@NickM
I’m not sure I can address that phenomenon… but I have noticed it as well. I would say that it has little or nothing to do with the economic factor of trying to tap an existing market. One sees the same thing in every industry, but it is most painfully clear in any manifestation of the entertainment industry.
Market forces would seem to dictate that the industry would go where the money is… but industries wised up some time ago and reasoned that it is easier for the mountain to come to Mohammed. “News”, music, movies, television programs and et cetera are relentless in manufacturing demand that does not already exist to the degree in which it is presented. Existing demographic preferences which are excluded have little choice but to consume what is available; not what they necessarily want.
This “creating demand upon demand” approach seems to be working well for them (it obviates the need to waste capital and time by actually doing market research since what the consumers “want” is determined by the vendors themselves) and, in the case of political news outlets, it has the additional benefit of marginalizing dissenters.
Do they do this to manufacture the status quo or simply to maintain the status quo? The answer to that depends upon how much credit you wish to give them and whether you are feeling more cynical or paranoid on any given day. It works well in either case.

Posted by: Monolycus | Jun 27 2005 21:47 utc | 3

nice catch, annie

Posted by: slothrop | Jun 27 2005 22:42 utc | 5

from the days of old Adolph Ochs, The Times made a premium of “news” to cultivate the sophisticated audience appealing to advertisers. Surely, this audience is still a valuable commodity? Obviously, not enough value for Wallstreet.
Somewhere in Hell, William Randolph Hearst is howling with laughter.

The impact of trading newspaper corporate stock on the stock market has meant that news companies must constantly expand in size and rate of profits in order to maintain their position on stock exchanges. This means that companies no longer reach a steady state of profits in real dollars; instead, the new ethic encourages them to squeeze the maximum from every news-paper unit in the corporation in order to buy ever more properties, not always in the news business, and to declare ever growing dividends…. This has introduced yet a third constituency for daily newspapers-stock market investors. Instead of the single master so celebrated in the rhetoric of the industry-the reader-there are in fact three masters-the reader, the adver-tiser, and the stock market. And with the increase of size of the corporation the emphasis shifts steadily toward the last two, in order for the large news corporations to maintain their economic position with other national and transnational corporations. (Bagdikian, 1980, pp. 63-64)

Farewell, old media. Good riddance.

Posted by: slothrop | Jun 27 2005 23:46 utc | 7

Instead of the single master so celebrated in the rhetoric of the industry-the reader-there are in fact three masters-the reader, the adver-tiser, and the stock market. And with the increase of size of the corporation the emphasis shifts steadily toward the last two

Bagdikian saw it coming — just as Paddy Chayafesky did in “Network” (Just like Fox News, but with better mad prophets of the airwaves.)

When, exactly, is the media going to realize that the market for idiot right-wing opinion is already saturated? Why should we have Fox, MSNBC and CNN spewing mostly the same crap, when there’s a huge market out there – of people in target demographics, no less – who would watch/buy liberal product

I’m just speculating here, but I suspect the Times believes it can always hold on to its liberal readership — after all, even with the Keller make over, it probably will remain a lot more liberal (culturally, at least) than the vast majority of local newspapers, TV news shows, etc.
But I think the Times marketing guys have looked at who they are competing against in the national daily newspaper market — which means the Wall Street Journal and USA Today — and have concluded that those two have a huge brand advantage in the red states because they are not viewed as negatively by conservatives, particularly cultural conservatives.
The Times may believe that it can’t afford that handicap. It’s not even clear there’s going to be room for three national daily newspapers (given the industry’s general decline) and Times management may fear being left the odd paper out. They may also be right.

Farewell, old media. Good riddance.

I feel that way too, some of the time. But then I think about what kind of information sources we would have if “old media” really did go away. Imagine no more NYT, no Washington Post, no wire services, no news weeklies, no Economist, no Guardian or Independent.
Or, more likely, imagine all of those sources forced to charge corporate newsletter-level subscriptions for access.
We could be left with the cable news morons and the talk radio ranters as the only “free” news media. That, plus the blogs and the indymedia type operations — which are wonderfully free, but hit or miss (at best) in terms of coverage and accuracy.
The problem is that news gathering — reporting, as opposed to bloviating — is very expensive. If the “old media” model breaks down, the only people with access to hard, reliable information might be those with the money to pay for it, which could primarily mean those with a corporate expense account for such things.
That would be a high price to pay for the knowledge that Judy Miller and Bill Keller are out of work.
.

