Conservative columnist dismisses liberal media bias claim

The Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby notes that the simplistic right-wing claim that newspapers are failing because they're too liberal just doesn't make any sense:

Conservatives often accuse liberals, with reason, of clinging to emotion-based fantasies even when they are contradicted by real-world facts and results - of preferring to see what they believe, rather than believe what they see. But the right has its shibboleths too, and one of them is that liberal bias explains why so many newspapers are hurting.

Adds Jacoby [emphasis added]:

if liberal media bias is the explanation, why are undeniably left-of-center papers like the Globe, The New York Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle attracting more readers than ever when visitors to their websites are taken into account? How does liberal bias explain the shutdown of Denver's more conservative Rocky Mountain News, but not the more liberal Denver Post?

Newspapers are hurting because their traditional business model has been made obsolete. (Is this a mystery to anyone?) But conservatives prefer to concoct their own partisan, alternate universe explanation.