Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Feb. 5 WorldNetDaily column by Les Kinsolving takes a certain amount of glee in the fact that the "strongly liberal" Washington Post is losing circulation:
So what is the Post doing about this precipitous loss in circulation and income?
Are you sitting down?
They are raising this price of each copy of the paper from 35 to 50 cents.
This despite the fact that a new daily newspaper competitor. the Examiner, is delivered at homes and available in street boxes – for free.
The Post in this story, "Post newsstand price going up to 50 cents," did not mention this free competing daily – or the fact that the Washington Times still retains its 25 cent price – as well as a smaller but hardly sinking number of avid readers, particularly on Capitol Hill.
Kinsolving adds: "I would suggest that both of these Old Big Media giants [the Post and the New York Times] might, before they lose a quarter million more in circulation, consider some ideological emulation of the conservative New York Post – one of the very very few daily newspapers that recently reported an increase in circulation."
But Kinsolving ignores the fact that the Washington Times and the New York Post are working off of a different economic model than the Washington Post and the New York Times. As we've noted, the WashTimes and the NY Post are perennial money-losers kept in business only by the deep pockets of their conservative billionaire owners. They are not competing in an open business market, while the WaPo and the NYT are -- which tells us that conservative newspaper journalism is not a smart business move. If the Washington Times were actually in the newspaper business to make a profit, it would not still be 25 cents a copy.
