Dateline BEA: Checking in with Regnery

By Ron Hogan on May 22, 2006 11:31 AM

When I told friends that I was planning to drop by the Regnery Publishing party Friday night before driving up to Pennsylvania for my non-BEA speaking gig, there were a lot of inevitable jokes about marching on the fortress of reaction, since the announced guest list included such conservative luminaries as Newt Gingrich, Sen. Bill Frist, Oliver North, and Michelle Malkin, while my own political beliefs are somewhere to the left of the Kerry/Edwards ticket. But I go where the publishing action is, and the atmosphere at the Regnery action was very convivial, and I eventually worked my way over to president/publisher Marji Ross (right) to discuss Hillel Italie’s AP piece on political publishing, in which she plays a prominent role, and the panel she was doing Saturday about “selling and promoting right of center books via left of center channels.”

I was a bit surprised at the panel’s approach; after all, the conservatives have had a firm grip on political power for nearly a half-decade now, and one could point to any number of best-selling right-wing writers, so the suggestion that they’re suffering at the hands of a liberal media becomes less plausible every day. And Ross agreed that the explosion of alternative media over the last ten years, from new cable networks like Fox News to certain high-profile bloggers, has leveled the playing field somewhat. We also talked about how many of the major New York houses have tried to imitate Regnery’s success by launching their own conservative imprints, like Crown Forum and Sentinel (as well as Mary Matalin’s nearly-launched Threshold). Ross believes that such imprints are still just chasing after a perceived audience. “They’ve put on a new dress,” she jokes, “but they haven’t changed the lady underneath.” Part of the problem, she says, is that they’re New York publishers at heart. “The first part of your job as a political publisher is knowing politics,” she said. Regnery’s D.C. location, she argued, gives it a decided advantage in terms of awareness of what issues are really on the conservative community’s minds.