Media Reports Air America Demise, Begs for New Home

It is no secret that Air America is a favorite of most if not all the liberal denizens of many newsrooms. In Austin today, Austin Statesman reporter W. Gardner Selby cemented that reputation in his/her publicity piece on Air America's demise in Austin, Texas. Wrote Selby,

Air America seeks another home in Central Texas, but nothing is imminent, Kaufman said. He'd welcome tips at dkaufman@airamerica.com.

"If someone can point me in the direction of someone more amenable to picking up our format, I'll take all the help I can get," Kaufman said.

I am aware that the liberal media will do virtually anything to try to counteract the conservative dominance of talk radio, but for a supposedly neutral reporter to publish the liberal talk radio's contact information along with a barely-disguised plea for someone to add Air American to their lineup strikes me as somehow beyond the pale. Can anyone imagine a similar cry for help if Rush went off the air due to low ratings?

However, Selby makes his/her own personal feelings even clearer by quoting from a poster on the Democratic Underground website- a site whose partisanship is not in question. Yet Selby apparently considers them mainstream enough to use as a quote, writing,

A blogger writing on democraticunderground.com was dismayed. "This is a city that is overwhelmingly Democratic, but the right-wing talk radio stations in town consistently get much better ratings."

It seems to me that if Air America could not succeed in Austin- one of the most liberal cities in the United States, then perhaps Selby and his friends on the Democratic Underground might consider that their product is less than appealing, or perhaps, echoes that of the so-called mainstream media a little too closely. People welcome alternative voices, not a single ideological echo chamber. If the liberals understood this, they might understand why the mainstream media is losing their audience and why liberal talk radio consistently fails so spectacularly. But of course, if they could understand that, they would not be the monolithically liberal media. Hat tip to NewsBusters reader Gregg Geil. Cross-posted on NewsBusters.