You Say That Like It's a Bad Thing

There's some indication that the Koch brothers, self made billionaires and much reviled by the left for their conservative beliefs and support for conservative causes, are interested in buying the dying Tribune Co, which is bankrupt after years of bad management and in the hands of creditors.  According to Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post, this would cause mass resignations by the current, extreme left-wing staff:

In their very-brief no-comment on the sale rumors, the Kochs took care to note, “We respect the independence of the journalist institutions” owned by Tribune, but the staffs at those papers fear that, once Kochified, the papers would quickly turn into print versions of Fox News. A recent informal poll that one L.A. Times writer conducted of his colleagues showed that almost all planned to exit if the Kochs took control (and that included sportswriters and arts writers). Those who stayed would have to grapple with how to cover politics and elections in which their paper’s owners played a leading role. It’s also unclear who in Los Angeles, one of the nation’s most liberal cities, would actually want to read such a paper, but then the Kochs don’t appear to view this as a money-making venture.

It's easy to say you'll quit if the Koch's buy the paper, but much more difficult to actually go through with it in an era when dead tree journolistm is dying.  They might have to go out and get an honest jobs, flipping burgers, or carrying buckets of mud on a fracking crew in North Dakota.  I urge the Koch's to call their bluff.