Op-Ed Sections, Threat or Menace?

Asrael-

Callender was later found dead in a few feet of water. He was a notorious drinker, but this has always been somewhat of an Unsolved Mystery™.

 

I'm starting to think they're doing this to accelerate the fall of public education. How can you keep schools open if no one will teach in them?

 

The educated class should take a page from the segregationists of the 1970s and open “private schools” open to all. Let the dregs of society deal with their creationism.

 

Irrespective of politics - which we don't argue on this thread - there are lots of serious threats to freedom of speech. And the 1st Amendment.

Andrew Sullivan moving to Substack isn't one of them.

 

ex- top editor now paid gun, offering op-ed placements.
https://newjerseyglobe.com/media/former-star-ledger-editor-now-offering-to-place-op-eds-for-clients/

 

The sweetest words are,
"Here is your end."

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/medi...=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

The company has been pushing for the cutbacks for years, and they have become increasingly visible to readers since a committee of editors formally recommended them at a meeting in April. “Readers don’t want us to tell them what to think,” the editors, who come from Gannett newsrooms across the country, declared in an internal presentation. “They don’t believe we have the expertise to tell anyone what to think on most issues. They perceive us as having a biased agenda.”

 

Same idiots don't want to be told what to think and think everyone else has a biased agenda will sit transfixed by Fox News propaganda.

 

The quest not to offend somebody or bodies invariably turns into a campaign not to be of interest to anyone.

 

I'm guessing - and only that, just guessing - the following is true:

1. Most Gannett EICs/editorial boards lean left at this point. Certainly most of their young newsrooms do. Given that some - not all, or perhaps even many, but some - newsrooms now operate like an academic senate, where the EIC/leaders have to "win the newsroom" or face a no-confidence vote, there's certain moderate positions (maybe more nuclear plants? maybe gear back certain COVID restrictions?) that represent no-fly zones.

2. Most young, progressive persons are not subscribers to these papers. Certainly not the print versions. They read the NYT and Post and Politico, etc.

3. Most of the folks who do still subscribe to these papers are older and much more conservative in general, and they do not appreciate the leftish op-ed stances.

4. The op-eds are thus not an effective strategy for either attracting new progressive clients or retaining old conservative clients.

 

My home town paper became part of the Gannett chain decades ago. My old friends, who now really are old, have had the same complaint ever since. "There's nothing to read in this damn thing!"

 

It's a whole separate discussion, but it's fair to ask what a modern local newspaper should be, especially when, again, the recruiting pool from which you're picking may not be willing to cover stories that don't suit their political worldview.