The Obama election is the kind of event that seems to have restored people's interest in the news and, even, in newspapers.
Obama may even represent a sort of front page last hurrah, with people lining up at newsstands across the country for their keepsake editions. (In one of my discussions with Rupert Murdoch during the primary season, Murdoch said sagely and approvingly about Obama: "He'll sell more papers.")
Obama is an opportunity that could revivify the media business.
The Herald Sun in Melbourne, Australia (a Murdoch paper), spent yesterday trying to find a Melburnian to donate a puppy to the Obamas—now that's old-fashioned newspapering of a kind that isn't done in the US anymore.
(Getty Image)
Indeed, from a liberal media point of view—not just in the interests of liberalism but in the interests of everybody in the liberal media keeping their jobs—it makes perfect sense to idealize Obama and to make him the ultimate reflection of our better nature. And yet, already, on the second day out, the liberal media worm begins to turn.
The story line to watch is about the struggle between the forces of Obama purity and the ever-entrenched Clinton establishment. With the selection of Clinton aides Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff and John Podesta to lead the transition, and the prospect of a Clinton hand as Treasury Secretary, it's already a neurotic Democratic family reunion (if not an outright Clinton coup d'etat.)
Or is it just a liberal media that finds the Clintons more compelling than puppies (and selling papers)?
