Conservative Businessmen buying the Union-Tribune is a Good Thing for San Diego. Here is Why.
Yes, I know, that’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? The paper’s glacial liberal editorial trend may soon be reversed. This correspondent welcomes the change, and expresses thanks to Doug Manchester and John Lynch, Sr. for investing their time and money into the community asset that is a Daily Newspaper. That they do so for a paper which has lost some circulation and advertising is truly remarkable. They are risking a lot on a deal that is not a Sure Thing. It will be a good thing if they make a profit from the total balance sheet. Profit is not a dirty word (!) and can keep this valuable news institution alive.
……THIS IS A GOOD THING FOR SAN DIEGO FOR SEVERAL REASONS
(1) It increases the chance of saving many local jobs . Not just journalists, but the support staffers, truck drivers, pressmen (and women), news dealers and sales people, etc.
(2) Assures that two proven business successes will do their best to make the paper worthy of this great community, and with locally-based ownership. Both men are driven and success-oriented.
(3) While blogs, like SD Rostra, serve an essential purpose, only a daily local newspaper can fully cover and document the spectrum of a 4,000-square mile, 2.5 Million-person county on a full-time basis. Both the Blogs and the Union-Tribune are good for San Diego’s community dialogue.
……TO THE CRITICS, I POSE TWO QUESTIONS
(A) Would you invest Your Money into what Matt Drudge calls, “The Legacy Media“? These two gentlemen are taking a significant Risk with their own resources.
(B) The sale to Manchester and Lynch does not take effect until December 15th. How about giving them 90 days to show us what changes they have in mind, before questioning their motives?
…… AND ONE CONCLUDING REFLECTION
Thank you, Doug Manchester and John Lynch for your lifetimes spent investing in San Diego and for your continuing faith in its future, at a time when that is not such an easy thing to do! This great community is the sum of dreamers, from Junipero Serra in the 18th century to Alonzo Horton in the 19th, to today’s risk takers.
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Jim Sills is a San Diego political consultant. He has aided the campaigns of Rep. Darrell Issa, Assemblywoman Shirley Horton, Senators Joel Anderson and Tony Strickland, Representatives Devin Nunes and J.D. Hayworth (Arizona) , and SD County Assessor & Recorder Greg Smith, among many others in California and beyond. If you have questions about Your future in politics, you can contact Jim Sills at YourElectionVictory@hotmail.com
Putative “conservatives” who advocate depleting public resources for private profit aren’t worthy of the name. As for your points:
Mr. Manchester has taken the arrows and grief for maintaining his position on Proposition 8. Nothing putative there.
A: Lynch and Manchester got a lot of real estate with the deal. It wasn’t just about the U-T. And taking Lynch at his word, the U-T will dutifully spout their corporate welfare line. That means they’ve gained a giant PR vehicle to further their agenda (which of course is synonymous with the interests of San Diegans) .
John Lynch built his radio empire from scratch without any public funds, beating long odds by leasing radio stations in Mexico and making a success of sports talk radio 25 years ago, when others laughed at him. He did so in a courageous manner worthy of a character in an Ayn Rand novel. It is a surprise to hear a sincere Libertarian dismiss that admirable career and those ideals, over a single interview.
B: We don’t need to wait to know Lynch and Manchester’s motives, because Lynch has publicly declared them in the Voice of San Diego article.
Also in the VOSD article, Lynch betrayed his disdain or incomprehension of the necessary role of critical journalism. Reporters are supposed to dig out the buried bodies, the rotten deals, and risk being called naysayers, so the public might be informed. Had the Union-Tribune been more alert in the years leading up to the pension crisis, had the paper been less of a cheerleader and more of a watchdog San Diego might have taken a different course.
How are John Lynch and Doug Manchester to blame for the policies of previous U-T owners on pension issues? Obviously they are not.
Finally, it might be better for San Diego to let the U-T slide out of existence than for it to become a propaganda vehicle to promote corporate welfare. That will inevitably lead to worsened government services and higher taxes. We’ve already been down that road. Time to get off it.
Would it be better for the hundreds of people who would lose their jobs if the U-T “slides out of existence”? The fate of people who are fellow workers in the journalistic vineyard should count for more than that.
If the U-T becomes a conservative voice again, it is far more likely to resist higher taxes. That was certainly the case when James S. Copely ran the paper a generation ago.
I hope critics take a 2nd look at John Lynch and Doug Manchester, who are investing in traditional journalism at a time when many, many others are heading for the Exit doors.
Naturally an employee of the North County Times, Fikes, would like to see the Union-Tribune slide out of existence. That would open all of North County as a monopoly for his newspaper. Not very hard to connect those dots. Thanks, but no thanks, we still want the UT covering North County too.
North County Knows,
Corporate welfare is hard to defend, so your ad hominem is no surprise. Anything rather than discuss the issue.
Since you bravely chose to be anonymous, I could speculate that you work for an interested party. The issue remains that a new owner of the San Diego Union-Tribune has brazenly mandated biased coverage for his pet projects. Let’s see you discuss that — under your own name, if you dare.
Manchester isn’t conservative. He wants the government to spend money on him instead of other people, and wants taxes cut on the rich so he doesn’t have to fund his projects at all.
Excellent response by Jim Sills to some of the concerns raised by the U-T purchase.
Regardless of what anyone may think of the transaction, or what anyone may think of Bradley Fikes’ reaction to Lynch’s stated intent regarding the Chargers, there isn’t one thing Fikes has written to even suggest that he’d like to see the U-T’s demise, or that he even thinks such a thing is possible.
