Ace continues to follow the refusal of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to cooperate with the FBI in their attempt to get more information about two men who might be planning an attack on a ferry. The editor of that august publication says:
I understand that people have a hard time with the concept that we get to decide what is news and what isn't, and what is fair and what isn't.
Ace says:
That's the problem. You keep insisting you have a more important, more influential job than the rest of us have agreed to give you. You jerkoffs keep describing the dream job that you wish you had, wished we would allow you to have. You simply refuse to accept that we do not give such important jobs out willy-nilly, and we especially don't hand them out to smugly incompetent morons like yourself who crave that sort of power just because they petulantly demand it.
I would disagree a little bit. If the editor of the P-I thinks that's the job he's been assigned by ownership, so be it. As far as that publication goes, he might be right.
The ultimate verdict on whether the consumers of news agree of course, is shown by their decision whether to buy the newspaper. To look at circulation numbers, the people of Seattle aren't showing much confidence. It's reported that circulation of the P-I was 176,000 daily in 2000, but had fallen to 128,000 by 2007: a drop of 27 percent in 7 years.
Perhaps I'm being too harsh. We all know that newspapers don't have the power and influence that they did a few years ago. I suppose there's no shame in having nearly 65 percent the readership as Instapundit. There's no shame in that; we can't all be as influential as Glenn Reynolds.
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