An article I wrote yesterday, Amateur Blogosphere, RIP, has generated a lot of discussion (apparently, a decent amount at Personal Democracy Forum, too). Even though it is a subject on which I have spent a great deal of thought, the article was written in haste, and so it did not convey the full context of my thoughts. As such, this afternoon I think it it important to provide some clarification.
My basic premise is that the progressive political blogosphere–and I am NOT speaking about other blogospheres, since I do not know much about them–is now almost entirely dominated by political and media professionals. But there is more to it then that:
Vast majority of bloggers still unpaid: First, let me clarify that the vast majority of progressive political bloggers are still unpaid hobbyists who blog as a labor of love. Like, over 99% still fall into that category.
Professionals dominate market share: What has changed since the formative days of the progressive political blogosphere in 2003 (and earlier), is that 95% or more of the audience share goes to three or four dozen bloggers who are now full-time media and / or political professionals. Over 95% of the audience of progressive political blogging goes to a small number of blogs anyway, and those blogs are now almost entirely run by people who take blogging and / or politics as their primary source of income.
The trend is very recent: Seven years ago, there were no professional, progressive political bloggers. That began to change when media outlets like the Washington Monthly hired Kevin Drum, when advertising services like Blogads became available, and when political campaigns decided it was time to start spending money to invest in the Internet. Those developments, all of which occurred in 2003, opened up the three paths to professionalization: 1) get hired full-time by a media outlet or non-profit, 2) make enough income to live off your own blog, or 3) parlay your blogging into political consulting work.
The trend is irreversible: We will never return to the days (some may say glory days) when the progressive political blogopshere is dominated by unpaid hobbyists. This is because it is virtually impossible for a hobbyist to compete with professionals who are actually paid to spend all day blogging. No one has enough free time to blog as much as Matthew Yglesias, David Dayen, or the front page of Daily Kos.
New voices will still emerge, but only within the professionalized context: Undoubtedly, new voices will still emerge from the hobbyist world. However, when they do those bloggers will emerge within established, professionalized blogs in order too attract an audience in the first place (hell, this was already the case by 2006, as I discussed in my first ever article on Open Left), Further, these new voices will have to become professionals themselves in order to sustain their efforts over the long-term.
I hope that helps provide more solidity and clarity to my thesis. I stand by it, but I think it makes a lot more sense with this added context.
Update: There is now a follow-up to this article, providing more context, qualification and clarity. You can here it here.
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Today the New York Times announced that it will incorporate fivethirtyeight.com into the NYT website:
This summerThe New York Times will incorporate the political blog FiveThirtyEight into the political news section of NYTimes.com. Blogger, polling expert and founder of FiveThirtyEight Nate Silver will continue to oversee the blog and will also be a regular contributor to The New York Times and to The New York Times Sunday Magazine.
Only five years ago, the progressive political blogosphere was still predominately a gathering place for amateur (that is, unpaid or barely paid) journalists and activists unattached to existing media companies and advocacy organizations. Those days are almost completely over. Now, the progressive blogosphere is almost entirely professionalized, and inextricably linked to existing media companies and advocacy organizations.
This transformation has been brought about by three developments (fellow bloggers, please forgive me in advance if I fail to mention your or your blog as an example):
Established media companies and advocacy organizations hiring bloggers to blog, full-time: The Washington Post, New York Times, Politico, Center for American Progress, Salon, CQ, Atlantic, Washington Monthly, the American Independent News Network, and more have all hired hired bloggers to blog, full-time. Many of these bloggers, such as fivethirtyeight, Unclaimed Territory, or the Carpetbagger Report, operated their blogs independently of any established organization, and were key hubs in the “amateur” or “independent” progressive blogosphere. Now, those bloggers do pretty much the same thing they did before, they just (quite understandably) do it for a much better salary from an established organization.
Previously “amateur” progressive blogs became professional operations: Another trend, less common than the first, has been for blogs like Daily Kos, Fire Dog Lake and Talking Points Memo to transform themselves from hobbies into professional media outlets and / or activist organizations. These blogs have increased their revenue stream to the point where they can hire multiple full-time staff.
