Another Liberal Newspaper Cuts Employees

The "team" responsible for tossing litter onto my lawn every so often grew smaller today. Seattle Times to Cut Approximately 200 Employees via The Stranger "Seattle's Only Newspaper"

A memo just promulgated onto the web by the odious "Stranger" details the reasons for the mass sackings -- 45 from the newsroom. [Full text after the jump] The money shot is right up on top with

Our circumstances are in line with the newspaper industry nationally, which continues to see steep declines particularly in areas of Classified ad revenue and also a slowing of online revenue growth.

Translation: 1) Craigslist bites deep in high-tech metro areas these days, so deep that large bleeding chunks of staff are now being torn from the news body. 2) Online revenue ain't making it either since who wants to go to the website of a dead-tree product they don't read in the first place? And even if they did, the money sites get from ads online just isn't at all in the realm of what they get for print ads.

Online ad revenues, often touted by blathering publishers with "a vision", never have and never will replace the revenue lost to the print edition.

Of course, the real elephant drooling in the room of newspapers like the Seattle Times these days is "the forgotten reader." These are the potential readers who, because of the unremitting liberal tone and slant of the Times in both the news hole and on the editorial page, loathe the Times and the whole sector of Seattle society it represents.

Now you may say, in a town as overwhelmingly liberal as Seattle, "Screw those troglodyte, Republican morons!" Well, you can say that but then you will, sooner or later, fire 200 of your employees. And that will be only the start.

Why? Because in an "overwhelmingly liberal town" you are talking about, at most, around 55% of the potential readership that agrees with you. This means you are leaving about 45% of potential readership out of the equation altogether. King County has about 2 million people. That means that 45% of potential readership is not at all a trivial number, and yet the Seattle Times takes every opportunity to alienate them. Result: Mass sackings and many millions lost.

And yet the Seattle Times, as well as numerous other newspapers now dying in the US, never ever cops to its point of view as the reason why it is failing.

Source: American Digest

Commentary

I think I last purchased an Asheville Citizen-Times about 6 months ago because I was increasingly fed up with the left-slanting news in it's pages. Not just in the news it reported, but the news it failed to report. If 15 lefties had a meeting and were upset about something, you could could bet on the AC-T and WLOS to be there with breathless coverage. (I don't watch WLOS either---too many syrupy puppy stories and lefty newscasting).

A conservative crowd of over a hundred couldn't buy coverage the lefties were getting.

If the AC-T could be counted on to have a few news articles written from a conservative perspective, I'd pick it up more often. Also, if they had a real regional and state news section, it would be another incentive. And longer stories would be nice, too. It seems like they've decided to become a copy of the abominable USA Today. (Yes, I know Gannett now owns the paper).

My local papers, the Franklin Press and Macon News are basically the same way, and I rarely purchase the Press, but since the News is free, I pick it up nearly every week, whether I intend to read it or not. It's main value is a very strong Community Calender. If people are meeting or a candidate for office is speaking, it will be there.

What the author of the article didn't mention is that there is another reason papers or local TV don't give coverage from a conservative viewpoint...the cries of protest from the intolerant lefties who cannot tolerate a whisper of conservatism from news outlets.

Remember the outcry when the New York Slimes hired William Kristol as a Op-Ed columnist? Look at this article in Think Progress and be sure to read the comments by your typical "multi-cultural" lefty. Not very tolerant of another's opinion, eh? It appears that lefties want blacklists filled with conservatives.

That is a case of a hard left news outlet hiring a conservative to pen opinion pieces for them.

Ever hear of Fox News? Find your neighborhood lefty and ask them what they think about Fox News. Just be sure to be ready for a healthy helping of hate to be heaped out, pressed down, and heaped on again. Just imagine how they would react if a real conservative news network were to start broadcasting! (I call Fox RINO News)

So where does that leave us? If the papers continue to report lefty news...conservatives by and large won't buy their paper, and lefties will continue to use Craig's List, and the papers will continue their downward spiral.

If they throw conservatives a bone, the lefties start frothing at the mouth.

Where does that leave us? I don't really know. I suspect that it will give citizen journalists a foot in the door and leverage to squeeze out the regional and perhaps even the local papers. Anyway, I do get a kick out of lefties attacking their own institutions, though. Keep the popcorn coming!