Molly, once a month with you is not enough
I came across an internal memo from the Star Tribune today. It may show up in their Reader's Rep column...or it may not. A reader of the Strib went to the trouble of counting the syndicated columnists that have run on the Strib's Op-Ed page the past 6 weeks. Here's the count:
Lefties
Steve Chapman, 8
E.J. Dionne, 2
Molly Ivins, 1
Garrison Keillor, 5 (he hardly counts, in my opinion)
Paul Krugman, 3
Total Lefties: 19
Righties (which doesn't really sound right unless you're talking about baseball pitchers)
David Brooks, 5
Mona Charon, 3
Jonah Goldberg, 4
Clifford D. May, 1
James Pinkerton, 1
Debra J. Saunders, 6
John Tierney, 3
George Will, 10
Total righties: 33
So, next time someone's bitching about Nick Coleman, whip this out on them. Personally, I think the above numbers would provide a great excuse for getting rid of Katherine Kersten. The Strib is tilting right without her help, thank you.
Perhaps they figure they need her, just like Bush needs the right wing Christians. They can't stand her, but they need the votes.
Or maybe like every other capitalistic, free market, company it is swinging back in the direction of the market that wants it so it can pay it's bills! A market correction, If you will. Mainly because the readership of the Strib and every other paper, has dropped so much that they can't stay afloat. And the seeing as the tabloids have the market cornered in the 'conspiracy theory' stories, they needed to switch to a more conservative market to sell papers. Seeing as all of you PROGRESSIVE tend to hide out here in the blogs and web they can't sell papers to you. So bitch if you want but the media is giving a pass to Obama over his pasture, and they railed Romney over his religion and how it must effect his morals and decision making. How about 20 years of that hate riddled speech we heard from Obamas preacher? He calls him a Old Uncle that he does not always agree with, but wont define which part of it he disagrees with!
If it helps, the righties think George Will is a liberal now. How's that for balance?
Note to self: Be careful when I use irony.
It takes some pretty contrived math to turn a 45-43 right-wing advantage into "communist" territory -- not that the typical Powerline reader would ever stop using the communist pejorative on liberals, anyway.
You could do that yourself, but I will take a quick stab. If Grow and Coleman (lefties) and Kersten (religious fascist) each have two columns per week, that would raise the respective totals to Lefties 43, Righties 45. Throw in the usually liberal unsigned editorials, and yup, the Strib is still firmly in the Communist sphere. But, that's not really the point., right?
Interesting. But I want to see a similar analysis done with ALL columnists.
First, not my tally. It came from a reader via an internal Strib memo. Second, the reason I dismiss Keillor is that I see him basically as a humorist rather than a serious columnist. Of course Will Rogers was also a humorist. Is Keillor today's Will Rogers? I'm not sure his heart is quite as pure when he spends some of his time suing people who would make fun of him. http://www.mnspeak.com/mnspeak/archive/post-733.cfm
Steve Chapman is a lefty and Keillor "hardly counts" as one? The former recently encouraged South Dakotans to be more patient in seeking to ban abortions, the latter recently called for W's impeachment. I think you misplaced the paranthetical.
But a disturbing tally nonetheless.
Some good debate on this going on over at MNSpeak. http://www.mnspeak.com/mnspeak/archive/post-1529.cfm
I'm sorry I wasn't clear. I meant that I honestly believe the driving force of what they print over there has nothing to do with what they believe. It has everything to do with what they believe they can sell. The press (and I exclude real journalists from this) is a business. A business exists to create a product that customers want. The "handlers" at the Strib have determined that their readership, which is increasingly suburban, wants more "balanced" opinion pages. This is how they are doing it.
are you serious?