I remember when my father used to, jokingly, call our local morning paper “The Comical Appeal”. Now that I’ve seen their recent handiwork, I’ve been outraged, like many progressives in Memphis, about the Commercial Appeal’s downward spiral into a conservative rag, frequently and openly portraying itself in a way that makes it unfit even to perforate and place on a roll for appropriate usage. Autoegocrat over at The Flypaper Theory reprinted the cover of Monday’s C.A. for everyone to see, along with a fairly accurate commentary about how the paper has devolved into a candidly biased and seemingly content-deflated publication.
The GOP constantly gets reinforcement for its political frames on the front page of the only daily newspaper that serves a city that is mostly Democratic. One day not too long ago, Howie Kurtz got the front page lede. On another, Haley Barbour got some free buzz for his presidential ambitions. When not doing for the GOP what Monica did for Bill, the Commercial Appeal is usually using the front page to hawk empty consumerism and human interest stories about cute fuzzy puppies.
It should come as no surprise that this behaviour on the part of the newspaper is likely in direct response to a decline in readership of the paper and, for that matter, newspapers in general as the population continues to turn to internet sites for its news. I’m all for equal time and the like, but there comes a point at which the C.A. has stopped reporting real news and, instead, is pandering to what it interprets as its readership. There is no other daily newspaper in Memphis, not since the Memphis Press-Scimitar shut down its presses some 15 years ago. If it weren’t for the fact that newspaper revenues are down dramatically, I’d suggest someone form something new in this town. But I’d hate for them to lose their shirt over something that our town’s one daily newspaper should have enough self-worth to maintain: integrity.
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