I wrote yesterday about a story from Greg Sargent over at the Plum Line about how Jane Hamsher, Markos, John Amato and I are all a bit miffed that the progressive leaders, from the big nonprofits to the Democratic party to the administration, do very little to help the Netroots (in terms of advertising, but other ways as well), yet are always asking us for help.
Some conservative bloggers, not surprisingly, were very upset that we would talk about "money." As you probably have noticed, we at AMERICAblog don't tend to cover the tit-for-tat of the liberal blogs vs. conservative blogs feud. Bigger fish to fry. But, there were some interesting posts on a few conservative blogs, and some posts on traditional media blogs, regarding this issue, and I think they're worth sharing.
First, this post from RightWingNews is really the seminal piece - he quotes a number of other conservative blogs writing about the very same topic as it applies to conservative blogs not getting support from the right.
There are loads of deep pocketed donors in the GOP who toss around millions of dollars to fund huge ad budgets -- but, how many of them spend money on blogs? Not many....Joe or I could have written those two paragraphs. Many of the big non-profits will hire a $50,000 a month PR firm to hit us up for free, rather than pay probably half that and advertise on most of the top liberal blogs, and then some. Not realizing, of course, that most of us immediately incinerate any email coming from a PR firm or a consultant.
In fact, we've even gotten to the point now where organizations will pay thousands of dollars on consultants, to hit blogs up for links, instead of just buying ads on the blogs. That's great for the consultants (and I can tell you that from personal experience), but it sucks for the bloggers who get nothing but link requests out of it while some consultant pockets a fat check just for writing a few emails that generally don't produce any results.
RedState:
One area where the left has done a much better job than the right online is investing in blogs as a component of left-wing activism.I found it fascinating that they, like we, think the other side's blogs are all being subsidized. Not true on our side. Media Matters may subsidize a blogger, but they certainly don't subsidize bloggerS, plural, nor do they exist to help the Netroots grow. Nor does any organization that we know of. As for the list of leftwing groups who routinely buy ads on the liberal blogs, the only group that routinely does that is SEIU. I can't think of any other group that has routinely supported us and worked with us, other than the ACLU, but their blog outreach pretty much stopped the middle of last year. Still, it's fascinating to see the same complaint, and misconception, coming from the right side of the aisle.
On the right, Heritage has its blog. Club for Growth has its blog. MRC has its blog. The GOP has its blog. The list goes on and on and on. When the right wants to get online, each organization does its own thing. That's just the way its done.
To be sure, on the left, there's a bit of the same thing going on, but then you've got groups like Media Matters that function more or less to subsidize left-wing bloggers. Oh sure, they say they are more important than that, but they aren't really.
More importantly, though, is the advertising component. What is the online advertising budget for Heritage? What about for AEI? What about for Americans for Tax Reform? Family Research Council? Leadership Institute? NFIB? NTU? National Right to Work? Club for Growth? The list goes on.
In the past few years, SEIU, AFL-CIO, NEA, DCCC, and a host of other left-wing organizations have been buying ads on left of center blogs keeping those blogs going -- allowing the bloggers on the left some financial incentive to keep blogging for the left.
In addition to all of that, you've got the Soros gang and SEIU engaging in a host of left-wing activities online that recruit and fund online writers -- bloggers, journalists, etc.
As for George Soros helping the blogs... George who?
Volokh
I wonder whether it's quite right for authors who publish their own opinion and news commentary to demand a "two way street" in which the authors get advertising money from the people they praise....A valid, and expected, argument. Except that we're not authors, or newspapers, or magazines. We're party activists. We're political organizations. We're talking heads on TV. We are political operatives. And sometimes - only sometimes - we are journalists too. (Or perhaps we're always journalists, but we're a new kind of - or a very old kind of - activist journalist that hasn't been seen in decades.) The old rules simply don't apply because we are not the Washington Post, and we aren't even the Nation.
But if an ostensibly independent blogger has a general pattern of demanding advertising — even indirectly, rather than in some personal communication — from institutions in exchange for publicizing the institutions' work, that sort of relationship strike me as harder to disclose in any transparent way. And my sense is that historically this sort of deal has been seen as not entirely kosher in the newspaper business, or for that matter in the opinion magazine business.
Sistertoldjah
In other words, they’re kissing Obama’s ass as much as a human being possibly can, yet they’re not even getting so much as a moist towelette to wipe themselves off with. And then they have the gall to go public and complain about it! Talk about prostituting yourself.Cute. But they do raise a valid, though obvious, concern. Are we simply saying we're available to the highest bidder? No. We don't publish things on the blog that we don't think are newsworthy and/or don't help the progressive movement in some way. But we do sometimes help our friends. I've posted things that a large organization, another blog, someone on the Hill, or even someone in the administration has asked me to post. I do it because we're Democrats. We're progressives. We help our family and friends. But when someone only calls you because they want something, and never offer to help you in return, they're not your family or your friend. You know the kind of person I mean. They only check in when they need something. It doesn't make you greedy to finally get fed up with being used.
So now we know what makes these left-wing blogs tick: money. They’ll say and do anything you want them to say, all you have to do is meet their price.
