Slanted media

An analysis by a couple of Chicago economists finds that newspapers and other media outlets slant their coverage to match their audience's views -- i.e., they don't make opinions; they follow them.  The authors also argue that this is a business strategy aimed at maximizing profits.

I guess I will resign myself to the Chronicle's one-sided coverage of zoning/land use disputes, such as here and here.  It must be giving its readers what they want.  I'm just surprised that it has so many readers with a suburban taste in housing.

(BTW, the Statesman is not any better.)

Comments

[Tim]

My God! How can they keep talking about "the trail" in relation to those projects, when there is no trail! As someone who actually uses the trail and doesn't just see it as some sort of chip for keeping high rises away from my neighborhood, I would like a trail that goes around town lake. That seems like "protecting the trail" to me. I don't really call Riverside Drive's sidewalks a "trail".
I still wish we could focus on fighting for interesting, funky architecture instead of against development. They're going to develop it. If need be they'll just do what they did with the Lowes on Brodie Lane. They'll go to the capitol and get their cronies to pass a law specifically allowing them to build. We should be fighting to add personality. We should be fighting bland buildings. Why not require that the condos they're building over the RV park still have some RV spots? How about requiring that these condos keep space for a boat rental concession so people can row out to see the bats? I'm totally just making stuff up here, but I know we can't beat development. We can ensure it doesn't completely suck the soul out of the town.

[M1EK]

Tim,

I like your examples - they're exactly the kind of thing many of us wish our obstructionist neighborhood associations would do. (Mine fought the Villas on Guadalupe so obtusely that the developer won an absolute grand-slam - leaving us with an ugly medium-density project with nothing any of the neighbors might like to walk to; the Chronicle's coverage beforehand was uniformly pro-stupidass-neighborhood, but they adopted a stance like yours after the fact as political cover).