Today I awoke to see this diary atop the Recommended list.
Help Star Tribune! First newspaper to call Bush a liar gets attacked by Bushies.
Good diary. Good idea. Right wing attacks Star Trib, 1000 cancelled subscriptions, publishers unnerved etc. Let's help them.
But then I got to thinking.
Why not US?
Why are we always REACTING to organized wingnuttery?
And that led me once again to my oft repeated idea of a
More after the break.
So I responded with this comment:
Digby says "Cancelled subscriptions are unnerving the publisher."
I can well see how that might happen. When it's a (moderately) left wing newspaper and it is attacked by the right, we all see the danger. You post a diary about it and it is immediately on the recommend list.
But WE do nothing to use OUR power to effect the same sort of result regarding the massive stonewalling of the truth that has been perpetrated by the corporate media over the last...oh, let's say 42 years just to be on the safe side.
Why are WE not using the same tactics?
I proposed something I called
months ago here that never gained much traction.
Why not???
(Please go here, here, here, here and especially here to read several diaries and many comments on this NEWSTRIKE!!! idea.)
The right wing does it.
Why not us?
Was the proposition maybe a little too broad? Not focused enough? OK...let me ask you kossacks a couple of questions.
Digby says "Cancelled subscriptions are unnerving the publisher." Anyone know how MANY cancelled subscriptions it has taken to "unnerve" this publisher? When the LA Times reported on Schwarzenegger's groping activities just before the gubernatorial election, Editor & Publisher said "Almost as important as the Times' decision to air the charges was the reaction they provoked (including more than 1,000 cancelled subscriptions), and how the newspaper dealt with it."
1000 cancelled subscription rocked a newspaper with a circulation of 907,997? (http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050502/lam103.html?.v=8) THAT'S ABOUT.1% OF ITS BUSINESS!!! Looks like it's pretty damned easy to get these corporate frontrunners' attention, doesn't it?
Well?
What are we WAITING for?
What mainstream newspaper or magazine is most subscribed to by the people on this blog?
TIme Mag? Newsweek? WAPO? NY Times?
The NY Times claims a circulation of 1,136,433. (http://www.nytco.com/investors-nyt-circulation.html)
Time Mag? Time's circulation in the United States is 4,000,000 weekly.(http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=152157)
Newsweek and WAPO are probably in the same general ball park...Avis to the others' Hertz.
So 1000 or so cancelled subscriptions would get the attention of WAPO and the NY Times, and 4000 would make some noise in the offices of Newsweek and Time Magazine.
50,000+ Kossacks?
C'mon!!!
It's a SLAM DUNK!!! (With apologies to Mr. Tenet.)
Do you mean to tell me that there are not 4000 Kossacks with a subscription to Time or Newsweek? Hell...they practically GIVE those useless rags away!!!
CANCEL their asses!!!
1000 measly Kossacks with a subscription of some sort to the NY Times?
CANCEL, and TELL THEM WHY!!!
Let's take this a little further.
For the last week of 2004, an average of 8.4 million households tuned in to watch NBC's "Nightly News". 7.7 million for ABC, 6 million for CBS. (http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/1/11/105324.shtml)
So if they operate on the same general scale of corporate cowardice and short term bottom line paranoia as the LA Times...and I will BET you that they do...then only about 8000 serious emails and letters to NBC News telling them that we are through watching their lying asses stonewall the truth would snap their little grey flannel heads right back out of their corporate assholes.
As I have posted here a NUMBER of times...
An idea whose time has come.
DO IT!!!
Stop being so dismissive of all those so-called "wingnuts". Hell, people...they may be stupid but they DO wield their power, don't they?
How stupid are we NOT to?
An idea whose time has come.
I can see it now.
The Independence Day Media Massacre!!!
MONDAY.
Let's DO IT!!!
AG