-By Warner Todd Huston
There are reports that Donald Trump is looking at a new way of influencing the media, this time by trying to buy The New York Times. If he pulls it off it’ll be huuuuge.
Trump has spent years getting media attention for one thing or another. From multiple marriages, to hit TV shows, to rumors of running for President, “The Donald” has been an expert at insinuating himself into the news cycle. But now it seems he wants to write the news instead of just being written about.
Rumors abound that Trump’s making an effort to buy the paper. But he isn’t the only high profile millionaire around whom such rumors swill. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is also rumored to be looking into buying the paper.
Trump’s office has refused comment on the rumors of his interest buying in the “paper of record” and so is The New York Times. But one can’t imagine that the Sulzberger family, owners of the Times, would find it a cozy fit with Donald Trump!
Speaking of Trumping the Times, New York magazine reminds us of an amusing tête-à-tête between Trump and the gray lady.
Trump certainly has many opinions on how Times journalism should be conducted. For instance, when columnist Gail Collins derided Trump’s birther obsession in 2011, calling him “the man who can make Bill O’Reilly look like the most sensible guy in the room,” Trump responded with a letter to the editor claiming that Collins’s “storytelling ability and word usage (coming from me, who has written many bestsellers), is not at a very high level. More importantly, her facts are wrong!”
While not between Trump and the Times, The Donald recently got into it with another newsmaker last week when he sent out a Tweet congratulating the website Deadspin for its scoop outing Manti Te’o’s for his fake girlfriend story. The nice folks at Deadspin immediately Tweeted a reply telling Trump “Go f*** yourself.” (Though Deadspin’s Tweet spelled out the word.)
Trump replied to that saying that the Deadspin guys are “losers” and that he should learn not to be so nice to them.
If The Donald were to buy The New York Times one might suspect we would be in for some fun journalism.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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