What Market Forces?

To follow up on Atrios’ point, it seems worth noting the newspaper situation here in one of the nation’s most liberal cities (my borough, which Kerry won 72-27, is conservative by New York standards), our dailies include the New York Times, with a moderate-left op-ed page (featuring at least one regular conservative columnist). OK. Then you have the Wall Street Journal, whose op-ed pages are a fount of entirely unleavened wingnuttery. And the New York Post, which to borrow a friend’s line is not so much a newspaper as a social meance. And The Daily News, which endorsed Bush in 2004. And The New York Sun, which you’ll like if you think it’s a good idea to have an entire newspaper written like the WSJ’s editorial pages. Even if you count Newsday as a New York paper, that’s two liberal op-ed pages out of six. Moreover, the comparative ideologies aren’t commensurate — can you imagine the Wall Street Journal joining in an endless attack on Bush based on trumped-up pseudo-scandals, as the Times did against Clinton in the 90s? Is there any equivalent in the Times of the Journal implying that Clinton was involved in drug-running? At any rate, it’s pretty clear that the reactionary tenor of the city’s op-ed pages, far from playing to market forces, is cutting against them. (In its last audited circulation, The Sun had a circulation of 18,000.) Just as Olbermann proves that the exclusion of liberals from cable news was never just about market forces.