Schadenfreude for the Leftist Media

What amazes me about the media is that they do not seem to understand what is going on at all. In fact when they need to become less biased, they believe the solution is to become more biased. When they should be making efforts to appeal to both sides and make amends, many actually just get a lot more biased. The New York Times, for example, is just a leftist rag now. Before it had a bias, but at least it had credibility.

Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported on big circulation declines at most newspapers. The only two to remain steady have reputations for being centrist and unbiased: The Wall Street Journal and USA Today.

One might think that dropping all pretense and just openly serving one side is a good business decision, but it is absolutely not, because there are way too many media orgs that choose to serve that one side. There are only so many liberal eyeballs, and they have dozens of news orgs to choose from. The amount of news they consume is limited by how much time there is in the day.

The decline of the newspapers is not solely due to bias, and maybe not even primarily - their big problem is the internet - but it has an effect. When things are tough, it's a lot harder to stay alive when you not only have the Internet Problem, but you also have a reputation for untrustworthy reporting. The decline of the big 3 (ABC, CBS, NBC) is in some ways due to the advance of cable TV, but not all of it. MSNBC's problems are mostly due to their embarrassing bias, I think.

Another thing that is so damned entertaining: seeing these reporters' morale collapse. These guys didn't get paid worth crap to start with. Now they're going to end up looking for a job outside of the media because the demand for "professional" reporters has tanked, and with failing news orgs and the democratization of news generation on the web, supply is huge. So there go there livelihoods. Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of sleazeballs.

Some news orgs have taken the effort to appear less biased by employing conservative commentators, or having some commentators appeal to conservative causes. CNN is a good example with Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs. I suspect CNN is going ok in the ratings now. Not that I think that gives them a pass for their actual reporting, but at least they understand that a reputation for bias is going to kill them. For the NYT, there seems to be no such illumination.

So it is funny, like a starving man, their bodies have begun to feed on themselves. The NYT is selling part of its building to stay alive. Time and Newsweek are at death's door, I don't think either will survive through 2009. And yet they accelerate in the wrong direction. It is just amazing.