Bloggers translate blogging into consulting and advocacy work: Many bloggers have also found a way to make a living by combining their blogging with blog-friendly advocacy and consulting work. This is actually the path I am currently following, as are, I believe, Oliver Willis, Atrios, Jerome Armstrong, and more. This involves finding part-time or full time work in politics that is conducive to still maintaining a full-time blog (which also generates a part-time income).
Add up all three of these paths, not even to mention the emergence of the utterly dominant Huffington Post, and the progressive political blogosphere is now both thoroughly professionalized and integrated into the progressive media an political ecosystem.
That didn’t take very long. The progressive blogosphere really first emerged onto the political scene in late 2002 over fights like the run up to Iraq, the 2003 Democratic primaries, and Trent Lott’s comments at Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party. In less than eight years, it went from a loosely knit, rag-tag network of amateur outsiders into a fixture in the world of professional political advocacy and media.
I want to make it clear that I know there are still “amateur” independent blogs around. Also, I do not begrudge a single person for taking any of these various routes to professionalism. Hell, I have wanted to be a professional blogger since Kos first began selling ads in late 2003. I am simply describing a trend that has, quite obviously, been underway for years now. In fact, my first post ever at Open Left was on this very subject).
It was, really, inevitable. Avant-garde, “outsider” developments which prove to have real support are invariably co-opted by any successful, institutional establishment. At the same time, these avant-garde movements are often willing to be co-opted, since established institutions usually have vastly greater resources than the independent, shoestring distribution networks of the avant-garde. Before I became a blogger, I was an ABD graduate student in English, and I was going to write my dissertation about this phenomenon in 20th century American poetry. I am quite thrilled that instead of writing that dissertation, I was able to participate in a real-life example of it.
Anyway, kudos to Nate Silver, and RIP to the amateur progressive blogosphere. It provided a regular feeling of revolutionary ecstasy while it lasted, but there was no way it could last very long. It was a transitional period into a new media and political paradigm, not a new paradigm unto itself.
One of the most common arguments in the blogosphere, and indeed in the entire progressive ecosystem, is whether President Obama, and his administration, are ideologically in tune with the broad progressive agenda (see a quick synopsis of that agenda here.) It is certainly an argument I have engaged quite a bit, even too the point of landing an appearance on Hardball back in late 2008 to discuss it. As most of you reading this blog probably know, I weighed in on the “no, he isn’t” side of that debate.
However, as time as has gone on, I have gradually come to believe that this argument is missing the point. Ostensibly, the stakes of the debate are as follows:
Those who think Obama is doing the best he can for progressive causes will seek to defend him in public at all turns, and to work with / within Democratic Party structures like Organizing for America.
Those who think Obama is not doing enough for progressives will engage in public, left-wing pressure against the administation, and work to build coalitions independent of Democratic Party structures like Organizing for America.
Now, this choice seems like it is about President Obama and the Obama administration, thus justifying the ongoing argument about whether Obama is sufficiently progressive.
However, if you look closer, you can see that this debate actually isn’t about Obama at all. Instead, this debate is actually about choices over what sort of public messaging and coalition building will best achieve your desired advocacy ends. To put it a different way, unless your goal is actually to prove that Obama is teh awesome or teh suck–which is a very generalized discussion withdrawn from direct advocacy–then this is an argument over which means will best achieve progressive political ends.
Given that this argument is about tactics involved in political advocacy,, and given the the variable nature of useful tactics involved in political advocacy, the utility of determining whether Obama is progressive enough, in some generalized sense, falls apart. Across several campaigns, the goals of the Obama administration will have a variable relationship to your goals as a political advocate. Also, across several campaigns, the coalitions you work with will have variable responses to public, left-wing pressure on Obama. There are going to be times when supporting the administration, and working inn concert with it, is the best play. There are going to be times when working independently of the administration, or even taking an oppositional stance to it, is your best play.
