action, secularism, internationalism and big government. Their partisan election coverage kept John Kerry in the race in 2004, and their bias largely drives anti-Bush, anti-war sentiment among the public today.
But having Moveon.org come to your aid may be a bit like having Typhoid Mary stop by to nurse your cough. Newspapers have lost the support of the public largely because of their liberal bias, both cultural and political. Though they deny they’re even liberal, with Moveon.org as their public defender, that denial loses some of its persuasiveness.
Not that it matters. Petitions don’t override market forces, which are aligned against newspapers. The internet is siphoning off readers and advertisers daily, circulation has been declining for decades, public confidence is shot, young people ignore them entirely, newsroom morale is low and corporate greed has stripped away their ability to produce a quality product even if they knew how to do that. Which they don’t. Most of America’s 1,450 dailies are as insipid, predictable and unfulfilling as white bread, and the slice gets thinner the farther away one gets from the big cities. Eras have a logic of their own, and from the looks of the industry today, newspapers may have reached their logical conclusion.
No one knows what comes next. Some newspapers will transition themselves to the web, but that’s alien territory to print journalists. They’ve been protected for decades by corporate monopolies, causing them to lose touch with both the public and their profession. They’ve become social engineers rather than journalists, progressives rather than reporters, doling out news as it fits their agendas, to a public they disdain. That era is coming to an end too.
Competition has come to the marketplace of ideas, and it is that more than anything else that scares the likes of Moveon.org.
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