Gazette: Still Re(a)d All Over

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Last week, Media Matters published a report, "Black and White and Re(a)d All Over: The Conservative Advantage in Syndicated Op-Ed Columns," an analysis of nationally syndicated columnists from nearly every daily newspaper in America. It is worth noting that this report described Wisconsin's newspaper media as "progressive" in general. But you wouldn't know it living here in Rock County.

By now, the Janesville Gazette subscriber and advertiser base in Rock County should be aware of the newspaper's editorial endorsements, Republican leanings and right-wing economics. Some readers still make weak attempts to link the paper up with democrats or even left-wing organizations. Subscribers also mistake the idea that since the Gazette recently has been publishing some off-color cartoons from the fringes, that it somehow helps balance their conservative editorial slant. It doesn’t - don’t be fooled.

Cartoons are meant to draw specific reactions with adjacent articles and othertimes are deliberately presented to stir up the base. I use them here, but this is a blog, it’s not a subscription-based mainstream media outlet. There should be a difference.

I would rather see newspapers present balanced news reports with a more open and honest centrist editorial view than one that has has an extreme political editorial right or left, only to think if they present cartoons or other views from the opposing extreme, they are achieving some form of balance. The Gazette seems to be heading in this direction.

But back to their syndicated political columnists. For being a relatively smaller paper, the Gazette has quite a few of the national columnists. So I thought it would be fun ranking their ideological differences in this simple chart. Sure, my analysis is not scientific, but it does represent about ten years of steady reading.

From my perspective, I’ve decided to put values on progressives from 0 to 100, 100 being the liberal extreme, and conservatives from 0 to –100, -100 being the conservative extreme with zero of course being the center. MediaMatters for instance labeled David Broder as a centrist. Not in my opinion. He leans to the right, not heavily but enough to consider him a conservative.This is not in any way connected with MediaMatters. And again, it is not scientific, but I will stand by my perspective. I separated McNally and Milam from the rest because their columns are usually Wisconsin only. It’s worth noting the Gazette carried Molly Ivins up until her passing. Although she was one of the most knowledgeable critics of the Bush Administration and a progressive, I would not have considered her extreme – but about a positive 50.

It appears the Janesville Gazette may be only one progressive columnist away from achieving Op-ed balance or they can permanently drop one of the full-time conservatives writers for the same effect. This excludes their ownership and editorial staff ideological position which of course would require much more drastic measures to "balance."