The 2010 elections provide good examples of both circumstances. Supporting primary campaigns by Joe Sestak and Bill Halter, in direct opposition to the administration, have led to positive progressive outcomes in terms of Senate votes 9see Arlen specter’s voting record over the past ten months) and legislation (see Blanche Lincoln’s derivatives language). However, in the general election, maintaining a decent Democratic majority in the Senate, and reforming Senate procedural rules, will be shared goals that virtually all progressive organizations will hold in common with the Obama administration. There is no hard and fast rule, because this is about achieving certain political ends, not about a debate over the proper normative evaluation of the Obama administration’s ideological outlook.
Perhaps this actually means I am just coming down the second camp in the great debate–organizing independently of the Democratic Party leadership and Obama administration–just without a necessarily oppositional stance in that organizing. Either way, it is a debate that will continue for as long as the Obama administration is around, no matter what I say about it. Further, that I would even write this article shows that I am still fascinated by these discussions, even if I ostensibly claim to have moved beyond them.
If you read this far, you are probably fascinated in these discussions, too. As such, you would probably enjoy the America’s Future Now Conference, from June 7-9 in D.C., which is putting this debate at the center of its agenda:
The Campaign for America’s Future has held an annual conference every year, and typically the attendees would discuss how conservatism has failed and how their leaders can be brought out of power. The next iteration of the CAF conference, titled America’s Future Now and scheduled for June 7-9 in Washington, will have a much different focus – an open discussion among the progressive community about how to best position itself in an age of governing.
“The progressive community is somewhat divided, between the folks who think Obama is doing everything he can against a broken political system, and the folks that think he’s not doing enough, and that we need an independent force to push him,” said Bill Scher, the Online Campaign Manager for CAF. “We’re going to have that debate at this conference.”
Scher highlighted a session called “The Great Debate: Progressives in the Obama Era,” where Executive Director of the Progressive Congress Action Fund Darcy Burner and Executive Director of the Center for Community Change Deepak Bhargava, who sit on opposite sides of the aforementioned divide, will argue how best to achieve progressive goals in the Obama age. This will be followed by community discussions and opportunities to engage on the question, which overhangs virtually the entire conference. “No matter where you line up in that debate, we need to come together and engage” on it, said Scher. “Are we the wingman of the Obama Administration or an outside pressure force?”
Darcy Burner is a real role model of mine, so I will be very excited to see her engage this debate.
And yeah, I threw an ad in at the end of this article. Sue me. After arguing about it for 18 months on the blog, I want to go see people argue about this stuff in person. You can check it out too, by registering for the conference here.
I am outraged by this, because this is outrageous.
And yet, where are the street protests in response to this outrage? No, not those protests–we need bigger ones. There should be hundreds of thousands of people out there protesting this. Every day. In every city.
Even if there aren’t ubiquitous, massive street protests over this outrage, there should at least be ubiquitous, massive street protests in response to one or more of the many other ongoing outrages. Because those outrages are also outrageous.
Furthermore, the lack of appropriate outrage from the left on this is also an outrage. In response, we need to put together two simultaneous protests–one against the outrage, and one against the outrageous lack of outrage expressed by the absent left.
This new, pathetic, absent left is a shadow of the glorious American left of the olden days. What the hell is wrong with kids these days, anyway?
Back in the good old days, hundreds of thousand of lefties took to the streets every day, in every city, in response to similar outrages. Further, these previous massive protests that took place every day in every city solved all outrages. That is why the past was a left-wing paradise, far more progressive than our own times.
However, the protests stopped. And so, we have new outrages. This is because there is a direct correlation between the amount of outrages and the amount of leftie protests.
But the kids today just don’t get this. Their parents didn’t teach them properly, and the country is going down the tubes. Like all true lefties, I just wish we could return to the good old days.
One of my pet peeves as a new media consultant is that many campaigns and organizations possess a Harry Potter style belief in how new media operates. The belief goes something like this:
Hire someone who works in new media;
Person just hired in new media waves magic wand;
Something amazing happens to benefit the campaign.
