In California's Inland Empire, the "vulture" hedge fund Alden Global Capital is passing a single regional newspaper off as four "local" ones, and I.E. communities are none the wiser.
I can tell by your screed that you’re another left-wing nut. No surprise there; overwhelmingly academia and journalism are staffed by mostly far-left propagandists.
And you wonder why newspapers are dying? People are sick and tired of a steady diet of progressive tripe. Readers don’t have to subscribe and pay for perspectives they despise. They’ve found online outlets that support their personal, political and social points of view.
Media, in order to regain any of their former clout, needed to do one simple thing: hire the same amount of conservatives as they do liberals. But they can’t do that now. They’re on life support and their readers are getting ready to pull the plug. Should have become more fair and balanced decades ago instead of shoving a bunch of leftist nonsense down their subscribers throats.
But they chose to hire a more “diversified” newsroom and in the process traded objectivity for political correctness, uniformity of thought and wokeness while advocating for climate change nonsense, relentless attacks on cops, the military and conservatives and issues like the whole BLM movement and the wonder of EVs.
People got tired of having garbage shoved down their throats and they walked away, never to come back. BTW I spent 30 years at newspapers so I know of what I speak. I look forward to your response and would be glad to exchange further comments in the future.
The Opinion section editorial board is the Southern California News Group. They are 100% libertarian. I wish for a more balanced presentation of views. I feel I read the same opinion about various issues over and over again. I wonder if Alden and MNG have something to do with this.
I like print so I have print +digital, but it is too expensive. The cost has gone up dramatically over the last five years. I may have to drop it, or at least the delivered print, and perhaps have no local news, but perhaps have some different viewpoints with a different paper. At least this one paper has sections on San Bernardino, Riverside, etc.
Brett: Thanks for your note. Absolutely, the editorial page is consistently libertarian. Sometimes that's function of marketing -- giving red counties what they're presumed to want (the Fox News model). But in this case, it seems much more like a (centralized) structure and (corporate) ownership thing, as there's plenty of blue territory within the SCNG footprint.
What I find fascinating is that there's basically never any editorializing on local issues. National, California, and maybe something in L.A. -- but nothing about political, economic, or cultural issues that are specific to each paper's readership. But I guess that's to be expected when you're writing an editorial page that's being duplicated across a wide geography.
Would be interesting to go back and see at what the editorial leanings of these papers looked like before they entered the SCNG cluster (MNG acquired the the San Bernardino County papers in the late 90s and they added the Press-Enterprise in 2016)
A San Bernardino resident for three decades, I am still surprised by what you have discovered. Very educational and informative. Glad you are putting me -- and hopefully many others -- on alert.
For sure! Yeah, I taught a class on the local news ecosystem in the spring and we were really surprised when we saw the extent of duplication. It's a problem for researchers studying local news, too, because if we randomly sample papers (as is common), we run the risk of missing these practices and mistaking regional fare for local stuff (which is always a fuzzy line). Thanks for reading.
I can tell by your screed that you’re another left-wing nut. No surprise there; overwhelmingly academia and journalism are staffed by mostly far-left propagandists.
And you wonder why newspapers are dying? People are sick and tired of a steady diet of progressive tripe. Readers don’t have to subscribe and pay for perspectives they despise. They’ve found online outlets that support their personal, political and social points of view.
Media, in order to regain any of their former clout, needed to do one simple thing: hire the same amount of conservatives as they do liberals. But they can’t do that now. They’re on life support and their readers are getting ready to pull the plug. Should have become more fair and balanced decades ago instead of shoving a bunch of leftist nonsense down their subscribers throats.
But they chose to hire a more “diversified” newsroom and in the process traded objectivity for political correctness, uniformity of thought and wokeness while advocating for climate change nonsense, relentless attacks on cops, the military and conservatives and issues like the whole BLM movement and the wonder of EVs.
People got tired of having garbage shoved down their throats and they walked away, never to come back. BTW I spent 30 years at newspapers so I know of what I speak. I look forward to your response and would be glad to exchange further comments in the future.
Thanks for writing and researching this!
The Opinion section editorial board is the Southern California News Group. They are 100% libertarian. I wish for a more balanced presentation of views. I feel I read the same opinion about various issues over and over again. I wonder if Alden and MNG have something to do with this.
I like print so I have print +digital, but it is too expensive. The cost has gone up dramatically over the last five years. I may have to drop it, or at least the delivered print, and perhaps have no local news, but perhaps have some different viewpoints with a different paper. At least this one paper has sections on San Bernardino, Riverside, etc.
Brett: Thanks for your note. Absolutely, the editorial page is consistently libertarian. Sometimes that's function of marketing -- giving red counties what they're presumed to want (the Fox News model). But in this case, it seems much more like a (centralized) structure and (corporate) ownership thing, as there's plenty of blue territory within the SCNG footprint.
https://www.pressenterprise.com/2020/10/23/which-inland-cities-are-the-most-republican-democratic/
What I find fascinating is that there's basically never any editorializing on local issues. National, California, and maybe something in L.A. -- but nothing about political, economic, or cultural issues that are specific to each paper's readership. But I guess that's to be expected when you're writing an editorial page that's being duplicated across a wide geography.
Would be interesting to go back and see at what the editorial leanings of these papers looked like before they entered the SCNG cluster (MNG acquired the the San Bernardino County papers in the late 90s and they added the Press-Enterprise in 2016)
A San Bernardino resident for three decades, I am still surprised by what you have discovered. Very educational and informative. Glad you are putting me -- and hopefully many others -- on alert.
Thanks for reading Ron! I'm glad you found it instructive.
This is helpful since I don't really see all the papers to compare. Thank you for taking a look at this.
For sure! Yeah, I taught a class on the local news ecosystem in the spring and we were really surprised when we saw the extent of duplication. It's a problem for researchers studying local news, too, because if we randomly sample papers (as is common), we run the risk of missing these practices and mistaking regional fare for local stuff (which is always a fuzzy line). Thanks for reading.