If newspapers were less liberal they wouldn't be losing so many readers. That's what conservative media activists have convinced themselves is behind the steady decline in American newspaper readership; a decline conservatives take great delight in. The activists, or 'press haters,' as I call them in my book, treat the inevitable consequences of a radically altered media landscape (i.e. the wild proliferation of news outlets accessible on the web for free) as yet more proof that Americans are turned off by the biased press.
Writing this week in the Philadelphia Inquirer, blogger and radio host Hugh Hewitt again insisted the ongoing newspaper slump is a direct response from subscribers fed up with the liberal bias and who have walked away. (Damn that liberal sports section!) Granted, there are probably 15 or 16 more compelling reasons to explain the trend behind declining newspaper circulation. (Starting with the wild proliferation of news outlets accessible on the web for free.) But that doesn't stop conservatives from insisting that if big city newspaper weren't so liberal, than business wouldn't be so bad. Of course, if that theory were valid, the flip side would also be true--business must be booming for major market newspapers that proudly display their conservative pedigree, right? Guess again. Turns out those newspaper are in worse shape financially than the allegedly liberal ones.
Take the case of the Washington Times, the openly partisan D.C. daily owned by Rev. Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Church and who fancies himself the son of God. According to the conservative logic, circulation at the Times should be growing because the newspaper appeals to those disgruntled news consumers who, in the words of Hewitt, became "disgusted with biased product." Problem is somebody forgot to tell the circulation manager at the Times, because (surprise!), like so many major market dailies, The Times is hemorrhaging readers. Specifically, circulation for the Times' Sunday paper was down a whopping 10 percent, or 40,000 copies, in the last year, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations' latest FAS-FAX report.
But what about Rupert Murdoch's New York Post? Conservatives would cheer the paper's circulation spike since 2000 is proof consumers are thirsty for Republican-flavored news, even in NYC. Wrong. It was the Post's decision to cut the newsstand price to a mere 25 cents that lit the fuse under the paper's newsstand gains; profit-less gains that cost Murdoch an estimated $20 million in losses last year. Indeed, since buying the Post nearly 20 years ago, the perennial third-place daily has likely cost Murdoch a quarter-of-a-billion dollars in losses.
Bottom line: Both the Washington Times and New York Post are openly conservative newspapers and both are massive money-losers. How does Hewitt explain away their sorry financial state?