This is frustrating because it views new media as a magical realm that is the province of a few magical people who can somehow produce massive, tangible benefit to a campaign without any resources being invested in their efforts. In reality, new media requires significant investment of money and manpower to get an appropriate return on that investment.
The subject of this post is another one of my pet peeves: the very similar belief among election observers about the magical nature of field campaigns. This belief goes as follows:
Polling shows a candidate tied, or down a couple points;
The candidate has a strong filed campaign;
The candidate will defy polling and win due to strong field campaign
Salon’s war room offers up an example of this belief in their discussion of the Pennsylvania Senate primary today:
Obama’s absence from the state means the race will probably just come down to whichever side has the stronger ground game. Polls have it virtually deadlocked (though one new one out Thursday had Sestak winning by nine points). Vice President Biden may still return before Tuesday. A close election that hinges on turnout could favor Specter, who’s got several big unions plus the powerful Philadelphia Democratic apparatus on his side.
This is a nonsensical, Harry Potter style belief. It is also very widespread–I am not just picking on Salon here, just using a relevant news item as an example.
Have the mobilization efforts of the unions, Organizing for America, and the Philadelphia Democratic party somehow escaped the results of public opinion surveys to date? Of course not. The efforts of those groups to persuade voters and make them more likely to vote are already included in the public opinion surveys measuring the Pennsylvania Senate primary (which, on average, give Sestak a narrow lead).
Field campaigning does not operate in a different plane of non-muggle existence from other forms of voter contacts (paid media, free media, new media). Field campaigning is also not excluded from polling. Voters who have been contacted by phone calls, yard signs, or by person to person canvassing on the ground, are, just like all other voters, contacted by pollsters. The likelihood of these voters turning up to the polls is, just like all other voters, also measured by pollsters.
Polls measure the strength and effectiveness of field campaigns to date, as polls measure the strength and effectiveness of all campaigning through the date when the poll was conducted. The only way that a strong field campaign could surprise polls would be if that field campaign spent a disproportionate amount of its resources after the last public opinion survey had concluded its interviews. However,t his can be said of any aspect of a campaign, not just field. If a campaign spends disproportionate resources on television ads after the final poll was conducted, or one that manages to score a particularly good news cycle after the final poll was conducted, then the final poll will not measure the effectiveness of that aspect of the campaign, either.
For an example of how polling already measures the strength of field campaigns, look no further than the 2008 Presidential election. The final 15-day simple mean of national polls in 2008 showed Barack Obama ahead by 7.44% (across 61 polls, scroll to the link at the bottom). The final 2008 results gave Obama a 7.27% victory in the national popular vote. Few would dispute that the gap in quality between the field operations of the Obama and McCain campaign s was one of the highest ever in a Presidential election, with the decisive edge going to Obama. And yet, this advantage did not translate into an improvement for Obama from the final polls to the final result. This is because the strength of field operations, as is the strengthen of all aspects of a campaign, are measured by public opinion surveys.
The belief that field operations can produce a hidden vote polls are missing simply does not make any sense. Such a belief may serve as a comfort –or as a fear-based motivating tactic– to steel the nerves of supporters of one candidate or another, but it is not supportable by either deductive reasoning or empirical observation.
Because of your generosity and commitment, I am thrilled and relieved to announce that Open Left and Living Liberally met our fundraising goals. This week, we raised $19,501.61, from 411 donors. This will keep both organizations going, full strength, all the way through the electoral and legislative season.
Fundraisers like these are a humbling experience. They are also an excellent reminder about who you work for. Knowing that we work for you guys is a tremendous motivation to keep going, as hard as possible, no matter what happens.
Even though it seems like political types always say this, I really believe the next six months will be the biggest we face as a movement for quite some time. From the record number of progressive primaries, to taking advantage of the large Democratic majorities while they still exist, to trying to prevent Republican control of Congress, to reforming Senate procedure after the election, this really is a very rare moment in progressive politics. There are good reasons to feel frustrated and depressed, but we still have to seize the day while it lasts.
