MINOT, N.D. — I wrote a column recently about local journalists getting blowback for the bias of the national news media. I almost always get a lot of feedback from my writing, which I’m deeply thankful for, but this particular column garnered more responses than I expected. Mostly from two categories of reader. One was from people…
Print Column: National News Outlets Squander the Public’s Trust and Local Journalists Suffer for It
MINOT, N.D. — This year the Columbia Journalism Review released the results of a national survey finding “the press” was the least trusted institution they asked about. They also asked respondents about Congress. You have to work at being trusted less than Congress. That term, though. “The press.” What does it mean? More on that in a…
When Actual Racism Doesn’t Happen I Guess We Have to Invent It
Disney has been doing this thing where they re-make their old animated movies with real actors and live action. The latest is the Little Mermaid, which in the original animated version portrayed Ariel as a young girl with red hair. The live action remake, however, will feature a black woman named Halley Bailey in the…
You Can’t Be a Journalist and an Elected Official
On the podcast today state Rep. Matt Eidson told me he’s going to do his best to do a good job both as an elected member of North Dakota’s legislature and a working journalist for the Grand Forks Herald and Prairie Public. I’m not convinced he can do it. I say that not to besmirch Eidson’s…
Plain Talk: Can You Be an Elected Official and a Reporter at the Same Time?
On this episode of Plain Talk, state Rep. Matt Eidson (D-Grand Forks) talks about how he plans to manage being an elected official as well as a reporter. Eidson has taken internships with Prairie Public and the Grand Forks Herald (owned by Forum Communications Company which also employs me), and says he’ll work hard to…
The National News Media Isn’t Even Particularly Good at Being Biased
The national news media has a pronounced leftward lean in their ideology. This is no big secret. Honest members of the media industry acknowledge it, and at least pay lip service to correcting it. The national news media, for the most part, also hates President Donald Trump. One needn’t watch many pundit panels on CNN,…
Print Column: The Problem With Journalism and Politics Is Us
MINOT, N.D. — Between the BuzzFeed catastrophe and the Covington Catholic High School mess, I’ve been thinking a lot about journalism these past few days. This is a topic I’m not fit to weigh on, according to some. Not so long ago columnist Jack Zaleski wrote that I shouldn’t refer to my reporter co-workers as colleagues, which is an…
Alternatively, More Conservatives Should Join the News Media
Yesterday, in response to consternation among media types over the demise of conservative news and opinion magazine The Weekly Standard, I argued that if “mainstream” media types were so concerned about it they ought to try hiring more conservatives. I received a lot of feedback on that post through various mediums, and one consistent and well-made…
The News Media Should Hire More Conservatives
There is a lot of consternation of late about the demise of The Weekly Standard, a right-of-center publication founded by Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes and owned by Rupert Murdoch from its founding in 1995 until 2009 (right around the media mogul purchased the Wall Street Journal). The Standard is hardly the first ideologically-driven publication…
Twitter Isn’t Harming Journalism, Journalists on Twitter Are
John Ziegler, writing at Mediate, has an interesting piece today headlined “The Top Ten Ways That Twitter Has Greatly Harmed Journalism and Destroyed Our Public Discourse.” An excerpt: I have written before about some of the many problems which exist with Twitter, the platform which now, partly because of President Trump’s love of the outlet,…