Redstate News
By Raven Comments (14) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
AKA: The Conservative Newspaper.
Once upon a time, when all things were bright and golden and nary was there trouble in the world...
News Wars!
Episode (we lost count)
Day after day, the people were subjected to changes in their newspapers. With one company buying up another and keeping some readers and dumping others. The Times buys the Tribune which bought the Post, which bought...
Out of this rose the Evil Intercontinental News Empire that now spans the globe. Imagining themselves to have more power than they do and yet having more power than they should, the Empire throws its weight behind its chosen politicians and national leaders worldwide in an attepmt to control everything.
Out of this struggle and despair arose Redstate News, fleeing to the USA to report the truth (or at least the Conservative angle to it) that the Evil Empire has sought to destroy. Now, flooding the courts with lawsuits and lawyers, the Empire seeks to crush the upstart Redstate Alliance and halt their march to bring truth to the world...
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OK, so it wasn't the best job of a Star Wars spoof, but I'm sure you've got the picture.
Way back when, I'm sure some of the fogies 'round here remember, every town had at least 2 papers. 1 Conservative and 1 Liberal. Through the proccess of buyouts and mergers, most of those papers were integrated into vast media corporations that we have all come to know and love: CNN, The Times, MSNBC and more.
In recent times (recent being as far back as I can remember), there have been incessant complaints about the Liberal Bias in the "Old Media" or "Mainstream Media." Perhaps these complaints are legit. Perhaps they are not (I happen to believe that they are). Regardless, perhaps the time has come to tell the news from more than 1 Point of View.
I suggest a new series of Conservative Newspapers such as existed 30 years and more ago. And Redstate could lead the way. We already have some excellent writers/reporters here and perfectly good editors. All we need now are some drive and some money. Lots of money.
Because it will be tough. The MSM will attack constantly using every weapon in their disposal to shut us down, but in the end, enough money will see us through it.
I can offer $1,000 toward this goal. Who's with me?
People whine and complain about "Liberal Bias in the Media" but when someone proposes an answer, no one even comments on it.
Are we sure the country is trending Right? Sure sounds like it's trending "whiny loser who needs his mommy..."
"The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal comfort... has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
--John Stuart Mill
Its just doing a lot of damage before they go. Theres a bigger question of just what kind of responsibility someone buying ink by the barrel should have.
Raven's idea of a series of Conservative newspapers is a good one. There are SOME conservative newspapers out there (Washington Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Post), but lots of American cities only have liberal drivel in print.
Rather than trying to start something like this from scratch, could existing conservative news sources be persuaded to expand into newspapers? Could News Corp, whose Fox News Channel is the highest-rated cable news channel, be persuaded to buy some local papers in major cities, install conservative editors and some conservative bloggers and reporters, and allow straight news which tends to support conservative points of view be reported instead of suppressed?
There may be a problem of marketing. Most newspapers make most of their money from advertising, not writing political opinion, and there would need to be coverage of local issues, sports, and leisure activities such as movie listings that also attract readers. Instead of trying to start these things from scratch, it would probably be easier for a company who wants to promote conservative thought to buy an existing newspaper, then replace the editors with known conservatives, some reporters by conservative bloggers, and ask the reporter staff to check and verify stories from bloggers, rather than rely on "feeds" from the New York Times, Associated Press, or Reuters, whose leftist spin pervades their reporting.
Circulation of many major newspapers has been declining lately. Who knows--if a conservative editor bought out an existing paper and started writing the news as it is, with a conservative editorial page, many people disgusted with liberal spin might start reading newspapers again. The crucial question is--is there any money in this?
Does "Raven" have any connections to News Corp. or other existing conservative publishers, who might be interested in something like this?
The bad news: Conservatism is hard to sell. The good news is that it works.
That of using existing news companies. They still follow the lead of Associated Press and the NYT[wits] as far as what they publish/air as news.
We need to build something from the ground up that completely separates itself from these organizations. A New infrastructure. An uncontaminated organization without any of the Liberal input or connections...
You know what I mean?