Your support will make it possible for us to do that. Once again, thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
Update: Up to $830–thank you! Still $170 left to be doubled. Please give now!
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If you haven’t already taken advantage of debcoop’s generous offer to double your donation to Open Left and Living Liberally during our fundraiser, you still have time. Since Deb pledged to match the next $1,000 in donations, 19 donors have given $680.
One year ago, Open Left needed your help in order to avoid shutting down. You came through for us, which over the past year allowed us to play a big role the fight over health care reform, marriage equality in Maine, and convincing Senate Democrats to reform Senate procedure like the filibuster.
Now, one year later, in order to keep going, we need your help again.
We are faced with a $12,000 budget shortfall over the next six months. This is a time when Wall Street reform, climate change legislation, pro-LGBT legislation, a new reconciliation bill, and both primary and general elections will be decided. To operate at full capacity, and keep making progressive dents on these issues, we need 400 members of the community to give to Open Left.
We are joined in this fundraising effort by a vital partner in the progressive netroots, Living Liberally, who is also facing a budget shortfall. Living Liberally has changed the landscape of modern politics by building progressive communities in 350 cities, with a goal of creating progressive communities in all 50 states. They are a real-life counter to the tea party that will be sustainable over the long-term, making progressives stronger in every fight we face, both now and in the future
It is not an exaggeration to say that the next six months will be the best chance in a generation for progressives to pass good legislation. We have to make it count. By giving to Open Left and Living Liberally, you can do just that.
Check out this video of Alan Grayson talking on the House floor about reducing defense procurement waste. Open Left co-founder Matt Stoller is literally the man behind the man in the video:
And speaking of both Matt Stoller and meta, it turns out a new academic study has the numbers to prove our old thesis that right-wing blogs are more top-down, and less community focused than left-wing blogs. For those of you old-time blog junkies, you might remember our 2005 paper, The Emergence of the Progressive Blogosphere.
I am pleased to announce that during the 2010 primary season, which will last until mid-September, Democracy for America will be sponsoring Open Left’s coverage of primary elections.
Primaries are one of the very few tools available to make Democrats in power in D.C. care at all about what the progressive activist base thinks. We can write as mainly tersely worded blog posts and comments as we write, but it is only through primary challenges that we have effectively pressured Senators like Blanche Lincoln, Michael Bennet and Arlen Specter on important legislative fights over the past year. To have as much influence as possible, we have to keep running primary challenges on as wide a front as possible.
Given their long-time support of numerous progressive primary challengers, including Ned Lamont, Donna Edwards, Ed Fallon, Mark Pera, and Bill Halter, not to mention their organizational genesis as a vibrant primary campaign that changed the Democratic Party, I am very excited that we will be working with Democracy for America this year.
Open Left is going to be rich in coverage of, and activism around, primary campaigns in 2010. I hope you will join us, and I hope you will join Democracy for America, too.
(This is from a reply to a diary at docudharma called F*** The Meta
IMO, the mechanics of blogs could be improved. Quite easily, I should think.
Basically, you should give diarists the ability to ban people from further commenting in any particular diary, if they don’t think the commentator is being serious. (But only after the offending commentator makes at least one post.) Since some diarists will do so dishonestly, or because they’re fanatics or overly irrational,
people who are banned should have the ability to respond, with either the verbiage or the link to verbiage clearly shown in the diary
the banned person should have the opportunity to troll-rate the diarist who banned them
Last week, I talked to the staff of the New Organizing Institute about developing a successful blog. The talk was given in the context of potentially further developing NOI’s blog (I am a fellow there). It was also given extemporaneously, so there are a lot of “ums” and “uhs.” Still, it present my basic vision, gathered over six years in the business, of what is needed to make a blog work. Watch the talk here:
The days of launching a successful blog, independent of established, well-resourced media outlets or non-profits, are nearly over. Hopefully, the vision I present above will help them last a little while longer.
What blogs are you reading these days? What draws you to those blogs?
