‘I’m not gonna buy a newspaper that doesn’t reflect my views’: Valley senator’s remarks after Vindicator closure
In an interview after the 2019 closure of Youngstown’s Vindicator newspaper, state Sen. Sandra O’Brien of Rome, R-32nd, told a journalist she thinks people stopped buying newspapers that reflect only Democratic viewpoints.
“I’m not gonna buy a newspaper that doesn’t reflect my views,” she said.
Today is the three-year anniversary of the Vindicator Printing Company’s announcement that it would shutter the 150-year-old newspaper on Aug. 31, 2019.
A portion of O’Brien’s interview with The Guardian journalist Oliver Laughland is included in the new HBO documentary “Endangered,” which focuses on the state of journalism in America and across the world. Laughland’s segment focuses primarily on misinformation in American media.
O’Brien on Tuesday told Mahoning Matters she views social media as a direct competitor to “legacy” media sources, including The Vindicator.
A clip of the documentary was broadcast during a segment of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” that aired Monday evening. American journalist Ronan Farrow, the documentary’s executive producer, appeared on the talk show to promote the film:
Here’s the exchange, as shown on “The Late Show”:
Laughland
So the paper in Youngstown, The Vindicator, closed down recently, meaning that Youngstown is now the biggest city in America without a local newspaper. Were you upset by that?
O’Brien
No, it’s just a sign of the times. They’re a dying industry because they are so left-wing progressives. We are not left-wing progressives, so we stopped buying the newspaper. We stopped them having one point of view — the Democrats. Why am I going to pay for a paper that calls me all kinds of names because I’m a conservative Republican? That’s why they’re a dying industry.
Laughland
Don’t you think, though, that this community has a right to have accountability journalism in it, though? Because that’s what the function of that paper was — it was to hold the powerful to account.
O’Brien
I don’t believe they did. I’m not gonna buy a newspaper that doesn’t reflect my views.
In the clip, O’Brien appears with a name badge reading “Sandra O’Brien for State Senate.” O’Brien was elected in the 2020 general election to serve Ohio’s 32nd Senate District covering Trumbull and Ashtabula counties, ousting Democratic state Sen. Sean O’Brien.
Mahoning Matters reached out to O’Brien by phone Tuesday to talk about the interview. Here’s her emailed response:
With regard to local newspapers dying, the legacy media no longer has a choke hold on the news. The Vindicator, The Plain Dealer, The Columbus Dispatch along with NBC, CBS and ABC once ruled the world of journalism. But that world is gone. The Vindicator is no more. The Columbus Dispatch is unbearably woke and The Cleveland Plain Dealer is preaching to the last few liberal members of the choir in Cleveland. In their place social media has risen. We have competition. The First Amendment is reborn. Of course the legacy media doesn’t like competition. So social media’s reporting is dismissed as “disinformation”. Accusing the new competition of disinformation is simply saying only the legacy media’s viewpoint is correct. Coke is better than Pepsi. Ford is better than Chevrolet. The media market is a market place like any other market. People buy what they like. The Vindicator died. Mahoning Matters was born. Newspapers are selling buggy whips but the public is buying Teslas.
Following The Vindicator’s closure, the Tribune Chronicle, a Warren-based daily owned by Ogden Newspapers, purchased the newspaper’s masthead, web domain address and subscription list and continued publishing The Vindicator as an edition of the Tribune Chronicle.
“Endangered” premieres tonight on HBO. Here’s its official synopsis:
An official selection of the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival, Endangered chronicles a year in the life of four journalists living and working in democratic countries where freedom of the press has historically been considered a ‘given.’ Yet, as online misinformation proliferates and world leaders brazenly denigrate the press, distrust of traditional media is on the rise, and journalists are increasingly facing situations more typically encountered in war zones or autocratic states.
