Do conservatives still have voice in media?

It's safe to say I'm in the final innings of my newspaper career. Granted, I may still have a time or two to step to the plate but since my first newspaper paycheck was in 1963, the writing is on the wall.

And I accept that.

Which got me to thinking about changes in the newspaper business through the years and, quite frankly, the sad state of journalism today.

I could bore you with way too much information about the changes in technology employed to bring you this newspaper.

Suffice it to say, we produce a newspaper today in a much different fashion than the old days.

But it's the content of modern journalism that bothers me.

It's no secret that most major urban publications are bleeding money at a record pace.

The blame for this slow but steady decline is often attributed to the advent of the Internet.

But in reality, that decline predates the Internet.

No one in their right mind can ignore the bias and left-leaning bent of large metro papers such as the New York Times or the Washington Post.

Perhaps those publishers believe that staking out the extreme political view will shore up their sagging circulation. But it does not.

Yet, the real tragedy and negative impact on the American public is that the major television networks to a large extent, take those large papers as the bibles of the media and parrot their reporting on the nightly news.

Because of this obvious bias, we find a large uninformed public in the urban areas and never before has it been so evident.

When urban dwellers absorb this propaganda masquerading as news, it's impossible for a conservative voice to find traction.

And you wonder why we have such a divided population?

As much as I detest the liberal-leaning drift of this great nation, I am much more troubled by those within the media - particularly newspapers - who play a key role in shielding the American public from the truth.

Pick a scandal of this administration and, believe me, there are ample choices.

But try to find a nugget of truth in many of these large publications and you'll come away frustrated and angry.

As a society, we place blame on social media for circulating false and inflammatory rumors as if they were true.

But if you look closer at the explosion in social media, much of the "factual" matter is regurgitated from the urban media.

There's plenty of blame to go around but it needs to start with those who allow their personal opinions to be published as fact.

Over 20 years ago, I chaired a Missouri Press Association committee designed to explore the future of the newspaper industry.

That committee carefully examined this new fangled Internet along with the emergence of 24-hour cable television. We concluded wrongly that these changes would not negatively impact newspapers.

What we failed to explore was the changing content of newspapers where opinion and news coverage were combined.

This misleading trend of packaging opinion as fact will eventually lead to the downfall of the newspaper industry.

This collapse will surely come after my watch in this business. But unless there is a change that assures the reader gets news as news and opinion as opinion, the day will arrive as certain as the sun will rise.