Last week, libertarian investors the Koch brothers expressed interest in purchasing the LA Times.
This sent Los Angeles and opinion columnists around the country into a tailspin, with angry denunciations, protests, and outrage.
Garance Franke-Ruta of the Atlantic characterizes this as “a bid to establish a pro-business conservative media chain”, although the Koch brothers have said that it’s nothing of the sort (their spokeswoman: “We respect the independence of the journalistic institutions referenced in the news stories. But it is our longstanding policy not to comment on deals or rumors of deals we may or may not be exploring.”)
Franke-Ruta goes on to explain for some reason that this won’t work in a Democratic city (which elected a Republican mayor twice between 1993 and 2001):
Newspapers, like other businesses, have to follow the local laws — such as those protecting out gay employees — or risk getting sued. And, historically, they had to appeal to urban or urbanizing local residents if they wanted any subscribers.
Well, that shouldn’t be a problem:
David H. Koch, who lives in New York and serves as executive vice president of Koch Industries, has said he supports gay marriage and could align with many residents on some social issues.
So exactly what inclination is there that the libertarian Koch brothers wouldn’t “protect out gay employees”? None. But Franke-Ruta just wants to float the turd in the punchbowl, except instead of a turd, he used a melted Three Musketeers to scare.
There are successful conservative newspapers in cities, but they are usually the scrappy local underdogs to the big mainstream dailies bought by the plurality of the regional paper-buying population. Think: The Boston Herald(conservative) versus The Boston Globe. The New York Post (conservative) versus the New York Times and Daily News. The Washington Times(conservative) versus the Washington Post.
When newspapers were the only source of information available (such as a century ago when these mainstream dailies were started), they became the last word on the news. They eventually shaped and defined political opinions of the populace for a century, which, in turn, bought more of the newspapers and kept perpetuating the paper’s views. Only in the past two decades have alternative sources of media become more well known—cable news, talk radio, and the Internet—and people no longer have to read the news from a sole, slanted perspective.
The Koch brothers could try to make the Los Angeles Times or the Baltimore Sun more appealing to a different intellectual community. But if they were to buy the papers and push their newsrooms in a more conservative direction, I suspect they would see an increase in the pace at which the geographic communities that once sustained the publications abandon them.
Not only have the Koch brothers said they wouldn’t “push their newsrooms in a more conservative direction”, they could literally print porn and not increase circulation of the dying Los Angeles Times.
Circulation at the Los Angeles Times fell 14.7% to 616,606 on weekdays and 7.6% to 941,914 on Sundays.
That’s not from some rival newspaper either—that data comes from the LA Times itself.
Here’s a graph to get a closer image at what a complete free-fall looks like.
This is a paper that just a few years ago that had a subscription well over 1 million, has zero competitors in the whole Southern California area, and is now wheezing by, posting 15% drops in just six months. Whatever opinion or news the LA Times is hawking just isn’t being bought anymore. Blaming someone for coming in and trying to save it (it wouldn’t be for sale in the first place if everything was humming along) is akin to stopping a paramedic from performing CPR because of their hair color.
