When I was working in radio in Nashville back in the ’60s and ’70s, there were only six effective daily news outlets in town: The NBC outlet (WSM-AM/TV), the ABC outlet (WSIX-AM/TV), the two separately owned and staffed CBS outlets (WLAC-TV and WLAC-AM), the morning paper (The Tennessean), and the evening paper (The Nashville Banner). Only one, the Banner, had a conservative point-of-view. In the early ’70s, the Nashville media market began to “diversify” when WPLN joined NPR. Nashville was not unique in left-wing dominance of its news media.

The Banner folded in 1998, but it was replaced by an online site of the same name in 2022 which says it “will be politically agnostic and will not include opinion pieces.” Things are still a bit lopsided in the media back home.

Several folks roughly my age at those news operations have gone on to other things. I’ve gone from WLAC-AM to working at Goddard Space Flight Center. Oprah Winfrey moved on from WLAC-TV and Pat Sajak from WSM-TV to other work in television. And Al Gore … well, being Bill Clinton’s VP was the high water mark of his career.