Conservative media might be taking a hit

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From my perch at American Thinker, rumors sometimes come my way. One of them, seemingly a solid one, is that a well-financed effort is underway to acquire several major conservative outlets, including Human Events, The Post Millennial, and The Daily Caller, to roll them up under a single owner. According to what I’ve heard, the forces behind this effort are donors sympathetic to the vision of the Republican Party that Liz Cheney, Mike Pence, Paul Ryan, and Mitt Romney espouse.

As a matter of principle, I’m deeply opposed to the idea of a consortium controlling multiple once-independent websites. I’m also perplexed by the consortium’s choice for its figurehead (assuming the rumors are true), because the man chosen, while a great journalist, has a track record of big, expensive dreams that he has yet to realize.

If the rumors about the buyers’ ideological leanings are correct, these are people still invested in the stale ideas and feckless policies that broke the Republican party during the Bush years. Today’s conservative thought leaders, who have huge videos/podcasts and X followings, actively support or are open to Trump’s policies. The Bush-era Republicans, stuck with marginalized ideas that cannot compete in the conservative realm, have decided to skip improving their ideas and to opt, instead, for buying influence.

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However, it’s possible that the consortium I’ve heard about may contain the seeds of its destruction. That’s because I’ve heard that the person (or one of the people) heading the rollup initiative is John Solomon.

I have no beef with Solomon. I think he’s an excellent reporter, and I admire him greatly for sticking to his guns in the face of savage (and, ultimately, provably wrong) attacks against his accurate reporting on Joe Biden’s corrupt Ukraine ties. (See, e.g., here and here.) I also like the outlet he created, Just The News, which has straightforward reporting and, something I really appreciate, links to newsworthy judicial decisions.

Having said that, if you look at Solomon’s history, it shows a man with a vision that he pursues relentlessly, but no matter how much money or authority he gets, he never fulfills that vision. ...

The problem is that Solomon, unlike The Daily Wire team, reportedly has never achieved his goal, whether at sites that gave him power and money or at his own site (which, again, I like). One example is his tenure as executive editor at The Washington Times. There, he attempted to implement his vision, allegedly at great expense, only to see that implementation fall apart with circulation apparently collapsing on his watch.

When the Moon’s family infighting placed an even greater burden on the paper, things rapidly fell apart, and Solomon resigned in 2009. One long-time editor issued a harsh verdict: “John Solomon put the paper into a near-death spiral.”

According to another report, the pattern repeated when Solomon, in 2012, moved on to the Center for Public Integrity (“CPI”). Once again, he dazzled people with a grand vision for a vast, consolidated site, promising to give everything to audiences, whether they read, viewed, or listened to the news. He convinced backers to provide millions to fund this vision.

Suddenly, the small outlet, which once offered only a few deeply-researched and award-winning essays a year, had a huge staff and was churning out up to ten essays a day—except that, according to the same report, those ten essays weren’t anywhere near enough to satisfy the outlet’s burgeoning expenses. Solomon had allegedly predicted gross annual revenues of $16.4 million from investments, partnerships, advertising, and subscribers. What actually happened was that CPI almost failed. Instead of $16.4 million coming in, Solomon left it $2 million in debt.

From there, Solomon moved on to Circa, where he was allegedly given a $9 million operating budget through the Sinclair Broadcast Group. Solomon left Circa in less than two years, and nobody even remembers Circa now.

American THinker

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