According to a new business profile in the Financial Times, conservative magazine and daily website Newsmax thrived in a year filled with media misery, scoring $35 million in revenue, after $25 million in 2008, and scoring a much-anticipated Sarah Palin endorsement in a chat with Sean Hannity. Speaking of Fox News, does this sound familiar: “liberal media” alternative excels in increasingly partisan news space? Bingo.
The story’s headline reads “Rise of Newsmax defies media trend,” but that’s only a trend of an economic nature. The larger story here seems to be the ongoing shift toward partisan media. If you care about dollars and cents, that is.
In the profile, Newsmax founder Chris Ruddy says he started the media company to provide “an alternative to the mainstream news, the liberal media in New York and Washington,” as a “heartland publication.” Main street’s where the media money is, apparently. Obviously, the article is quick to compare the successes of Newsmax to some of Mediaite most frequent newsmakers:
Fox News presenters such as Glenn Beck, talk radio hosts including Rush Limbaugh and online commentators such as Andrew Breitbart have seen strong gains among audiences opposed to Barack Obama’s handling of the healthcare debate, security and the economy.
Mr Beck, Ms Palin and the White House “war” against Fox News have all featured on the Newsmax cover in recent months.
Not to mention the claim that they’ve beaten the Drudge Report’s online numbers for two years. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding: partisanship is profit.
Rise of Newsmax defies media trend [Financial Times]
