Barron's Magazine, "America's premier financial weekly," boasts a paid circulation of 301,230. Barron's claims it "has been influencing the decisions of investors for more than 80 years."
Publisher Dow Jones & Company also puts out the Wall Street Journal, which claims print and online circulation of 2.1 million (WSJ Online is subscriber-only).
Barron's online editor Howard Gold authors a twice-monthly capitalist call-to-arms, "Fighting the Tape." On Thursday, Gold tackled an up-and-coming VRWC talking point: the decline and fall of the mainstream media in western culture.
You definitely want to read Two Cheers For the Mainstream Media. We're winning. And they are very frightened.
The mainstream media is in trouble. Big trouble. According to Gold:
A crisis of confidence has combined with a technological revolution and structural economic change to create what can only be described as a perfect storm, especially for newspapers and broadcast news outlets.
The Jayson Blair scandal that rocked The New York Times in 2003 revealed the kind of ineptitude and imperiousness that The Times loves to expose in others (see Fighting the Tape, "Times Fiasco Has Lessons For Us All," May 22, 2003).
Internet bloggers have bagged some big pelts in recent months. They took down some experienced producers at CBS News' 60 Minutes and may have accelerated anchor Dan Rather's retirement over a questionable preelection story about President Bush's National Guard service.
And Eason Jordan, the chief news executive of CNN, resigned after bloggers recounted remarks he apparently made in Davos, Switzerland that the U.S. military was targeting journalists in Iraq.
Funny. To sketch the malaise of the media, Gold follows precisely the same post hoc ergo propter hoc (Blair-to-Rather-to-Eason Jordan) fallacy as Ann Coulter. Can you say "Republican Talking Points?"
More solid Gold:
...the Internet...is undermining the traditional media in many ways.
Meanwhile, print's business model is imploding as younger readers turn toward free tabloids and electronic media to get news (see Fighting the Tape, "The Print Media's Malaise Runs Deep," July 22. 2004).
Forget that almost anyone with any brains has been saying this for 10 years already. Not to worry, Gold chortles. "Bloggers" are a flash in the pan.
When their 15 minutes are over, bloggers will assume a necessary but limited role: as a source of lively opinion and a reality check on the mainstream media. Those that have the highest standards will be recognized as independent journalists.
Real journalists, Gold claims, are professionals, and:
...professional journalists still do a better job than anyone else of informing the public about the most important events of our day.
"Professionals" are more relevant than bloggers for the simple reason that:
...we get paid for what we do, and in a capitalist economy that's the way talent is recognized and rewarded.
And, when all is said and done, "professional standards" constitute the biggest stick corporate media can wave at the "blogs." Even so, Gold finally admits, corporate media is feeling a strain. Here's the demise of the mainstream press in pure capitalese:
The fraying of business models that worked for so long is putting enormous pressure on some short-sighted corporate managements to cut resources dramatically to preserve illusory profit margins.
That has driven too many talented people out of the business and has made it increasingly difficult for those who remain to do their jobs.
And unrelenting political pressure - mostly, it must be said, from the right - has often led the media into timidity and self-censorship precisely when the public would be best served by vigorous questioning of authority.
Like most clichés, the term "liberal bias" has a grain of truth, and was probably more valid 20 years ago when conservatives still could plausibly view themselves as a beleaguered minority.
But now that they're pretty solidly in power, some are using that phrase to bully journalists who might try to publish inconvenient information. It's also a nice fig leaf that allows people who have strong opinions to ignore facts they just don't want to hear.
The same might accurately be said of Mr. Gold's "two cheers." If this is the best they've got, it's pretty clear we are winning the war for truth, the corporate media can see the handwriting on the wall, and they are sincerely frightened.