Hewitt, de Tocqueville, and the Argus

I want to thank Hugh Hewitt again for his very nice article today about the Dakota blogs and the Senate race. I was just at Barnes & Noble noticed Hewitt's new book, which includes a chapter on the importance of the blogosphere. I opted to buy the Barnes & Noble edition of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, which everyone should read, and which includes a chapter on the press in America, whose "influence in America is immense," he says. De Tocqueville also says that "it is an axiom of political science in [America], that the only way to neutralize the effect of the public journals is to multiply their number," i.e. when there are few newspapers, or only one, in an area they have tremendous power. This is the problem South Dakotans face given the dominance and ubiquity of the Argus Leader. Its decision to ignore the raft of negative stories about Senator Daschle has the effect of distorting the democratic process in the South Dakota senate race. I'm reminded of this whenever I read the Boston Globe's stories about Senator Kerry. The Globe has no problem scrutinizing Kerry, but in South Dakota Daschle can do no wrong. Since I returned to South Dakota about five years ago and started, once again, seriously reading the Argus Leader on a daily basis, I can think of no hard-hitting stories scrutinizing Daschle. Not one. Perhaps I missed them, in which case I'm happy to be corrected. But I think I'd remember. On the other hand, I can remember dozens of stories--and my research has confirmed this--shredding former Governor Bill Janklow and former Senator Larry Pressler. Maybe they deserved it, but I'm sure Daschle is no saint. The national media can certainly find stories about Daschle that are unflattering. But they quickly disapear in the memory hole and are ignored by the Argus. Lastly, as we all know there are problems with the press nationally too. Note this article in today's LA Times by Tim Rutten and this opening: "If the American news media are lucky, 2004 will be remembered as the year of living dangerously. If not, then this election cycle may be recalled as the point at which journalism's slide back into partisanship became a kind of free fall." There is still lots of time for the Argus to improve, but people say I'm a fool for hoping so.