Posted by: Billmon | Jun 28 2005 0:30 utc | 9

“I think about what kind of information sources we would have if “old media” really did go away”me too
“The alliance that will challenge Microsoft’s ambitions emerges in 2008. Google and Amazon join forces to form Googlezon. Google supplies the Google Grid and unparalleled search technology. Amazon supplies the social recommendation engine and commercial infrastructure. Together, they provide total customisation of content – and advertising. The “News Wars” of 2010 are notable for the fact that no actual news organisations take part”

Posted by: annie | Jun 28 2005 1:02 utc | 11

I remember the first time I read the New York Times 46 years ago for a Civics course in a small western Washington High School. The teacher thought it would be good for us to learn something about the real world. (He subsequently lost his job when we learned our lesson too well and after class organized a telegram to President Eisenhower urging him to apologise to Kruschchev for the U-2 incident — but that’s a story for another day). It was a revelation. A few years later I got to read it as a New Yorker, learning to tell the editions from the number of dots after the date on the top line (it used to come out around 9:30 at my West 89th street kiosk).
It was a great paper. It is no longer a great paper. It was great because it had to compete against Lippman and the Herald Trib. Reston is long gone, Lewis is retired, Apple retired, if not deceased. They have no more great reporters. Instead they have by-lines. The Op-Ed page is a disaster. Originally it provided a space for Lewis and Baker and Reston, but mainly it was used to let people who actually know something about a topic (or could persuade the op-ed editor they knew something) to write a thousand words on it. Now we have the dispicable Brooks and the fatuous Friedman, Even Kristoff, who reads and speaks Chinese and evidently Arabic, is either muffled or has lost his bite. Of Krugman I say little. He is a friend. They hired him because he is an economist who writes well. They they didn’t check whether he actually could think, though it would have been fairly easy to determine.
The Times is a corporation. It exists to make money. It publishes in all the major metropolitan centers. It can’t sell advertising in places that don’t have the same information or values as its old New York market. It’s a business model that probably works. But compared to the Times I knew when I first was exposed to the outside world, it sucks.
Maybe we should start citing the Boston Globe, which though owned by Times Corp. is local and serves an educated audience.
It’s been years since I bought a Sunday Times. It’s like watching three hours of television.

Posted by: Knut Wicksell | Jun 28 2005 1:26 utc | 13

I haven’t commented here (maybe once or twice) but I lurk often and used to comment sometimes at the old place.
Dubious bone fides dispensed with, I have a question for those familiar with the inner workings of news:
How reliant are the wire services on the consumers? Are they and the stringers who work for them a little more insulated against this kind of politicization? If outlets like the NYT publish fewer of a particular stringer’s reports, would that stringer be under pressure to change his or her reporting style or viewpoint?

Posted by: Jackmormon | Jun 28 2005 1:32 utc | 15

Knut, I live in NYC now. For local news, it would be mad to read the NYT: the Metro section is blithering nonsense. The Voice has good local reporting written up in an impenetrable style. The Post actually addresses local issues, but their bias is nauseating. The Sun is a horror. AM New York and Metro New York (both free wire digests with a few local spots) do better than the NYT; the NY Press, still free, is a strange hybrid of snarky blog-style local reporting and Voice-type ambitions.
The NYT exists on an almost Medium Lobsterish plane of disconnectedness, yet local readers have tended to find themselves curiously drawn into those ethereal, unlocatable waves. If the paper truly goes through with this “diversity” initiative–while taking some features offline–we’ll see what local NYC press flourishes…

Posted by: Jackmormon | Jun 28 2005 1:45 utc | 17

I’ve said this before…
Now that NYT publishes the lying drivel of Brooks and Friedman it retains no claim to the reputation it may have once had. Worn out. Moss covered. too Soggy to even light a fire with. And worst of all, self-important.
Given the news it has chosen not to print in the last few years I would call it a filthy propaganda rag, that is, accessory to mass murder.
Sorry to offend you faithful readers out there.

Posted by: rapt | Jun 28 2005 2:08 utc | 19

It may be bad form to demonize, but there really is a demon in this story, and it’s Abe Rosenthal–a gifted and twisted man who really tortured good editors and journalists, all in the name of Virtue (as understood by Abe) and profits (as understood by Punch Sulzberger). He killed the Times slowly–and not without its going into a remission of sorts under Joe Lelyveld. But then came Raines, that hyperbolic recurrence of the dreadful Rosenthal (whose son, as mentioned elsewhere, is currently the op-ed editor). A paper as incestuously (and provincially) staffed (and managed) as the Times can’t possibly go national in any real way–it can only fail to go local… I don’t agree that USA Today and the WSJ have managed to be strong national papers merely on the basis of their political slant (or slants), because I think those papers really have found a way to “go national”–partly, I suspect, through the idiom of their feature stories (often decidedly liberal). If this is what Keller’s after, I doubt he’ll succeed.

