A lot has changed at USA Today and throughout the rest of Gannett — the largest newspaper chain in America — over the last few years. The newspapers have gone “woke” writes David Mastio, the former deputy editorial page editor of USA Today in a Thursday New York Post editorial.
Mastio, after relating his own story of being demoted at USA Today for posting at Twitter the “unwoke” comment that “People who are pregnant are also women,” details the current state of affairs at Gannett:
Gannett’s top editors and publishers are filling the company with a cadre of young college graduates who share a narrow “woke” ideology that is alien to the values of most of its readers. In a closely divided America, Gannett has a grand total of one local conservative staff columnist. There’s one conservative editorial page left in the network. In recent years, I’ve watched good conservative editorial pages in Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Oklahoma City wink out to be replaced with bland corporate liberalism. There are zero conservative editorial cartoonists left in the network.
Mastio concludes his editorial with a prediction that this woke makeover will not turn out well financially for Gannett and USA Today, writing:
While Gannett and USA Today’s top leaders have understandably focused on the company’s billion-dollar debt and quarterly bottom line, they’ve lost control of its newsrooms, which are writing off half their potential readers to pursue activist staffers’ narrow political agendas. It won’t be long before that hits the bottom line — if it hasn’t already.
Indeed, the term “legacy media” sometimes applied to Gannett and other older companies may have become much more apt as many of these companies make the woke transition. The transformation will likely help ensure that their prominence and influence are increasingly attributes mainly of their past.
Read Mastio’s complete editorial here.
Big technology companies have provided increasingly woke legacy media companies like Gannett a lifeline by using search engines and social media to deliver to internet users those legacy media companies’ content despite it not matching up well with what many of these people desire to see. That big tech business model of deliberately delivering to people what they do not want seems rather unstable. Should it topple, expect the decline of many legacy media companies to accelerate.
The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity is a project of Dr. Paul’s Foundation for Rational Economics and Education (F.R.E.E.), founded in the 1970s as an educational organization. The Institute continues and expands Dr. Paul’s lifetime of public advocacy for a peaceful foreign policy and the protection of civil liberties at home. Visit http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org