Topic: Newsmax
Last week, Financial Times ran a profile (registration required) of Newsmax that its subject loved the heck out of. Given the article's fluffiness on its subject -- for example, quoting Christopher Ruddy likening Newsmax to "a heartland publication" like Reader's Digest -- no wonder.
Being a fluffy profile, Financial Times skips over any evidence that Newsmax has ever been controverisal -- there isn't even a mention of its co-owner, Richard Mellon Scaife. Ruddy is allowed to claim that he " started Newsmax in 1998 with a $25,000 investment to give Americans 'an alternative to the mainstream news, the liberal media in New York and Washington'" without any mention of rabid anti-Clintonism that drove those early years.
There's also no mention of more recent controversies, such as Newsmax being forced to pull a column by John L. Perry for advocating a military coup against President Obama. We're pretty sure Reader's Digest has never advocated a coup against anyone. (And that was far from the only column Newsmax removed in recent months for its extremism.) Nor was there any mention of the spectacular failure of Newsmax's attempted career rehabilitation of Bernard Kerik.
There's also no mention of the virulent anti-Obama strain at Newsmax as personified by columnist like Perry and Pamela Geller, or the anti-immigration attacks of James Walsh -- also not exactly Reader's Digest material.
The FT profile is not completely worthless, however; it includes some interesting numbers -- it employs 110 and expects to see $35 million in revenue in 2009, up from $25 million in 2008. It's also spending $500,000 a year on Newsmax.tv, which Ruddy claims "isn’t paying off in terms of advertising but it is paying off in terms of subscriptions" to its magazine and it financial- and health-related newsletters.
