First, We Killed the Advertisers

By Al Giordano

“Near the end of an extremely important discourse


the great man of state


tumbling on a beautiful hollow phrase


falls over it


and undone with gaping mouth


shows his teeth


and the dental decay of his peaceful reasoning


exposes the nerve of war


the delicate question of money”

 

     -   Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Oh, lordy, am I glad to be off of this dysfunctional grid:

Some colleagues in the blogosphere have gone public with their efforts to get liberal organizations and others in the Democratic Party universe to spend more money on blog ads.

Jane Hamsher says it (surprise, surprise) most petulantly:

“They come to us, expecting us to give them free publicity, and we do, but it’s not a two way street,” Jane Hamsher, the founder of FiredogLake, said in an interview. “They won’t do anything in return. They’re not advertising with us. They’re not offering fellowships. They’re not doing anything to help financially, and people are growing increasingly resentful.”

What she is admitting is her own complicity in a corrupt system. It’s the same corruption that plagues the dying daily newspaper industry and the rest of the commercial media (that which blogs, at their best, should challenge, not replicate).

I sympathize with their plight but mainly I’m glad to live close enough to the land, with a low enough overhead, to be free of such concerns, thanks to you, the readers that toss your regular small donation into the cup.

For anyone that has observed history, it was entirely predictable that Netroots blogs – like virtually all liberal or progressive organizations – would be suffering a slip in their revenues in 2009 now that a Democratic administration is in the White House. The same thing happened in 1993, when President Clinton began his term. Back then, liberal advocacy groups from the ACLU to NARAL had to lay off staff, move to smaller DC offices, some even closed their doors, because it is simply harder to raise money for advocacy organizations when they are no longer seen as a necessary counter-weight to an evil-doing administration in power.

The fact is that many of the liberal organizations to which some bloggers are pointing the finger are also suffering financially. People just don’t donate as much to them when they don’t feel as threatened by US policies. And those organizations aren’t going to admit to their own fundraising problems aloud. That would lead to a chain reaction of panic that would brings them even less revenue. Anyway, it seems a bit tiresome that some are yelling at them; with very few exceptions they’re hurting, too.

I’m so glad to be on the sidelines of that push-and-shove match. But this freedom is not by happenstance. Narco News – the host of The Field and the engine of original hard-hitting investigative journalism and the training of independent journalists throughout the hemisphere – is a project that I launched in 2000, at the tail end of the “dot com boom” when investors were throwing money at new online ventures. We didn't seek investors and never sought or accepted advertisers. And we survived the “dot com bust” very well, when so many other news websites went out of business in the early part of this century. We’ve grown stronger and more widely read each year precisely because we weren’t dependent on advertisers. We designed it that way.

Over these nine years, many companies and organizations have approached Narco News from every direction seeking to advertise on these pages. I don’t blame them. They could reach a lot of people that way. They've offered us a lot of money. But I always said no, and will keep on saying no, because in my prior experience working at newspapers, radio and other commercial media, I had learned the lesson hard: There is no such thing as advertising without strings attached. And once a media organization heads down that slippery slope of worrying about what could happen if it criticizes certain matters near and dear to the advertising classes, even the "progressive" institutions, it loses its greatest credibility: independence.

In 2008, The Fund for Authentic Journalism – the only source of support for this newspaper (including The Field) – had only three donors of $5,000 or more - and none of them over $10,000. The majority of our funds came from small donors. And look at how much we can do with so little. Over nine years, we’ve seen other four-figure donors come and go. Not to over-generalize, but as a group they tend to be fickle. Only the Angelica Foundation – whose mission is human rights in the hemisphere - has consistently given $5,000 or so every year. And never with even a hint of strings attached.

Since 2004, when our own readers formed The Fund for Authentic Journalism, we’ve overwhelmingly relied on small donations from you. Living close to the land never bought me a house or a car, but it has kept me in laptops and cigarettes and, most importantly, in your hearts and minds. We’ve done an enormous amount of good work with the support of many, and also trained a small army of younger journalists who either still report with us or have gone on to do this important work independently. I would posit that we’ve only survived and thrived because we’re not dependent on advertising.

I don’t begrudge any fellow or sister blogger who helps make his or her project sustainable by accepting blog ads. By itself, that’s not necessarily a corruption. But when that converts to trying to pressure certain sectors to advertise – and so messily, in public! - that’s when the jig is almost up. You can see it in the comments section of Greg Sargent’s story, linked above, in the wide disconnect between the readers and some bloggers who don’t yet understand: our only valuable currency is the trust that readers have for our independence from moneyed interests (and that includes the Washington DC insider organizations and PACs on the left side of the dial, too). Everyday people are so absolutely right to distrust commercial media. But this matter of pressuring advertisers, with the resentful sense of entitlement that oozes from some of the complainers, will be the death of many blogs in the coming years. We've watched it happen again and again.

There is another path. We’re living proof of it. And you are the foundation of of it. Warmest holiday greetings, Field Hands, on this Passover and Easter week, and as spring blooms: Thank you for your readership, your support, and your trust. We'll keep doing our part in this work that is so worthwhile.