Posted on 04/24/2013 2:41:19 PM PDT by IBD editorial writer
Media: Billionaire brothers with a free-market bent are said to be eyeing some big newspapers. The left is worried. Will this end a noble tradition of red ink and layoffs? As readers of Mother Jones and the Daily Kos will tell you, David and Charles Koch fund a vast right-wing conspiracy that has warped American political life and kept a boot heel on the neck of the 99%. So with power like that, why would the brothers want to buy struggling newspapers? Why not go after something with more of a future, like mobile apps? Whatever the reasons, the Kochs are reported to be interested in buying papers owned by the Tribune Co., including the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, Hartford Courant and Baltimore Sun. The eight papers are worth an estimated $623 million. Koch Industries, the brothers' diversified energy and manufacturing business, books revenue of $115 billion a year. So it doesn't look like much of a financial stretch.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
“If the Koch brothers can pull this off the country will be immeasurably better off.”
Oh, why not? They already have all the politicians and Lobbyists bought and paid for, they may as well have some media to tell us what we, as ‘conservatives’ are supposed to think/know.
Do remember this, they don’t claim to be conservative, just GOP, are for open borders, every trade deal, amnesty and heavily finance Grover Norquist.
The only way the Koch brothers are going to have success with this, is by also opening their own journalism school to train their reporters, journalists and editors. They should abstain from recruiting journalism graduates from other schools, and instead recruit from those who graduated with other degrees, to attend their journalism school.
Much of the train wreck of modern newspapers is both their radical leftist bent, but also the brittle fundamentalism that there is only one way to run a newspaper, that they are already run that way, that innovation is strictly prohibited, and that even the suggestion of change is an affront that must be discouraged at all costs.
They will salute their business model and go down with their ship before they would consider change, cursing the public for being illiterate baboons who do not appreciate their brilliance, an attitude beaten into them in college journalism schools. And one that is partly responsible for their dinosaur media failure.
One of the few successful newspapers in the US right now is the far more conservative Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, whose hard news format and strict editorial page editor, conservative columnist Paul Greenberg, make it a serious paper of record, with credibility far outside of Arkansas.
Unfortunately for us, but smart for them, they have long had a strict policy against allowing their content online, other than by a paid subscription, and not for republication outside of Mr. Greenberg’s column.
In any event, they should be the basic model for the Koch brothers, then to build up their newspapers with people their school has trained and found acceptable. Simply enough, with a “bachelor’s degree” they can be a reporter; with a “Master’s degree” they can be a journalist; but they need a “PhD” to be an editor.
With their own wire service produced only by trusted reporters and journalists, their news will be unique and extremely valuable for people who want and need news, not leftist agenda, opinion, and prejudice pretending to be news.
Pro open borders, pro Amnesty is a no-go for me.
You’re right - you’d have to go back to Pulitzer and Hearst to find the kind of diversity I’m referring to.
That last is no doubt true, and no doubt irrelevant with respect to moving the ball in the right direction.
The last serious “mainstream journalist” who was ‘somewhat’ conservative and had enough clout to affect the rest of the herd was Henry Luce, Editor-in-Chief of Time-Life. When he retired in 1964 and turned the reigns over to Hedley Donvan, the last restraint to the leftward tilt of “news” was gone.
I peg that event and that time period as the inflection point of no return in the history of journalism.
Ahhh, the Wall Street Journal has increased its circulation numbers and is currently the number one newspaper, and has been for several years, with more than 2.3 million subscribers (about 800,000 digital subscribers).
Fair enough, but selling like hot cakes ?
BTW, I would suggest that the difference between subscribers and actual readers of the WSJ is greater than that of IBD and certainly the Wash. Times.
It was in the early sixties that Otis Chandler became the head of the Los Angeles Times, which railed against the Birch Society and anything smacking of anti-communism, from there on out. That was the beginning of the end for journalism, for me.
Horsefeathers.
All of those publications are strong in their markets, and that is precisely what has liberal journalists whining.
Buy them and turn them around.
I’ll very possibly subscribe to the LA times if they buy it.
I’m series.
I might renew the subscription to The Times that I cancelled about 50 years ago, as well. Might, I say.
You mean like the Washington Times, the NY Post?
Asspress’ logo should be Pinocchio. They are the biggest craven liars on the planet.
Correcto.
We need to organize demonstrations and letter-writing campaigns in support of the Koch brothers.
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