With today's announcement that Air America is shutting down, I'm sure it'll only be a matter of minutes before conservatives start gleefully insisting that this demonstrates that there is no market for liberal news outlets.

Two quick points to keep in mind:

1) You can either claim that ABC/CBS/CNN/MSNBC/NBC/NPR/NYT/WAPO/ETC are “liberal media,” or that there is no market for liberal media -- but not both. Please pick one.* Thanks!

2) The Washington Times has been losing money for two decades. In the early days of Fox News, Rupert Murdoch paid cable companies $11 per subscriber to carry FNC (and Rudy Giuliani pressured Time Warner to carry the outlet in New York City.) Point being: conservative media outlets have succeeded not only because of market forces, as conservatives would have you believe, but because right-wing billionaires like Murdoch and Rev. Moon have been willing to subsidize them.

* Or neither. That works, too.