by Susan J. Demas
March 1, 2009

He was a real cops reporter, with a penchant for R-rated jokes (or worse) and cheap beer. He also was the one who would rail against hippie liberals every day in the office and try to coerce me into checking out Web sites plastered with hot Republican women.

Needless to say, I wasn’t interested.

So when he e-mailed me a couple months ago asking for help in finding a job, I wasn’t surprised. Those messages trickle in fairly regularly from my former colleagues, given the fact that newspapers are perhaps the only industry screwing people worse than subprime mortgages.

What my old friend was looking for was help getting on staff with a new Democratic congressman. Now that did give me pause, I’ll admit, since I’m not aware that he’s ever voted for anyone with a “D” next to her name.

But times are tough. I checked in with some of my pals in D.C., who informed me that with the GOP on life support after the last election, there have been a number of deathbed conversions. Suddenly, rock-ribbed Republican operatives have seen the light and embraced both “hope” and “change,” as signified by the new Barack Obama bumper stickers on their hybrids. Oh, and if that happens to help with that interview with the Democratic Leadership Council or EMILY’s List, well, that’s just gravy.

It’s hard to brazenly switch sides when you hail from the world of politics, and I doubt few have been successful. But there’s no doubt that journalists have been swelling the ranks of political groups and government staffs in recent years.

On one hand, this is nothing new. History books are filled with journalists-cum-politicos — Bill Moyers, Tony Snow and Pierre Salinger, just to name a few. There’s a symbiotic relationship, with some fleeing the halls of government for the pressroom, like Tim Russert or Mikhail Gorbachev, but the trend usually goes in the other direction. The reason for that is simple: PR pros bring home much bigger paychecks than most reporters.

Some say government work doesn’t pay. They’ve obviously never woken up to find that their shiny new B.A. in journalism is worth $18,500 a year for the privilege of writing four stories a day at their local rag.

It’s also true that many journalists are idealists at their core and some have naturally decided to serve their country.

In recent months, at least a half-dozen scribes have jumped to Team Obama, notably Jay Carney, who left a job as Time’s Washington bureau chief to serve as Joe Biden’s communications director, and Jill Zuckman, the Chicago Tribune’s Washington correspondent who resigned to assist Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

What struck me about these announcements was the “duh” factor. The Trib is in bankruptcy. Time’s circulation is falling off a cliff, like all print media. Meanwhile, the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune, Philadelphia Daily News and Philadelphia Inquirer have filed for Chapter 11. The Rocky Mountain News is shutting its doors and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and San Francisco Examiner appear to be heading in that direction. Everybody’s on the Web and nobody seems to be able to crack the code of making money off it.

Here in Michigan, one of the largest newspaper chains, the Journal Register Co., this past week filed for bankruptcy. The fate of the Oakland Press, Macomb Daily and dozens of other smaller publications is in doubt. Booth Newspapers has arm-twisted hundreds into taking buyouts at its eight papers. Gannett’s cuts have been deep at papers like the Battle Creek Enquirer and Lansing State Journal. And the two biggest newspapers in the state, The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press, are both slimming down to three print editions a week starting March 30.

Job security is a joke for journalists. The question to me is why more media types aren’t skedaddling for government jobs.

Of course, what strikes conservative critics is that reporters, by and large, are working for Democrats. There’s plenty of snickering by the Media Research Center, et al., about how members of the liberal media elite have somehow managed to be lured away by members of the liberal political elite. It’s all a grand conspiracy.

Now keep in mind, the right’s press bashing has been a staple for decades, going back to Nixon. Without it, nice girls like Ann Coulter would have to get real jobs. During the George W. Bush years, when the GOP controlled every branch of government, including the Supreme Court, we still heard incessant prattle that the all-powerful liberal media were in charge and, of course, destroying America.

I just want to know why my invite to the World Domination Summit got lost in the mail.

Now, I’ve seen surveys that three-quarters of reporters are liberal. (I’ve also heard the argument that journalists are forced to be more informed than the general public and that’s the logical outcome.) My personal experience at five different papers in the Midwest is that reporters tended to skew more liberal and libertarian, although they were far from a homogenous group, while most of my editors were Republican.

But I believe this is a false argument. As Tim Skubick persuasively argued last month in the Oakland Press, if reporters didn’t put their political leanings on the shelf, they’d be fired.

And the simple fact is that right now, Democrats control the White House and both houses of Congress (which is a far more pressing problem for conservatives than the press). Elections, as they say, have consequences. One of them is that the party in power is hiring and the one on the outs is not. Indeed, in this economy, Obama is just about the only growth industry in the country between his administration, commemorative books and cheesy coins hawked by Montel Williams on teevee.

Perhaps the biggest irony is that it’s the mismanagement of media executives, who tend to be quite conservative, that has driven journalists into the Democrats’ embrace.

Most reporters I know would like nothing better than to stay in the industry forever. But in the end, that pesky fondness for things like food and shelter tends to win out.

Susan J. Demas is a 2006 Knight Foundation Fellow in nonprofits journalism and a political analyst for Michigan Information & Research Service.