I don’t know how many of you follow “The Trace,” which is part of Mike Bloomberg’s new media strategy. It’s actually a pretty soft-sell type publication when it comes to gun control. They obviously have a pro-gun control bent, but they also do some decent reporting on the issue. So I admit, I use them as one of my sources. I tend to think “The Trace” is to the gun control movement was Guns.com is for us. Guns.com also does some decent straight reporting on the issue, bit with a bit of a pro-gun bent.
Anyway, I noticed since the election that The Trace has gone from more of the soft-sell to a much harder sell. I don’t know if that’s part of a deliberate strategy change, or whether a lot of people over there are just pissed off at the election results. Not that I’m complaining: the hard sell is a lot easier to make fun of, and it should provide some good material in the future. The mainstream media has gotten pretty boring with their gun reporting, and the fever swamp places like Media Matters are so hilariously over the top as to be hardly worth paying attention to. It’s self-parodying.
Has the shift been sudden or gradual?
One difficulty with the soft-sell, for activists at least, is /keeping/ the soft-sell.
Activists have the tendency to want to go harder.
(This is true regardless of the side or issue the activist is on, that’s why they’re an activist).
There’s also that the soft-sell is more /boring/. It doesn’t get the accolades from the “good guys” and it doesn’t get the ire from the “bad guys”
It is pretty sudden. Post election they got a lot more hard line. At least that’s my observation.
Just before the election, I was linked to an article about the ammunition shortage and was surprised at how evenhanded the writer was. I expected a few barbs to be thrown in at stupid gun owner who think that the gub’mit is confiscating the ammo as soon as it leaves the factory, but there wasn’t even that.
I wish the Trace had kept that level of journalism up.