Posted by: alabama | Jun 28 2005 2:58 utc | 21

Billmon is right that the Times motive in becoming more accomodative to Red State conservatives is to enable it to compete better as a national paper with the WSJ and USA Today. As others have noted, it’s unlikely to work.
On the other hand, after acquiring full ownership of the International Herald Tribune, I would have expected the Times to be expanding their reach internationally. The strategy of appealing more to Red Staters (and the overall listnessless and mediocrity of the paper over the past decade) would appear to make such an objective less achievable.
The only advantage the Times has over its competitors now is the breadth of its coverage (certainly not its quality). Domestically, the quality of the news articles in the Wall St. Journal and even the Washington Post is superior to the Times by a good margin. Internationally among English language dailies, the Financial Times (which is one of the world’s best newspapers), and the Guardian put out a superior product to the Times.
The Times has the resources to be the best newspaper in the world, but appears to lack the will. It’s really too bad Bill Kovacs did not advance further in this unduly self-satisfied and insular institution. It needs quite a shake-up to fulfill its potential.

Posted by: Ben Brackley | Jun 28 2005 3:27 utc | 23

1. There is clearly a market for quality reporting that is not being served. The demand may not be at USA today level, but so what?
Then again, an alternative with a good sports page and gorgeous page two tatas, might be surprisingly popular.
Seems to me a great paper only takes twenty great reporters. One thing the Confederate Republicans have done for us over the past five years is to clearly separate the great reporters are from the professional blow job artists are with bylines. The info is now freely available.
2. Reporters are expensive, they are not that expensive.
3. It is time for subscribers to let the NYT know what they think of the paper.
On a date certain, say, September 16th, it would be nice if fifty thousand or so people cancelled their NYT subscriptions and stopped going to its web site or discussing. The paper is a detriment to the pursuit of a more perfect union. I have one to offer up, including Sunday.

Posted by: razor | Jun 28 2005 3:49 utc | 25

How reliant are the wire services on the consumers? Are they and the stringers who work for them a little more insulated against this kind of politicization? If outlets like the NYT publish fewer of a particular stringer’s reports, would that stringer be under pressure to change his or her reporting style or viewpoint?

Good question, JM. I hope someone has the answer.
I just re-read Krrugman’s “Accidental Theorist” and have also met him several times. They hired him because he was staunchly neo-liberal–pro free trade and pro foreign sweat shop, while also exposing a few harmless economic myths in an entertaining fashion. Of course they are mortified by what he’s become–perhaps that’s why they are moving op-eds to subscription! The thing about Krugman is that, whether you agree with him or not, he has always been intellectually honest; he has a geekily naive quality to him about social and political exigencies. And now that he’s started, he really is fearless. But it’s important to remember that, while socially liberal, and economically he has moved towards the liberal left–particularly in his defense of the aspirations of the dwindling middle class of his childhood–he is, in other respects, someone who would fit in fine in Eisenhower’s administration, or even Reagan’s, where he actually got his start.
On a related topic, did anyone see Michael Ignatieff’s propaganda piece in this week’s Times Magazine section–“Who Are Americans to Think That Freedom Is Theirs to Spread?”
What a piece of crap! He discusses the whole PNAC wet dream in terms of Jeffersonian Democracy and American’s “good intentions”, with barely a nod to oil, geo-polical power, or any other rational interest.
A few choice quotes:

Until George W. Bush, no American president — not even Franklin Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson — actually risked his presidency on the premise that Jefferson might be right
If democracy plants itself in Iraq and spreads throughout the Middle East, Bush will be remembered as a plain-speaking visionary.
And yet . . . and yet. . . . More than one world leader has been heard to ask his advisers recently, ”What if Bush is right?”
Other democratic leaders may suspect Bush is right…
The relentless emphasis on the hidden role of oil makes the promotion of democracy seem like a devious cover or lame excuse. The unseen cost of this pseudo-Marxist realism is that it disconnected the Democratic Party from the patriotic idealism of the very electorate it sought to persuade.

You see, “oil” is just “pseudo-Marxist realism”,and natually the word “Marxist” is only used twice in the article–the first time in a reference to Stalin, just so we should be sure to discredit this line of thinking.
This is sure some thin gruel. I hope Billmon, or someone who writes better than myself, has some fun skewering this yet another Orwellian apology for endless war disguised as a noble venture.

Posted by: Malooga | Jun 28 2005 6:12 utc | 27

“But could not our situation be compared to one of a menacing epidemic? People are unable to view this situation in its true light, for their eyes are blinded by passion. General fear and anxiety create hatred and aggressiveness. The adaptation to warlike aims and activities has corrupted the mentality of man; as a result, intelligent, objective and humane thinking has hardly any effect and is even suspected and persecuted as unpatriotic.”
— Albert Einstein

Posted by: Outraged | Jun 28 2005 14:58 utc | 29