Prior to Jacobson's presentation in class, I had never heard of him or his website. But after his presentation, I understood why he was able to turn it into a success.
Jacobson had really good timing when he launched that site. He did it at a time when the internet was a smaller place and blog to blog linking was more prevalent than social media. I have always thought that there has been a huge vacuum of power in conservative media. Fox News is in rough shape. It is way too heavy on the commentary and continues to spotlight super crazy people like Sean Hannity. Additionally, Drudge is outdated and Breitbart is too far to the right. Fox News aside, those outlets don't seem to engage in a lot original reporting.
Legal Insurrection partly seized on that vacuum. Although I wish the name sounded less like a law thing, I think the blog has a lot more potential. As I mentioned in class, I think Jacobson could grow his audience more by appearing on cable news shows more frequently. Of course, that's a lot easier said than done. Jacobson has a full time job and a wife with medical issues (from my understanding).
When I asked Jacobson about why he doesn't appear on those shows more frequently, he gave an interesting answer – he didn't want to hire a publicist. That explanation makes a lot of sense to me. Additionally, when you're in the national spotlight, things suddenly become a lot harder – especially if you're conservative in academia. You end up making a lot of enemies and if you ever make a small mistake, people will remember that and use it against you.
It was also interesting to hear that because in my Newsroom Editing class, we had similar discussions. I was talking to the class about what I perceived as a center-left bias in the mainstream media. I basically said that the mainstream media treats the left much better than anyone on the right. No one in the class wanted to hear this and the issue was debated heavily. At one point, someone asked why Noam Chompsky doesn't appear in mainstream media more often. After that class, I emailed him and he said that he doesn't get a lot of invites from mainstream media and that's a truth that a lot of leftists have to contend with. But the explanation about the publicists makes a lot more sense.
I think a lot of people might blame this on the media's "corporateness." (yes, I made that word up - I'm tired). I actually think that many independent media outlets have this issue too. While they don't have publicists and all that, I think a lot of outlets are too heavily reliant on the same sources. It is very important to mix sources up and to try to find random/less known people with interesting views.
Interestingly, Fox News seems to be a lot better at doing this than the rest of the mainstream media. Over the summer, Tucker Carlson had Celissa Calaca on his show to talk about an article that she wrote. A week or two later, he had the mother of one of my childhood friends on his show as well. (Fun fact: she gave the sex talk to my 7th grade class). In his response to me, Chompsky said that he does get the occasional invite to Fox News. Fox was the only outlet he listed in the email that invites him on.
Jacobson is the kind of guy I wish I could talk with more frequently on policy issues. I think Jacobson is the first conservative teacher I had in the classroom in the past five years. The last time I had a conservative teacher in the classroom was during my sophomore year in High School. That high school teacher from my sophomore year – Mrs. Johnson – is the reason why I became conservative. She was, admittedly, much more conservative than me, but she was able to bring me over to the right. She was to me what Todd Shack/Jeff Cohen is to most journalism students in Park in terms of how she build up my ideology.
Just to clarify, I also think that they are two AMAZING teachers, they just challenge my ideology as opposed to building it up.
It's hard to be a conservative teacher in today's climate. Students and the culture of academia are so liberal that conservative teachers often get pushed around. This was the case with Jacobson after he presented to our class. He went to Vassar to give a talk and students put up posters of him with horns on his head. This is a widespread and systemic issue. Last year, I covered Rick Santorum's event at Cornell for my visual journalism class.
This is unfortunate for several reasons. The first is that it is very immature, obnoxious, rude, and disrespectful. To be frank, it is institutionalized college bullying of conservatives and it's a widespread epidemic. The second reason, is that it robs liberal students of opportunities to better engage with the other side. When I am in the classroom with liberal teachers, I get my ideas challenged, which is super beneficial to me. It forces me to put a lot more thought into my beliefs than I otherwise would have. I love being in the classroom with such teachers, which is why I love Ithaca. Ithaca also hasn't been bad with bullying conservatives from my experience. I haven't had any problems at Ithaca, which has been great. But I do see other colleges across the country like Burkley and Vassar that have a lot of problems with this.
But ultimately, I am really glad that we had Jacobson in class. Unlike Vassar, our class handled it well, and it was awesome. Jacobson was really informative and gave me a lot of ideas for the presentation that I will have to give later on in the semester about my ideal independent media outlet.
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