Mary Katharine Ham of The Examiner writes about competition and accountability in the media. Excerpt:
I grew up in a cross-town newspaper battle — one of the few left in a news climate where chains had bought most major dailies and many markets had become monopolies. I learned early that two newspapers fighting for scoops and readers meant that readers got better news coverage than they would have gotten if they were served by one paper.
I know because I watched both papers grow. We got the competition’s newspaper delivered to our house for opposition research.
...
I decided to give up newspapers when I started thinking of blogs and conservative media as just another competitor to the Mainstream Media. I don’t have to be the mortal enemy of the papers I grew up with. Sure, they do stupid things, and I love to call them out for it just as they love to call out bloggers, but the truth is that blogs have the ability to push newspapers and other mainstream media to be better.
I need the foreign bureaus and the years of experience embodied by an MSM news organization in order to be a decent blogger. I see the virtues of the MSM despite its many gaffes. After spending half my career in the newsroom and the other in my pajamas, as is the blogger custom, I know that if more members of the MSM did the same, we’d all end up with better products.
There is a reason the competition newspaper landed on our doorstep every day growing up. It thumped against the stoop next to “our” newspaper, weighty with ideas that could be used and tweaked in competition against it.
There are hundreds of cities that publish only one major daily, and far fewer that publish two or more. New York and Chicago may be the last few metropolitan areas in the United States that benefit from competition among newspapers. Out here on the High Plains, the Gannett-owned Sioux Falls Argus Leader dominates the region and holds a great amount of influence. Thousands of people in the southeast corner of the state read the paper and many small town dailies and weeklies run Argus stories. The rippling effect is large and, as such, the Argus plays an important role in presenting information to the citizens in the state. The Argus also holds monopoly power in terms of profitability. In short, the Argus is critical to the proper functioning of the democratic process in South Dakota. The core critique of the South Dakota bloggers during the 2004 campaign was the paper's biased reporting of the senate race, which favored Tom Daschle, and the Argus' political reporter, David Kranz, an old college buddy of Daschle's. The two were active in politics together in the 1960s, when Kranz was Daschle's "publicity chairman" for a mock Democratic convention. When Daschle and other staffers looked for friendly reporters in the 1970s, they immediately went to Kranz. The "bombshell memos" (which you can find on the right-hand side of this blog) called him "very much a strong Demo" and documented his work to help Democrats and hurt Republicans. Also note that the Argus buried at least 66 stories that reflected negatively on Daschle back in 2004.
The executive editor of the Argus, Randell Beck, responded to the blogospheric criticism of Kranz and the Argus, saying Kranz was "the best political reporter in the region" and "one of the finest, most honest, credible reporters in the region." Beck also said that the criticism was "crap" and driven by a "violent" internet "cabal" of "yahoos" and "jokers," who are full of "hatred" and "vitriol" and lacked "guts" because they hid "behind their computer screens" and wouldn't face him "man to man." Beck then went on to highlight the importance of debating issues "without calling each other names." That the Argus has a political slant is obvious, and that's fine. This blog also has a political slant that's obvious. But the Argus wasn't (and isn't) honest about it. To feign objectivity is absurd--and a fraud. Blogs never claim to be objective like the newspapers do.
There is no doubt that the South Dakota blogs affected the Argus' coverage of the Daschle-Thune Senate race that Ms. Ham talked about above. A University of South Dakota political science professor said the blog impact was "huge." Former KELO-Land anchor Steve Hemmingsen thought blogs had "a lot of clout" in the Senate race. Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit wrote about the Dakota Blog Alliance in a post-election column. The Argus Leader was put in a position where it had to respond to the blog criticism of its coverage, which made the coverage of the race (sometimes) better and, thus, made the citizens of this state more knowledgeable about the Senate race. These are the benefits of competition: more efficiency, better results, and a better service for consumers. Additionally for newspapers, there is better news coverage and a more informed electorate, an essential component in the practice of democracy.
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