JulesCrittenden
Call me a rube but I’m a little surprised these people allowed themselves to be shamelessly used in the first place. Partisanship all around, but whatever happened to just saying what you think? I vaguely recall being approached a few times by flacks and hacks who wondered whether I wanted their talking points, but I prefer to shill for what I give a damn about all on my own, thanks.* I haven’t noticed the kind of bucket-toting the lefties just admitted to elsewhere on the right half of the blogosphere, either. Love to know how Kos and FDL readers will feel knowing their stars are tools, but I’d guess it won’t be much of an issue.(Sorry, lost the link for this character, but since he's being a dick, I don't plan on Googling him to find it.)
Cute. I work 12 hours a day on the blog. Literally. I get up at 930, start blogging immediately, and end my day around 10 at night (often later), then watch Stargate SG-1 until around 1am, go to bed, and start the next day all over again. It's unrealistic, and a bit naive, to suggest that I, or any blogger spending this kind of time to make a top blog a top blog, should be doing it for free, to hell with the money. 12 hour days don't leave you much room to earn income on the side. It's a simple fact that producing a good blog takes time and effort. If we, as a movement, as a party, believe that the Netroots is something valuable, then we should foster it.
The second point, that you're all tools, is basically a conservative blogger jumping into that "conservative blogs versus liberal blogs" thing that I like to stay away from. I've been running the blog full time for four years now. I think you'd notice if we were simply posting things because someone bought us off. Everyone in this town, everyone in this world, gets paid to do their job. And most do it without compromising their principles. We simply expect the same.
Oh, and you are a rube.
DailyMail blog (not the newspaper from England)
Welcome to a little place I like to call Reality.Excellent points. And that's why you'll notice that on AMERICAblog, at least, we barely ever publish anything that a big group asks us to. But not because we won't give them the milk for free. Rather, because they only think of how we can help them, not how they can help us. And I simply find that rude. I help friends, and the occasional stranger in need. I don't help the stranger with a million bucks who only comes knocking when he needs something.
Why should a group pay her to say what she was going to say anyway?
She complained about Americans United for Change and American Association of Retired Persons.
I’ve seen ads for Americans United for Change and AARP on Fox News. Those groups know that they have to pay to get their messages to Fox News viewers unfiltered.
Why should they pay Hamsher to do what she was going to do anyway for free?
PoliticalByline
I will agree with AllahPundit here; We Conservatives are in the same boat man. I don’t get any magical fund from some rich Conservative here, at all.And finally, Ben Smith posted this today, as a follow-up to this story. I love Ben, but his post is just categorically wrong. First his post:
An online media executive pointed out to me that yesterday's suggestions from liberal bloggers that their allies should advertise — something between a plea for help and an extortion attempt — comes in part because the first quarter has been terrible for blogs' ad revenues across the board.This issue isn't coming up because times are lean. Joe and I have been privately complaining about this state of affairs for years. Long before we were blogging. The left does not support its own. We don't nurture genius. We don't nurture success. We don't nurture the possible. We don't look for those shining gems out there, the unknown activists who are kicking ass far out of proportion to who they are, and find ways to keep those activists afloat, to help them grow ten and a hundred times larger and more effective. We don't think long-term. We usually don't think beyond the current day.
The recession and the end of the election season appear to have meant seriously lean times for bloggers on both sides of the ideological spectrum. Though a few political groups, like SEIU, are still buying BlogAds — the most popular online ad seller for blogs — there are also a lot of empty ad strips on the left and the right.
Yesterday's story had some effect — Americans United for Change promised to throw some ads the blogs' way — but the whole situation is a mark that even rich, successful elements of the new media that are widely viewed as models still aren't making it financially.
It's not just the blogs. Joe and I have tried for years to get a variety of gay rights proposals funded. To nought. I happen to have kind of a kick-ass record on the whole gay rights thing. If I couldn't get a gay rights project funded, then something is seriously wrong. But it's not just the gays. It's across the entire left. We don't necessarily eat our own, but we don't suckle them either. And when we finally - finally - develop our own echo chamber, our own left-wing noise machine, our own answer to Rush Limbaugh and Talk Radio and FOX News and the religious right, what do we do?
Milk it for all its worth, while doing nothing to sustain it.
This has nothing to do with the economy being lean. And everything to do with something I've been harping on since the early 90s. The left does not invest in the future. And it doesn't respect success, or innovation. It may even fear it. Until that changes, we will continue to harp on this issue, during times of famine and feast.
UPDATE: Perhaps the, oddly, bitchiest response to our comments yesterday came from Gawker, which is generally a rather liberal site. Here's what Gawker had to say:
The leading lights of the liberal blogosphere are up in arms because the lefty organizations whose agendas they promote—Americans United for Change, the Democratic campaign committees, etc.—aren't coughing up ad dollars. So they're threatening them!Markos gets far more traffic than Gawker gets, so the argument Gawker is making, that liberal blogs don't get enough traffic, is simply flawed. And second, if we haven't proven our value, then why do these very same groups email us, on practically a daily basis, asking us to pimp their stuff on our insignificant blogs?
The implicit threat—maybe we'll stop promoting your stuff!—is nothing short of a shakedown. Why does Americans United for Change make big media buys? To reach swing voters and independents on as large a scale as is economically feasible in order to bring political pressure to bear in support of their goals...
Unless Hamsher, Moulitsas, et. al. start attracting enormous numbers of readers who aren't already politically engaged and don't already agree with Americans United for Exchange, then the group would be wasting its money on their sites. The point is to persuade and rally the actual country, not the liberal echo chamber. The only reason for the left-wing establishment to divert more ad dollars to the blogs than it already is would be to keep them happy, well-fed, and useful. We wonder if the ploy will work. Oh wait, it did!
