Category Archives: Blogs and blog administration

Newspapers with breakfast. End of an era.

I cut the cord today — I stopped subscribing to the print edition of the Richmond Times-Dispatch. I’d been delaying the inevitable for a long time, but a 50-year habit of reading the newspaper over breakfast and coffee was hard to break.

Here’s what did it for me: The print-digital subscription is $70 per month. The digital-only subscription is $12 monthly. What am I getting for the extra $58 a month? Almost nothing. (My wife will miss the puzzles, but she’ll get over it.) When it came time to re-subscribe, I realized I could save almost $700 a year. To me, that’s not chump change.

That got me to thinking…. Bacon’s Rebellion readers, you can do it, too!

If you’re tired of subsidizing a publication whose news articles reflect a steadily constricting view of the world — the liberal/progressive worldview of newsroom editors and writers — stop being a doormat. Speak out in the only way that will make an impression. Cancel your print subscription. Then take half the money you save, donate it to Bacon’s Rebellion, and support intellectual diversity in Virginia media.

— JAB

by James A. Bacon

Governor Ralph Northam and the 2020 General Assembly has engineered one of the greatest assaults on the middle class in Virginia history. You would never imagine that from reading the coverage by Virginia’s news outlets, whose reporters and editorial writers are so in sync with the new Democratic majority that the only controversies worth noting are intramural skirmishes within the liberal/progressive movement. (Well, the media did get around eventually to taking note of the Second Amendment Sanctuary movement, but only after it had spread to all corners of the state.)

The current generation of journalists literally cannot imagine any other way of looking at the issues. The topics highlighted here on Bacon’s Rebellion — the tax hikes and clawbacks, the heaping of new costs onto electricity ratepayers, the institutionalization of identity politics in schools and government — barely make it into the news articles, much less the headlines. Virginians may have elected a Democratic majority, but they did not vote for a revolution in governance. They have no idea what is about to hit them. And they likely won’t know it until it actually does hit them, because they won’t read or hear about it in the dominant media outlets.

Against this backdrop, we learn that the Virginian-Pilot, once the strongest voice in Virginia journalism, is consolidating offices with the Daily News. The shriveled Pilot news staff now will cover news for the 1.1 million inhabitants of Hampton Roads south of the James River from the Daily Press office north of the river. (See Kerry Dougherty’s column today for details.) This development follows the relentless decimation of newsrooms in other newspapers across Virginia. Their ultimate demise seems inevitable. Continue reading →