Fraters Libertas

The Hits They Keep On A Comin'

To the Star Tribune subscription numbers that is. We start with Dan:

I am not the only one. I gave up the Sickle for New Years and have not seriously read it in over four months. My doctor is impressed with my blood pressure readings! I now subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, I miss out on some metro news and local sports but do not care. The paper gives me all I need to know as a supplement to Fraters Libertas .

The Wall Street Journal as a supplement to Fraters Libertas? Sounds about right.

Next up is Dave:

I used to get the Red Star everyday by subscription. Mostly for the sports page for my fantasy football team, and since it was pre 9/11, their dubious headlines and editorials of spin did not bother me all that much. I remember thinking from time to time they were a tad off kilter, but was able to ignore it. Since 9/11 and for that matter George Bush, the front page has taken on new importance. I canceled them after one of their editorials on Iraq, I just couldn't take it anymore. One of the most liberating experiences in my life has been finding blogs like yours and the NA, as well as Fox News, all in the last year. I'm your typical 9/11 Republican, and let me tell you, the shrieking and hysteria from the Tribune and the Left will forever keep me from saying I'm an "independent" who could vote either way.

Fraters Libertas as liberators? Makes sense.

Last but certainly not least is long time Strib critic and writer (not cartoonist) Gary Larson:

Had it. With Strib. Canceling our sub. Too much over the edge, out of the American mainstream you might say. Beyond amusing, it's evolved into a hateful, vile, fact-altering far-left party organ editorially, if not the news slants. Hell, it's hard even to parody it's so far out.

Making "Condi" into a criminal, blaming Bush (not Clinton, not even al-Queda) for 9/11, parsing the PDB. It's Too Much. "Star & Sickle," that's a good one. Best I've heard since someone in Hot Springs called it "Izvestia North" and TCF's Bill Cooper's called it "Red Star." (Got one Strib writer's undies in a bundle once by calling it that myself. He wrote saying, seriously I think, he never had been a communist. I kid you not!)

Oh I'll be sneaking a peak at its editorial smear jobs, like on the Internet, or in a neighbors' paper, to rise my chronically low blood pressure (I'm with pacemaker to jump-start a tardy heartbeat) and just see what the far left is up to without reading The Nation. But do we support it by our sub dollars? No more.

Just also cancelled Newsweek (getting SERIOUS here!) for misrepresenting (factually, tonally, in all ways) the Bush tax cuts in a recent issue. Told them why in a cranky letter which might amuse a few in its Circulation Dept. Well, I feel better anyhow.

You could dismiss the stories that we've cited over the last few days of people bailing on the Star Tribune as merely anecdotal evidence. And we don't have hard statistics to show that large numbers of people are canceling their subscriptions because of the the perceived liberal bias of the paper, but these examples that we've sited should at least give the powers that be at the Star Tribune pause.

These folks are serious news consumers (as evidenced by the fact that they read Fraters Libertas) who want a daily local paper, but aren't willing to put up with what they feel is biased reporting and a heavily slanted editorial page. From everything that I've heard on the matter, young people aren't reading newspapers anymore. So the question for the Strib is; where are they going find readers to replace the ones they're losing on an almost daily basis? How will they stop the bleeding? And by the time they do, will anyone even care?