Those two phenomena would seem to be mutually exclusive.

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The Wall Street Journal still has a paid component. Too lucrative to abandon.

It is easier than ever to start up a newspaper if you third-party the printing. The biggest deterrent used to be the cost of a decent press, $10 million just to get in the door. There are a lot of venues around that are eager to job print anyone’s newspaper to get more revenue off that huge, already-existing investment. That takes your costs down to people and newsprint, libel insurance, rent, computers, etc.

Even if only 35% (lowball number) of the newspaper reading population is Conservative these papers are not serving these readers and are missing a huge percentage of the population. That’s why I cancelled my NYTimes subscription and why I don’t read the San Francisco Comical.

The point of my post was more to show the Liberal arrogance that exists inside these businesses to illustrate a larger point of how their activism (they would call it “journalistic duty”) is killing their business.

If comparing yourself to Darfur is not a good example I don’t know what is.

Certainly companies such as Craig’s List and eBay have hurt their advertising revenues but this has been going on for at least 5 years. Newsweek took a dramatic turn to the Left with their new editor and saw subscriptions plunge. News organizations such as NBC and CBS have also taken turns to the Left and seen their ratings decrease and MSNBC, the most Left of all the cable news networks has never had an substantial viewership while Fox News beats them all combined.

The weakening economy may have put the nail in the coffin but the mentality of the editors and writers is what dug the grave to begin with, I think.

In defense of Harrison’s point, why is it that media outlets that target balanced or conservative audiences tend to do fine? Liberal outlets are either going under or have to be bankrolled by people like George Soros. Economic success is not hardwired into the liberal mindset. If it was, you wouldn’t have to see apologists for the failure of the New York Times compare their dismal economic performance to African genocide movements – two entirely different things.

The business of news won’t disappear, but the only way in the future that you will be able to make money from it will be from providing useful, exclusive content that people will pay for.

I imagine there will be a boom some day where those who provide primary source leads to credentialed reporters, will bypass the major news companies and distribute their information for a fee to the social media publishers. Or existing major news companies will develop this model.

E.g. Harrison pays for the right to put a link to a primary source in his blog, if people click on this link, he makes money from his ability to distribute the content. Both owners of the link will make money off of the advertising on their pages. Liberals will probably decry this business model because of all the poor paper boys that will be put out of work.

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