New York Post-Mortem?

An overdue word or two first, about the tragic bombings at the Boston Marathon.

There is never any justification for acts of violence like this.  The victims, and their families, should be uppermost in our thoughts and prayers.  And NO ONE should use an outrage like this as part of a political agenda.

On the other hand, when they do so and screw it up, and it's Rupert Murdoch's New York Post doing the screwing up, it does make a point.

For one thing, the last time they screwed up a story about terrorism on American soil, it led to a war that cost trillions of dollars and thousands of lives.  Something the American people haven't forgotten, which is probably why they're not as eager to put the Republicans back in power as the Republicans are eager to take it back.

But there's another point as well, one that extends beyond the specifics of the new Boston massacre.

Once upon a time, the Post was a respected, liberal-leaning afternoon newspaper.  Its circulation began to decline in the 1970s as it lost readers to electronic media, and it started to lose money.  Then, Dorothy Schiff, the paper's owner, sold it to Rupert Murdoch, who proceeded to turn the paper into a tabloid cross between his London scandal sheets and National Review.  This did not, however, reverse the Post's financial fortunes; in fact, it started to bleed even more money.  There is every reason to think that Murdoch's Post has lost over a billion dollars, and has been subsidized by a combination of (a) revenues from Murdoch's more profitable (and more liberal) investments in entertainment media, and (b) assistance from state and city government in New York, justified by former Governor Mario Cuomo (father of Andrew, the current governor) as necessary to save union jobs.  (Note to Mario:  If you want to save union jobs, don't focus on dying industries in order to do it.)

I'm not rooting for the Post to die; I'm enough of a newspaper lover and a New York lover to want the city to continue to have three dailies, even though I know it makes no economic sense.  But Murdoch's willingness to fund the Post in the face of staggering losses simply proves that Murdoch knows what most liberals know:  that conservative ideas don't work in the marketplace of ideas, and need subsidies simply to survive.

So, the question posed by the linked article is a good one:  will Murdoch's conservative journalistic holdings (including the Post) survive his planned splitting of those holdings from his entertainment assets?  Somehow, I'm betting the answer is "yes."  As long as trickle-up economics is practiced in this country, there will always be undeserving billionaires who can afford a vanity press.

UPDATE:  If you want to see a thorough take-down of a politician trying to exploit the Marathon tragedy through a more up-to-date medium than the Post--namely, Twitter--take a look.