So I lurk a lot, both keep sane during the week, and to pick up some story ideas. I wanted to make this post a while ago and chickened out, but seeing that post about Maddow fawning over Biden's new dog made me want to try with this account again.

US media is absolutely a big-L Liberal institution. But you'd be surprised how many socialists, or socdems at least, write for smaller and mid-size newsrooms. So AMA about trying to be a reporter with leftist views in a decidedly anti-left racket, or about the inner workings of American news outlets that aren't CNN, MSNBC or Fox.

  • Awoo [she/her]M
    ·
    3 years ago

    Surely "moving the needle" doesn't come from pandering to your existing audience but by providing content that reaches new audiences you haven't acquired already. Isn't this why RT is doing so well? It provides a huge range of content that appeals to very different audiences and they all watch it for very different reasons.

    Sounds like a bullshit excuse for an ideologically motivated decision to not cover the strike.

    • TheFreshestHell [he/him,any]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Sounds like a bullshit excuse for an ideologically motivated decision to not cover the strike.

      Partially, but it's also a market decision. If the majority of your readership is suburban professional class libs and petty bourg republicans, you need to give them the right slop or they'll take their snouts elsewhere.

      • Awoo [she/her]M
        ·
        3 years ago

        So give them that slop, appeal to their class interests.

        If your coverage is anti-union to an audience of petty-boug shits, it will still have the effect of increasing class war. It will provide fuel that the left will use to illustrate the oppression they're under and it will serve to highlight the media is not on their side.

        I'm not so sure that softening things helps. If the working class gets attacked then the working class will attack back, a lot of the reason that things don't escalate is because everything is kept at a slow-cook. There's no big catalysts that truly motivate and fuel people to fight.

        • TheFreshestHell [he/him,any]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Believe me, if I could tell my editor to go fuck himself without getting fired and cover whatever the hell I wanted, I would. But until my newsroom is unionized, and that's a slow-moving work in progress, it's leverage I don't really have. It's my personal complicity in maintaining the status quo.

          • Awoo [she/her]M
            ·
            3 years ago

            :rosa-salute: you know your situation best.