"The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal comfort... has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
--John Stuart Mill
From the times itself Circulation Plunges at Major Newspapers
Overall, average daily circulation for 770 newspapers was 2.8 percent lower in the six-month period ending Sept. 30 than in the comparable period last year, the Audit Bureau of Circulations reported. Circulation for 619 Sunday papers fell by 3.4 percent.
But some papers fared much worse. The Los Angeles Times lost 8 percent of its daily circulation, and 6 percent on Sunday. The Boston Globe, owned by The New York Times Company, lost 6.7 percent of its daily circulation and almost 10 percent on Sunday.
Thats really horrendous levels of loss. The Times is literally paying for their ideological war with their existence.
As for creating a virgin conservative organization for news dissemination de novo, well thats seems to be something more along the lines of the communists. It would make a much better business case to show how existing infrastructure can be made or have its profitability improved.
With all due respect, and understanding where this sentiment comes from, I couldn't disagree more.
Conservatism is easy to sell. We've just allowed the MSM mantra that conservatism is about being against things to seep into our own consciousness.
Conservatism is about releasing the innate, unlimited power which resides inside each of us. The yearning to be free which is a part of the human experience.
Conservatives, 'cause we tend to be a logical lot, tend to see policies in terms of white papers and stolid analysis. For all those folks that aren't in that quadrant of the personality spectrum, that stuff is meaningless.
I believe with every fiber of my being that when conservatives focus on what conservatism truly is, they will embrace it with gusto. What we need to do is challenge repeatedly the basic fallacies of liberalism with rhetoric and ideas that inspire passion and hope. When faced with despair or hope, people choose hope every time.
"All that need be done for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."
I know one thing - in spite of slipping numbers from both print and broadcast "old media", they still dominate the agenda in America. I was thinking perhaps (a) like you are proposing, a rival media empire that is conservative, or (b) buying up one of the major networks (ABC, NBC, CBS) or the news division thereof, and flushing the entire news apparatus and replacing it with conservative news, or (c) I don't know what else.
FoxNews was onto a good idea, but has gotten terribly sidetracked. They continue to gain market share - the biggest problem I see is that while their *news* organs are IMO very excellently down the middle, the FNC brand is associated with all the shouting magazine shows (OReilly, Hannity & Colmes) and the tabloid trash (Greta, Geraldo, and co).
Kill the terrorists
Protect the borders
Punch the hippies -- Frank J
It is interesting but I have little confidence that anything could come of it. Every Redstate registered user contributes $1,000, what is the most that could come out to? A few hundred grand? That doesn't even come close to the startup capital needed to fund an empire.
There's no plausible scenario I can think of for essentially crashing the party at the highest levels right from the get go.
Rather than thinking in terms of an overarching federal empire, what about distributed responsibility? An investment group formed specifically to launch start up media enterprises, with strictly defined criteria. The adventurous will then come to you, seeking funding and support. Where there is a market and a willing entrepeneur then a paper will follow.
Let the free market do its thing and decide where to establish newspapers, and with how much capital.
absentee
I'm glad people are going back and reading my old stuff, though.
Anyway, the idea was that we start relatively small with the "overarching federal empire" as the goal.
Just start as 1 newspaper in 1 town and maybe a daily podcast of news that actually IS news. We can and Will grow from there...
But your investment group idea has merit, too. Perhaps both can be tried side by side...
"Let the free market do its thing and decide where to establish newspapers, and with how much capital."
Exactly my point. But the Free Market never gets started developing an idea unless someone first puts forth that idea.
"Guns don't kill people...
"...But they sure help!"
-Paul Giamatti, Shoot 'Em Up
I'm just thrilled that someone here thinks my writing is worthy of delving 2 years into the past to find it and resurrect it. Heck, just the fact that he delved 2 years into the archive to find it is itself a hell of a recommendation and ego-boost...
"Guns don't kill people...
"...But they sure help!"
-Paul Giamatti, Shoot 'Em Up
A sort of conservative counterpart to the Associated Press?
With redstate contributing authors that can then be published in the various "local" newspapers?