One of the least enjoyable aspects of getting older is the almost inevitable urge to complain about how things were better in the past. You start noticing how much more stuff costs, how you consume different cultural artifacts than younger people, how the neighborhoods and places of business you frequent have changed, and how the means by which you accomplish things in life have either become antiquated or obsolete. Before you know it, you are starting to use lots of inappropriate definite articles (“the HBO” was a favorite one of older people when I was a kid), and you sound like an old Dana Carvey character, even though none of the kids these days even know who Dana Carvey is:
That’s kind of how I feel when I read articles about how the progressive blogosphere and / or netroots have changed for the worse, such as the one Big Tent Democrat put up this morning. Believe me, I understand the feeling that BTD expresses. I spent much of 2008 exasperated by a progressive Internet space that had seemingly reversed itself overnight on things like the value of triangulation, bipartisanship, appearing Fox News, allowing Joe Lieberman to keep his seniority, sending more troops to Afghanistan, retroactive immunity for telecom companies, replacing local state party organizers with ones who answer directly to the DNC, and much more. It seemed as though numerous policies and strategies that had held near-consensus stature within the progressive online ecosystem had been either scrapped or reversed simply because Barack Obama said it was a good idea to scrap or reverse them.
Back then, the urge to call people who reversed their positions lobotomized “sheeple” was almost impossible to resist–and I frequently did not resist it.
However, that is not an impulse I feel anymore. This is because I realized Barack Obama persuaded progressive activists to change their minds not because those activists are sheeple or because activist organization leaders operate in “veal pens,” but rather because Obama developed new messaging that was more convincing than the likes used by myself, or BTD, or anyone else on the left who was making contrary arguments. He just beat those old arguments, plain and simple, and the progressive Internet space changed.
The following anecdote, from the movie Conspiracy, seems apt for the end of the health reform fight. The abusive father is a nice substitute for extended electoral or legislative fights, such as health reform:
Lange: What was that story he told you?
Heydrich: Story?
Lange: Kritzinger.
Heydrich: Yes, he told me a story about a man he had known all his life, a boyhood friend. This man hated his father. Loved his mother fiercely. His mother was devoted to him, but his father used to beat him, demeaned him, disenherited him. Anyway, this friend grew to manhood and was still in his thirties when the mother died. The mother, who had nurtured and protected him, died. The man stood at her grave as they lowered the coffin, and tried to cry, but no tears came. The man’s father lived to a very extended old age, and withered away and died when the son was in his fifties. At the father’s funeral, much to the son’s surprise, he could not control his tears. Wailed, sobbed, and was apparently inconsolable. Lost. That was the story Kritzinger told me.
Eichmann: I don’t understand.
Heydrich: No? The man had been driven his whole life by hatred of his father. When his mother died, that was a loss, but when the father died and hatred had lost its object, the man’s life was empty – over.
Lange: Interesting.
This feels about right for the love / hate relationship I felt both toward the 2009-2010 health reform fight, and the 2007-2008 Presidential campaign. The campaigns are so grueling that they feel abusive, certainly compared to the life you had before the campaign. However, at some point, the abusive, grueling nature of the campaigns becomes an end in and of itself. So, when those campaigns are over, even when you win, your life becomes emptier. A great source of pathos has been removed.
Health reform has passed the House. The reconciliation “fix” to the Senate bill, too.
Personal reactions:
I feel relief that the most difficult aspects of this specific fight are over. This was just an utterly grueling fight.
I feel grateful to everyone who participated in this fight, even to those on the left who opposed final passage.
I feel determined, in that this is just a step in the right direction. There is a long way to go before we achieve universal health care in this county.
I feel sad that it came at the cost of throwing reproductive rights under the bus. Any win that means hurting some of your friends is not a full win.
I feel frustrated, because I know we could have won the public option campaign, but it didn’t happen.
It feels good that Democrats did something with their majority. I hope it works out well, and provides the benefits its strongest supporters say it will.
This is an open thread. Tomorrow, more fights ensue. Good night.
STATE BLOGS
