A February 23 article in Vanity Fair offers some interesting insight into how publication sales are affected by the nation's political climate. During the height of the Bush administration hatred, sales of liberal rags rose considerably. Similarly, they are now losing readers and more conservative magazines are gaining readers. Surely the nation's economic problems have affected the numbers but all in all, it's an interesting little article.
There's just one problem: The headline is Hate Sells: Why Liberal Magazines Are Suffering Under Obama. This is sensationalized and extremely misleading. The article doesn't give readers any reason to believe that hate has anything to do with sales figures. In fact, the piece actually contradicts its own headline, as it offers a sound and reasonable explanation for how sales of magazines change during political eras.
It seems as though the writer had an interesting little report but couldn't come up with any relevant headline for the piece, thus decided to use some attention-grabbing line no matter how ridiculously inappropriate. Don't be surprised to see readership decline at Vanity Fair due to bad writing and unabashed bias. Although, they'll blame it on hate or the GOP even though they're own research might contradict the claims.
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