COLUMBIA — Here’s one way to prevent media bias.
Whenever I drive through a new town, no matter how big or small, I pick up a copy of the newspaper. Consider it a low-cost souvenir that is distinctly local.
Going through Marks in the Delta, I’ll pull over at a gas station to grab the latest edition of Bill Knight’s Quitman County Democrat. A CPA from Batesville with no background in journalism, he decided to buy the struggling weekly and has worked hard to try to turn it around. I admire his spunk.
Or if I happen to be in Little Rock, I make it a point to always buy the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, which despite its name is very conservative, relishing biting criticism of the Clintons, and very successful. It’s the fattest metro newspaper I’ve ever seen, full of stories and ads even on weekdays, kind of like the Clarion Ledger was in the ’80s. As a newspaper man, that warms my heart to see in this era of media disruption.
Relatives help support my habit. My brother-in-law brought back multiple newspapers for me after studying abroad in Europe, and my dad picked up an English-language newspaper in Saudi Arabia when he went there on business a few years ago. It was printed on a glossy paper that we would typically see on sales circular. Must be nice to have all that oil money (while it lasts).
A few weeks ago my family was traveling through Chattanooga, and while driving through a Hardee’s for a milkshake I noticed a newspaper rack. Of course I immediately began digging through my pockets for change.
Reading through the Chattanooga Times Free-Press, I was reminded of one of its most distinctive features: Two separate editorial pages, one sporting a liberal point of view and another a conservative.
The dueling voices are on facing pages. One bears the name of The Chattanooga Times and still notes its publisher from 1878 to 1935, Adolph S. Ochs. Any student of media history will know Ochs went on to greater fame and fortune as publisher of The New York Times, which his family still controls today. You can probably guess that the Chattanooga Times is the liberal voice.
The conservative side, The Chattanooga Free Press, also prints the name of its former publisher, who is less known nationally but familiar to me because he’s a distant cousin of mine: Roy McDonald.
McDonald is actually one of two Scottish cousins from my mother’s side who had great success in the newspaper industry in the 20th century; the other was Ralph McGill, who served as editor of the Atlanta Constitution from World War II through the 1960s.
McDonald had an even longer tenure, publishing the Chattanooga Free Press for a remarkable 54 years from 1936 to 1990. He got into the business not because of a love for journalism but because he needed an advertising medium for his grocery chain, the Home Stores. That led to a lengthy newspaper war between his afternoon Free Press and Ochs’ morning Times.
McDonald was conservative, which is always good for business, and ultimately won the war. The two papers merged a few years after his death, but they kept the separate editorial pages reflecting their very different points of view.
Having been personally accused of being a liberal by conservatives and a conservative by liberals, I can see the appeal of that approach: Instead of trying to be neutral in an intensely partisan world, do both sides at the same time and let the reader decide which one they agree with.
• Charlie Smith is editor and publisher of The Columbian-Progress. Contact him at csmith@columbianprogress.com.
