Newsweek:Balkanization of the News

This last week witnessed Newsweek along with several other opinion makers (Linda Foley of the Newspaper Guild, Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo) asserting themselves in ways which have conclusively exploded any notion that they might possibly be objective in their take on current events. These examples of distorting the truth-- lefty propaganda rendered as news-- were the sort of things that landed the New York Times, Eason Jordan, and Dan Rather in hot water as recently as four months ago. So, why aren't Foley, Isikoff and Barry of Newsweek, and the rest out looking for new jobs right now?

I think there is a basic retrenchment of the MSM taking place. It is not a conscious or a coordinated decision being made. No conspiracy here. Rather, what the MSM is doing is almost entirely a market driven trend. Observing how bloggers, with no pretense of personal objectivity, are perfrectly capable of outing MSM outlets who mangle the news, media chiefs around the country have experienced an epiphany. Now, news executives such as Linda Foley; Michael Kinsley at the L.A. Times; Richard Smith (Editor-in-Chief) Mark Whitaker (Editor) and Jon Meacham (Managing Editor) of Newsweek; and others no longer bother worrying over any absurd assertion of fairness in their organizations, but instead can play proudly to their primary, liberal, readers.

This basic shift in MSM attitude took off in a big way during the horrible, three week period preceding the death of Terri Schiavo. The MSM's who covered the protests and the judicial appeals gambled that if they persevered in their efforts to portray the protesters as semi-terrorists and the Schindlers as bereaved buffoons, then the story would die about the same time that Terri did, and the alternate medias of talk radio and the blogosphere would do nothing about it.

Emboldened by this grim victory, and realizing that they really could (with only a little more chutzpah than previously used) just ignore the bloggers about the same way they ignored talk radio for 15 years, media execs and editorial staff have asked themselves something to the effect of "Why do we try to satisfy people who don't like us to begin with? Let's just concentrate on providing positive reinforcement to the folks who already read us."

Newsweek, the L.A. Times, and the NYT (which is consciously rethinking their whole editorial and marketing approach) have quietly decided to play exclusively to the ideology of the majority of their readership. And if, as a result, their subscribers decline by, say, 10% over the next year, they will be happy to accept that rather than have to worry over the absudity that they care one way or the other that they might be balanced.

Then again, if their readership declines by 25% instead of 10%, then execs will start getting fired and the media revolution will be on its way again.

Interesting times to come.