Comment by bpt3
2 days ago
> If journalists had taken a neutral political position and called out wrong doing equally, they'd have at least 2x the paying subscriber base now.
Or they'd have no paying subscriber base because everyone is pissed off at them.
I prefer sources that just report on local happenings (including the activities of our local government) and am fortunate to have at least one that is non-partisan, but I don't think their success is assured, especially in an area that leans far in one specific direction.
In this case, the area in question very much does not lean in one specific direction. Which makes it unclear what journalists that do lean far in one direction are trying to accomplish in such an area.
They are pandering to the portion of the population that does lean in a specific direction and wants to participate in an echo chamber, which seems like it should be a tiny number of people to me but organizations like Fox News (and all the knockoffs that sprung up to reach people who feel like Fox News is too "fair and balanced") continue to prove me wrong.
Given what I said above, my point was that a significant portion of the local population will remember the negative articles about their side from that outlet and avoid it, leaving them with the depressingly small number of people who either don't consider themselves to be aligned with either party or actually want to read unbiased reporting.
In addition to just writing about what they believe personally, the business case is that you can capture more subscribers pandering to one side than you can pandering to no one.