March 21, 2005
Bias: A Quick Study in Why Newspapers Lose Readership
It is hardly a secret that newspapers are in decline.
They've been losing readership by population percentage since the post-WWII years, and since 1990, they've been declining in hard numbers as well. The newspapers themselves have all sorts of theories as to why they are losing readership, as do newspaper bloggers.
They first blamed the rise of network and then cable television news, and now the Internet. They've responded by trying radical new layouts, page sizes, and diversified staffs.
But they still fail and decline in readership, due in part to the apparent refusal to take into account political bias in the media and in the communities they serve.
Strong liberal media bias exists, and we know this because the media tells us so, and respected academic research confirms it.
This liberal bias may not be as much of a problem for the New York Times, as the New York metropolitan area is highly Democratic and the Times has global reach. Still the Times is only breaking about even. Move up the Hudson River an hour's drive, though, and you face a different set of circumstances.
A quick look at the 2004 Presidential Election Map shows why.
While New York City slants heavily left, outside of the metropolitan areas, readerships tend toward political moderation or even slight conservativism. Papers in this arc outside of NYC still often reveal a strong liberal bias, as is readily evident to anyone who has ever read the Times Herald-Record or the Poughkeepsie Journal.
The readership of the Record draws from Orange, Sullivan, and parts of Ulster County. The Journal draws from Dutchess, Putnam, and parts of Orange and Ulster counties.
Of these five counties, only Ulster went for Kerry in the 2004 election, while Dutchess, Orange, and Putnam went to Bush by margins of 5%-15%. Sullivan was a near dead heat, with Bush beating Kerry by 75 votes.
So when you present moderate to conservative readerships with strongly liberal newspapers, what are the potential subscribes going to say? I'll let two of my readers tell you. I just wrote an article critical of apparent liberal bias in yesterday's Record.
Reader "Marc from Monroe" responded:
"I live in Monroe, NY, and this newspaper[ed. the Record] is our local piece of CRAP...
...When I moved to the region in 2000 I got the paper to learn about the place. As soon as I could, I cancelled the subscription, hard."Reader "Peg C." chimes in:
"I live in Newburgh and my Bush-hating in-laws read nothing but the Record. That explains all you need to know about it. I won't have it in the house and have read their subscription sellers the riot act over the phone numerous times for trying to get me to subscribe. Said their lefty bias made them anathema to me. What a piece of tripe!"
While two people does not majority make, they do seem to reflect at least in spirit the comments of many people I know in the area. I can only imagine, as NY political maps indicate, that a much more politically balanced news staff might help these papers at least slow their hemmorhaging of subscribers. Unfortunately, diversity means melanin content, not ideology, to far too many people on editorial boards.
While I'm certainly operating on far less than scientific data here, I'd be willing to bet that scientifically valid research would show that newspapers who editorial biases are out of touch with their readership's political viewpoints are loosing readers faster than papers that best mirror the views of their readerships.
I don't think it takes a government research grant to figure that newspapers who alienate their readers, won't have readers very long.
Update: Added to the Beltway Traffic Jam.
