If Sheldon Adelson Really Wants to Control the Press, He's 100 Years Too Late - POLITICO Magazine

If Sheldon Adelson Really Wants to Control the Press, He's 100 Years Too Late - POLITICO Magazine

Some valid points about the declining ability of newspapers to shape the local political debate:

"But in recent decades, the plutocrat's ability to control a city or region's news agenda through ownership of its top daily and the manipulation of its news product has plummeted. Even in places where a plutocrat owns the only daily, independent radio and television journalists abound to expose him if he insists on resting his thumb too heavily on the news scale. Bloggers and weekly newspapers also stand ready to criticize him. The Adelson family's purchase of the Review-Journal--to make concrete our discussion of plutocracy--has made the paper's coverage of even inconsequential events an object of national fascination." Certainly it's a good thing that critics are scrutinizing media sources to see how their coverage might be shaped by corporate interests.

Still, there's something menacing in the last couple of paragraphs:

"But for the modern plutocrat, purchasing a newspaper conveys no new, instant power. The competition for audience and advertising is too great for any newspaper to run roughshod over the truth and not pay a price.... The Adelsons have purchased a wonderful toy that the culture won't ever let them play with."

Media outlets don't have to "run roughshod over the truth" to have influence. Simply by selecting which stories to pursue, which stories to promote, a newspaper shapes public perception, particularly when it comes to local officials, which fewer alternative outlets are writing about.

If the writer means to suggest that the professional journalists at the LVRJ will continue to skew coverage to the Left, in spite of the new ownership... well, conservative schools are turning out plenty of hungry, aspiring reporters.