I struck some sort of nerve among blog readers yesterday with my effort to explain, rationally, why so many people are concerned about the President Obama’s speech to schools. I attempted to do this all while supporting his giving that speech.
My article, Obama’s school speech; conspiracy, incompetence, or mind your own damn business?, brought in a record number of visits to my blog. I exceeded 2,700 visitors with 4 hours left in the day. That does not include the large number of visitors to social networking sites and other sites that picked up enough of my article to keep visitors and comments on their site. Not bad for a newbie to the blogosphere.
Based on reader comments posted on this site plus a variety of comments I found on those other sites, I have concluded that the subject was an important driver of visits. But, the simple fact that someone made a solid effort to explore and explain both sides of the issue, respectfully and rationally, drove a lot more of the visits. I didn’t call any of those for or against Obama’s speech any names nor did I question their intelligence.
I write this with my thoughts on the U.S. newspaper industry. Many newspapers in this country are in trouble due to falling readership and the related drop in ad revenues. I suspect that much of that falling readership is due to perceptions that the mainstream media including newspapers is very biased, particularly when President Obama is involved.
Maybe my experience yesterday should get some attention from newspapers. I suspect there really is a market for rational, respectful analysis of all sides of a news story; something of higher quality than the so-called fact checks some have employed to address health care questions.
Newspapers are very important to our nation’s freedom. I hope they find ways to bring readers back. I hope they’ll consider my experience.
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I would like to see newspapers survive, too, but I doubt perceptions of bias in media coverage have much to do with their demise, at least at this point. They have to figure what people want from daily paper, since the internet and cable news are much faster, and free to those who already are set up to use them. Your blog is a perfect example in that it was factual, balanced AND interactive. The OP-Ed portion of the newspaper can’t compete.
I’m sure that many newspapers are showing bias in their opinion pieces, but I don’t think that is the reason for the drop off in their circulation. Frankly, I don’t see how newspapers can compete with the internet going forward and I’m really not sure why. As important as newspapers have been, historically, to our nation, what do they have left to offer that cannot be found out here on the web?