If only it were that easy. Jacoby addresses that question very well in his recent Op-Ed for the Boston Globe:
I wish the lack of ideological diversity that tends to characterize most major newspapers - the reflexive support for Democrats, the distaste for religion and the military, the cheerleading for liberal enthusiasms from gun control to gay marriage - really did explain the industry's present woes. Because then newspaper companies would know what it would take to recover: a reorienting of their editorial views from left to center-right and the recruitment of editors and writers with a more conservative outlook.
But if liberal media bias is the explanation, why are undeniably left-of-center papers like the Globe, The New York Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle attracting more readers than ever when visitors to their websites are taken into account? How does liberal bias explain the shutdown of Denver's more conservative Rocky Mountain News, but not the more liberal Denver Post? How does it explain the collapse of newspapers in lefty enclaves like Seattle and San Francisco? How does it explain why the great majority of Americans - 60 percent, according to a recent CBS/New York Times poll - get most of their news from TV?
Newspapers are in extremis not because of their political agenda, but because the world around them has been transformed.
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