I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
I was taught as a child to respect authority. Later, as a reporter and editor, I learned to doubt authority. Bad decisions by parents, educators, judges, elected officials, bosses were puzzling until I realized they put on their pants (or pantyhose) one leg at a time.
Later, impressed by my own experience and longevity, I sometimes concluded I was an authority. Fortunately, if not always pleasantly, the world always disabused me of that delusion. What’s neat about this new form of journalism is the instant reality check; your responses and dialogue force me to think anew.
First, a recap: Two Fridays ago I lamented the heavy rightist tilt of the Albuquerque Journal’s Op-Ed pages, particularly on business and economics.
Last Friday, I stressed that management’s one-sidedness overshadows the newspaper’s virtues and may hurt revenues. Also, I defended the Journal against a reader who said that its Op-Ed page backwardness is reason to boycott it. I strongly disagree because a daily newspaper is (like love) a many-splendored thing.
This inspired a lot of instructive back-and-forth.
Babyfatt, the boycott advocate, repeated the mantra: “Never, ever buy the Journal. For any reason.” As the Independent’s Tracy Dingmann noted with amusement, babyfatt certainly is “consistent.”
Yes, and very likely more focused on politics, as opposed to culture, than I am.
Pablo Tashjian endorsed babyfatt’s boycott idea. He also wrote one sharp sentence:
“The Journal presents these right wing ideologues as if they are mainstream.” Assuming “they” refers to Charles Krauthammer, Jonah Goldberg and Victor Davis Hanson, that’s brilliantly correct.
Pari writes, “I cannot bring myself to subscribe to he Journal anymore” because it angers her. She goes on to outline a scary scenario: “I hate to think of ABQ as a no-paper town, but if (publisher T.H.) Lang persists in not giving the majority of Albuquerqueans what they crave in a paper — at least an attempt at balance — I’m worried that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”
Three boycotters? Maybe my speculation that the Journal’s far-out political slant undermines profitability is not so iffy.
I don’t fully understand Thomas James, though he’s clearly undisturbed by the Journal’s dearth of dissent. But how educational his (tangential) fear that the Fairness Doctrine might be revived to chill free expression at the newspaper!
As Ms. Dingmann told him, the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine applied only to broadcast licensees, not newspapers. He should know, too, that it never required equal treatment of diverse views. And, significantly, that it didn’t die until 1987. Since Morton Downey Jr. and his successor, Rush Limbaugh, pioneered right-wing talk radio before that, in the early 1980s, James’ fears may be misplaced.
(Eons ago, I blew off my Master’s thesis in political science, but if I were so inclined today, my topic would be “Fear and Loathing – Parents of the Far Right”.)
Finally, Johnny Mango weighs in with a few smart, nuanced paragraphs including: “…I believe the paper is actually getting better in many ways.”
Took the words right out of my iMac. My focus has been the Op-Ed pages, not the total Journal, but I agree. In fact, I was intending to explore the Journal’s overall performance, including umpteen virtues, this week until the opportunity to celebrate digital dialogue arose. We’ll begin next Friday.
Thanks, all, for the conversation. I like pontificating but this is more stimulating. Puts me in mind, too, of a Japanese proverb — “None of us is as smart as all of us.”
