New Yorker writer Nicholas Lemann tackles B-I-G question facing the U.S. MSM right now. His story focuses on the NYT, the Chicago Tribune (which lost 2,000 subscribers after endorsing Dubya) and NBC.

Here's an excerpt. Note how hard the NBC exec tries to sell new anchor Brian Williams as a de facto Red Stater:

Most mainstream-media organizations, worried at being culturally and politically out of synch with many Americans, are making an effort to reach out—I frequently heard a promise to cover religion more seriously and sympathetically. For many, that’s a business imperative, an attempt to broaden the audience, especially among conservatives. Neal Shapiro, the president of NBC News, whose variegated domain includes cable television, and even blogs, plainly felt that the nightly news broadcast needs to have its red-state credentials in order. He said of NBC’s new anchor, Brian Williams, “He’s a great journalist, a great reporter. Having said that, he’s a huge nascar fan, has been since his father took him to the track when he was a kid. He cares a lot about his faith. He wants to take the broadcast on the road a lot. He was on the road the whole week before the inauguration. Brian does get it. He once did a story on Cabela’s”—the superstore chain for hunters. “A lot of the people in the newsroom said, ‘Gee I didn’t know about that.’ But he did. And many of our bureaus did. We’re not just the Northeast Corridor.” One doesn’t get the sense that Shapiro worries about the possibility that NBC’s anchor might be out of touch with the values and concerns of residents on the Upper West Side.

A better understanding of conservatives seems manageable, but there is another possibility, which is much more worrisome, at least to journalists who work in the mainstream media. It is that during the years of heavy shelling—through impeachment and the Florida recount and then the rough 2004 campaign—what they consider their compact with the public has been seriously damaged. Journalism that is inquisitive and intellectually honest, that surprises and unsettles, didn’t always exist. There is no law saying that it must exist forever, and there are political and business interests that would be better off if it didn’t exist and that have worked hard to undermine it. This is what journalists in the mainstream media are starting to worry about: what if people don’t believe in us, don’t want us, anymore?

Frankly, I think that's what is happening in the U.S. right now. The media channels are becoming more fragmented.

I thought this Globe and Mail column from September 3 was one of the most incisive things Rick Salutin wrote last year. An excerpt:

Noam Chomsky pioneered this approach: that the facts are kept from Americans by the media, blighting their views. It can be addictive. There are people who don't bother with the news, they wait for the next Chomsky critique. It is hard to find a trenchant critique of him, as opposed to glib dismissals. Those who attack him on specifics usually wind up being handed their heads, studded with footnotes. But here's a comment by Slovenian philosopher and cultural theorist Slavoj Zizek, interviewed in Left Business Observer: “I partially disagree with him. It's an underlying premise of his work that you . . .  just tell all the facts to the people. The way ideology works today is much more mysterious.  . . . There's an active refusal to know.  . . . The question isn't of any real link between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi regime.  . . . Both Saddam and al-Qaeda hate the U.S. That's enough of a link. You cannot really help by making factual refutations. The key factor is not that people are duped — there's an active will not to know.”

This put us in Freudian country. What people seek is not truth but reassurance. They want to feel: Our leaders are wise; our enemies are crazed; our hands are clean; we are being told the truth etc. In private life, they seek similar comfort. In neither realm are facts crucial.

My question is: Will the same phenomenon happen here, or is it happening here? We certainly have an urban-rural social and political divide. We also have an age-related one on social and political issues. Are people on the different sides of those various fault lines seeking out media outlets that serve to confirm their beliefs?

My early impression is they are not.

While the National Post was an attempt to start an elegant, conservative national newspaper, it's not yet proven itself to be economically viable. It appears to have lost its EiC -- again. And it remains behind the Globe and Mail in circulation despite having the huge advantage of being part of the CanWest-Global chain.

(Disclosure: I work for CTV News Online. The Globe is a corporate cousin and CanWest-Global is a competitor. That being said, my opinions are solely my own. I am not speaking for my employer in any way, shape or form)

I think part of the problem the N-P and other conservative media in this country face is we just aren't as conservative a country as the U.S., despite large geographic swaths where conservatism runs deep.

While the MSM here faces problems related to declining market share, I think those are more technological than ideological in nature.

Bedtime! :)

But if anyone has thoughts, as always, I'd like to hear them.