Second Fiddle
We like to think of the newspaper supremacy battle currently raging in South Carolina between Charleston’s Post and Courier and Columbia’s La Socialista (a.k.a. The State newspaper) as being a fiddle contest – you know, like the “Devil Went Down to Georgia,” except not as infectiously entertaining.
Anyway, we’ve written several times already about La Socialista’s deteriorating position, and today provides us with additional news on that front.
It turns out the rag that likes to brag about being “South Carolina’s largest newspaper” won’t be able to say that for much longer.
According to our friends over at The Voice, a new media study shows that the independently-owned (and decidedly more objective) Post and Courier will surpass La Socialista this year for highest daily average readership.
From The Voice story:
According to Burrelles Luce, national experts in media trends, the family owned Post and Courier will top The State in daily average readership sometime this year.
Despite a series of painful staff cuts, The State’s readership continues to drop, while the P&C is one of only a handful of large daily newspapers in the US to see a sustained annual increase in readership.
A driving force in The State’s demise has been it’s far-left, welfare state style editorial policy – seen by many observers to be wildly out of line with the right of center majority voting trends in South Carolina.
“Wildly out of line?” Actually, that’s putting it nicely guys.
Comments
By Motoring Man on September 29th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Since La Socialista does not attempt to deliver to the low country or the upstate anymore,perhaps a change in name is in the making. “The Columbian” is a wee bit more fitting.
By Big Spenda on September 29th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
If there is any doubt about the growing panic among the editorial staff, last week Brad had a mini freak out on his blog and started verbally berating his readers after a few pointed out several grammatical errors. Ah, you can just sense the end is near.
By just me on September 29th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
The “Post-It” Courier is a sad, sad excuse for a newspaper. Whether it is the ubiquitous typos, the stories missing half the story, or the right-wing dribble on what they claim are editorial pages, it doesn’t make it as a “news”paper. On a good day you can read it in under two minutes. Quite frankly, apart from the fact it carries the Sunday NYT crossword and the “food” sections, we wouldn’t subscribe. And it is having financial troubles too – note the smaller size of late.