Lots of newspapers thought they were making the right decision by endorsing Hillary Clinton during the election. They couldn’t have been more wrong. And now they’re paying the price. Especially newspapers in red states.
The New York Times reports:
An Oklahoma Newspaper Endorsed Clinton. It Hasn’t Been Forgiven.
One Sunday after church, Jeff Mullin and his wife were in line at the Western Sizzlin steakhouse here when a man, fists clenched, threatened to beat the hell out of him.
“My first thought was just to kind of try to keep things calm. Otherwise, it was going to be two old guys rolling around on the floor of the steakhouse, and that would be pretty unseemly,” recalled Mr. Mullin, 64, the mustachioed senior writer for Enid’s daily newspaper, The Enid News & Eagle.
The dispute was not personal. It was, of all things, editorial.
Mr. Mullin’s red newspaper in a red county in what is arguably the reddest of states went blue this campaign season and endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. The editorial board, in a gray-shaded column on Page A4 on Oct. 9, wrote that Donald J. Trump lacked “the skills, experience or temperament to hold office.” The headline and subhead read: “For U.S. president: Hillary Clinton is our choice for commander in chief.”…
The News & Eagle, with a circulation of 10,000, lost 162 subscribers who canceled the paper. Eleven advertisers pulled their ads, including a funeral home that had a sizable account. Someone stuck a “Crooked Hillary” bumper sticker on the glass doors of the paper’s downtown office…
Days after the editorial, Paul Allen, 81, one of Enid’s most prominent residents — he financed construction of the ballpark downtown — stepped into the paper’s offices on Broadway. He walked past the statue of an eagle in the lobby and canceled his 43-year-old subscription at the front desk.
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As they say, elections have consequences.
It’s hard to feel sympathy for this paper or any other which endorsed Hillary.
They made their bed. Now they’ll lie in it.
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