New York Times Cable Gamer Brian Stelter reports that Fox News Channel chieftain Roger Ailes, and his wife, Elizabeth Ailes, have purchased their own little newspaper, The Putnam County News and Recorder.
Stelter's report would seem to suggest that Mr. and Mrs. Ailes don't have any big changes in mind for their new media property, which has a circulation of just 3,000:
But residents of the area should not expect any sort of makeover, ideological or otherwise. The paper will "probably stay the same," said Elizabeth Ailes, Mr. Ailes’s wife, who will be the publisher. "We bought it not to change it, but perhaps it will evolve over time."
OK, fair enough. But still, The Cable Gamer wonders what Mrs. Ailes meant by "perhaps it will evolve over time." Those are words to linger over!
In the meantime, a couple of points:
First, when The Cable Gamer read this news, she immediately thought of William Allen White, the legendary newspaperman and public intellectual in the late 19th and early-to-mid 20th century. White was the owner-editor of the Emporia (Kansas) Gazette, which would seem to be a pretty small gig. But White made it into a big deal, regularly criticizing--and consulting with--presidents and other top leaders over the course of five decades.
Interestingly, White could have gone to a bigger media market if he had wanted to. While still in his mid-20s, he went to work as an editorial writer for the Kansas City Star; from there, with all his talent and energy, he could surely have moved up rapidly, to Chicago, say, or New York. But instead, in 1895, he borrowed $3000 to buy the Emporia Gazette, the paper in his home town.
And it was from that seemingly humble perch that White built a legend (the US postage stamp above, issued in 1948, is testament to his impact). Specifically, it was an 1896 editorial in the Gazette that rocketed him to national renown. Entitled "What's the Matter With Kansas?"* it revealed White to be a man with a sharp eye and a sharp tongue:
What's the matter with Kansas?
We all know; yet here we are at it again. We have an old moss-back Jacksonian who snorts and howls because there is a bathtub in the statehouse; we are running that old jay for governor. We have another shabby, wild-eyed, rattle-brained fanatic who has said openly in a dozen speeches that "the rights of the user are paramount to the rights of the owner"; we are running him for chief justice, so that capital will come tumbling over itself to get into the state. We have raked the old ash heap of failure in the state and found an old human hoop skirt who has failed as a business man, who has failed as an editor, who has failed as a preacher, and we are going to run him for congressman-at-large. He will help the looks of the Kansas delegation at Washington. Then we have discovered a kid without a law practice and have decided to run him for attorney-general. Then for fear some hint that the state had become respectable might percolate through the civilized portions of the nation, we have decided to send three or four harpies out lecturing, telling the people that Kansas is raising hell and letting the corn go to weeds.
The issues, of course, have changed over the last 112 years, but TCG reckons that Roger Ailes, today, sees things in the same sharp terms that White saw things in his time. So don't be in the least surprised if Ailes, known to have strong opinions-- mostly, but not exclusively, on the right--starts penning editorials that affect thinking, and sway opinion, far beyond Putnam County. Indeed, friends say that Ailes is increasingly concerned about the direction of the United States in the 21st century. So maybe this small purchase is the beginning of a new effort to affect public opinion. Or, of course, the PCNR could stick to its familiar newspaper fare, which is local news, sports, and weather.
Maybe, but TCG doesn't think so. Roger Ailes will find his voice--and the world might discover more about what the low-profile Beth Ailes, too, thinks.
So perhaps the Ailes' communications won't just be written editorials, but video editorials, or possibly in some new media format altogether. After all, in the era of the Internet, geography matters little, so why not use Putnam County as a launchpad to the world? If 35 years ago Ted Turner could grow a single Atlanta TV station into a nationwide "superstation," WTBS then surely such exponential growth is even more possible in the Internet era.
Second, Putnam County, sleepy as it might sound, is actually much more strategically located than Emporia, KS. With a population of 95,000, Putnam is sandwiched geographically in between the state of Connecticut and Orange County NY, which includes the United States Military Academy, West Point. And further upstate are such prominent exurban havens as Bedford, where billionaires, tired of the overcrowded Hamptons, go to get away from the rigors of Manhattan--but they have to pass through, or near, Putnam to get there. And of course, New York City, capital of the world, is just 30 or so miles to the south.
So in other words, there's plenty of potential there, in the little News & Recorder, for Mr. and Mrs. Ailes to have big booming voice. Perhaps, together, they will be like William Allen White. Perhaps they will be like The Times of London, known as "The Thunderer," for its centuries of powerful broadsides against sovereigns and statesmen.
All this is speculation, of course, but Roger Ailes has never done anything small in his life. And so even if this new venture starts small, it will likely not stay small.
* Just a few years ago, in 2005 the lefty Thomas Frank wrote a book with an homage title, What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America.