Fikes has been around a long time in the biz and is a smart reporter, one that knows the likelihood of the U-T ending as a news source in San Diego is slim, especially during the rest of his career.
He’s also smart enough to know that what he writes on a blog is not going to add to the U-T’s downfall.
Nope, I’ve known Fikes long enough to know that he has a passion for journalistic integrity — with any publication — and that’s what he’s been writing about in this case.
Agree or disagree, but please don’t call into question HIS integrity. If you insist on it, then show your face.
Bradley, Barry,
Thanks for the comments. It was also good to meet Bradley in person yesterday.
Having said that, I think that we are reverting to a time in our country’s history where newspapers were typically partisan organs. The U-T purchase is unfortunate because I believe that the interests of big business are only sometimes aligned with the taxpayers of San Diego. We should thank John Lynch for being open about the biases he intends to introduce in the U-T, so that we can decide if we want to subscribe and read. Even if we do, we will need to inject a healthy dose of skepticism in our reading of articles that affect business interests.
My only lament is that there seems to be pro-business and pro-labor outlets, but no pro-taxpayer outlets.
Barry,
Thank you, kind sir.
One reason I’m criticizing Lynch (and by implication his partner Manchester) so early and so vigorously is to let Lynch know that he’s chosen the wrong course. Lynch needs to hear bluntly and often that he’s endangering the Union-Tribune’s reputation.
If criticism is confined to the usual suspects who get the vapors over Lynch/Manchester’s “conservatism” (based almost entirely on Prop. 8), it won’t do much good. We need to have a wide section of the political spectrum tell them they’re wrong.
For people who want a news leader and not a cheerleader, it’s time to stand up.
B-Daddy,
The San Diego Reader is probably the most pro-taxpayer media outlet in town. It has published numerous exposes of government waste, ripoffs and corporate welfare. If you want a critical eye on what the downtown power structure doesn’t want you to know, Don Bauder and Matt Potter are your best bets.
I would say that in my infrequent visits to the NC TIMES editorial page, I find a pretty good limited government editorial slant. Inconsistent, but pretty good, overall. And limited government = pro taxpayer.
Recapping the discussion between Mr. Fikes and myself this week on the Union-Tribune’s future. Fikes’ words are in Italics, while Sills’ are in bold type.
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Putative “conservatives” who advocate depleting public resources for private profit aren’t worthy of the name.
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Mr. Manchester has taken the arrows and grief for maintaining his position on Proposition 8…. Nothing “putative” there.
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thought conservatives were also for free enterprise and against government interference. If being “conservative” means being pro- corporate welfare, no wonder conservatism has had an image problem.”
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You called Mr. Manchester a “putative” (i.e. supposed) conservative and I offered the very relevant example of his support for Prop. 8. The Mervyn Field Poll of October 30,2008 showed 76% of self-identified Conservative voters backed Prop. 8. So Manchester was in good
company, the great bulk of conservatives. How that somehow relates to ‘corporate welfare” I don’t know.
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How are John Lynch and Doug Manchester to blame for the policies of previous U-T owners on pension issues? Obviously they are not.
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Obviously, I never said they were and you are stuffing a straw man. Manchester and Lynch are primed to repeat the corporate welfare propaganda of previous U-T owners, even more blatantly.
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That is just what you implied above. Here is your direct quote: “Had the Union-Tribune been more alert in the years leading up to the pension crisis, had the paper been less of a cheerleader and more of a watchdog San Diego might have taken a different course.”
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It is a surprise to hear a sincere Libertarian dismiss that admirable career and those ideals, over a single interview.
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Do you think Lynch didn’t know what he was saying, like the idiot Occupy San Diego protestor? I give Lynch a bit more credit than that. And as for his admirable career, that doesn’t justify his embrace of corporate welfare.
Expressing his support of the Chargers = Corporate welfare? If Lynch owned the team, sure, but to my knowledge he has no
financial connection to them. He ran sports talk radio stations for decades. No surprise that he loves sports.
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Would it be better for the hundreds of people who would lose their jobs if the U-T “slides out of existence”? The fate of people who are fellow workers in the journalistic vineyard should count for more than that.
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We have to weight the costs of the loss of the U-T vs. the loss to San Diegans from a corporate welfare propagandist. The city is nearly broke, and we can’t afford more of it. We also have the Internet, which empowers other media sources like Voice of San Diego. It’s no longer a one-paper town.
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You’re made of sterner stuff than I…. The future and dreams of the secretaries, truck-drivers, pressmen, salesmen and saleswomen, and the reporters who would lose their Jobs if the UT disappears do matter to me, and they are the main reasons I celebrate Lynch and Manchester for giving them new hope. The unemployment rolls are too long already.
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If the U-T becomes a conservative voice again, it is far more likely to resist higher taxes. That was certainly the case when James S. Copely ran the paper a generation ago.
Corporate welfare is a left-wing trait, not a conservative one. Just look at Jeff Immelt at, feeding at the public trough in collusion with Obama. And it goes with higher taxes. Just look at the scare campaign Mayor Sanders put on to raise taxes with Prop. D. You can bet that Lynch and Manchester will back higher taxes if it helps their corporate welfare buddies. Self-interest is their ideology, not “conservatism.”
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The great majority of conservative leaders Opposed Prop. D, led by Republican Party of SD Chairman Tony Krvaric. Your colleaugue Richard Rider said Kravric’s stand on Prop. D was his deciding factor in switching from Libertarian to becoming a registered Republican.
And I’ll take your bet! ……I predict the next tax-increase proposed for SD City voters will be editorially opposed by the UT under its new leadership. The Loser buys the Winner lunch at Fillippi’s Italian Restaurant, one of San Diego’s other great traditions….