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Dan
Calabrese
Read Dan's bio and previous columns here
August 24, 2009
Relax, Conservatives:
Liberal Media is Doomed
If
there is one constant among conservatives – from generation to
generation – it is continued disgust with the liberal mainstream media.
This is for good reason, which has rarely been more evident than today,
as institutions like the Associated Press, the New York Times and
major television networks cheerlead shamelessly for President Obama and
his left-wing agenda.
But conservatives should stop fretting. The liberal media is doomed.
The media’s liberal bias exists because the individual practitioners who
join journalistic institutions are overwhelmingly liberal. They decide
to study journalism in college because they are idealistic and are
intrigued by the notion of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the
comfortable. They dream of filing Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative
reports that do just that.
You’ll find your odd conservative in a given newsroom, but the
newsroom’s dominant culture will almost always lean left because the
lifers who have worked their way through the ranks are the true
believers, and they are liberal to the core.
The culture of these institutions will never change, and that frustrates
conservatives to no end, but it doesn’t matter. These institutions are
dying – to be replaced by a more independent, entrepreneurial, small-d
democratic model of journalism that is already emerging.
It’s ironic when you think about it, but liberal mainstream journalists
depend on the largesse of their corporate masters to continue plying
their trade. They score a staff position, join the newspaper guild, work
their way through the beat structure and keep amassing annual pay raises
and increases in vacation time. Your typical liberal journalist wouldn’t
know the first thing about the revenue-generating side of the business.
If anything, he or she went into journalism in part because of a deep
distrust of people who sell things. They think it’s their job to protect
consumers from all the salesman out there, because surely they are
nothing but a bunch of scam artists.
When these journalists get laid off, most don’t know the first thing
about approaching their career in an entrepreneurial fashion. They
simply bemoan the disappearance of the sort of job they’ve always had.
That’s why the new media model is tailor-made for the entrepreneurial
conservative – the hard-working individual who is willing to bear down,
report and sell advertising or sponsorships to capitalize a low-overhead
operation. The dinosaur institutions that sheltered liberal journalists,
and fostered a culture hostile to conservatives, will be all but gone
within five to 10 years. The new rules will not block entry by
conservatives on the basis of ideology. Your opportunity to get in the
game will be determined by your work ethic and your entrepreneurial
prowess.
This is not to say there will be no liberal journalists. There are
liberal entrepreneurs. What people like Arianna Huffington and Markos
Moulitsas have accomplished with online media is impressive indeed. But
no one mistakes Huffington Post or Daily Kos for anything other than
what they are – left-wing web sites. By the same token, when people read
Michelle Malkin’s Hot Air, everyone knows they’re getting news from a
conservative perspective.
It’s all fair game, and everyone is welcome to play. But no longer will
liberal journalists be able to pretend they are objective and hide
behind old-line institutions.
Newspapers are the first element of the mainstream media to begin dying,
but they won’t be the last. Newspapers are dying because their business
model is preposterous, and they’re so steeped in self-important
arrogance that they’ve been completely unwilling to change that model.
They lay off reporters by the dozen while continuing to operate the
printing presses and distribution systems that are relics of yesteryear.
Most newspapers now have online editions, but few have figured out how
to capitalize them – certainly not enough to fund the massive overhead
that remains within their newspaper operations.
Radio and television don’t have the same cost-overhead issues facing
newspapers, but their relevance will nonetheless be challenged by
individuals who can harness the power of the web – who can report more
quickly, more fairly, more accurately and more cost-effectively. This
will reduce the value of television and radio advertising time, because
people will increasingly understand there are more trustworthy
alternatives.
I
expect there will still be some large media institutions, but they will
no longer dominate the game or set the rules. And the few dinosaur
liberal journalists who remain will be held increasingly accountable by
their new, emerging competitors. We already see this with sites like
NewsBusters, which regularly lays to waste the interminable bias of
old-liners like the AP.
Within 10 years, most liberal journalists will be forced into other
lines of work. They will surely bemoan the loss of the institutions that
once bankrolled their journalistic malpractice, but the rest of the
nation will be better off for the change.
This is not to say we’ll be ushering in an era of conservative
propaganda accepted as straight news reporting. The Sean Hannitys of the
world are not going to be taken seriously as journalists. But
conservatives who know how to report news, source information and
present it in a timely fashion are already getting their chance, and
will soon get it all the more so.
Conservatives would be wise, therefore, to stop whining about the
liberal media and start getting in line to replace it – because its days
are decidedly numbered.
© 2009 North Star
Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.
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