9:11 am – This is the first session I’ll be liveblogging. The idea is to connect blogs and the netroots to the big-money funders who want to change America in a progressive direction and have money to make that change happen.
9:12 – Chris Bowers is the first speaker, talking about why the blogosphere needs funding. We are the new generation of working class activists, part-time political activists and who work in another field in their other time. Because of this, they don’t have huge influence yet.
9:14 – There are 2-4 million progressive activists who read blogs regularly and become inspired and know what is going on because of the blogs. Blog readers are a large percentage of small donors. The blogs are driving political professionals more to talking to and interating with the progressive base. Almost every damanging Republican scandal of the last five years was driven by blog coverage.
9:17 – Given these successes, it would be disastrous to allow the blogosphere to continue to go with low funding. Less than $10 million of the annual $4 billion given to progressive causes is given to the blogosphere and most of that goes to 3-4 major blogs. Three quick ways donors can help fund the blogosphere:
*Buy advertising on blogs.
*Hire bloggers to netroots and blogospere outreach and other writing and outreach.
*Give money to netroots organizations.
9:22 – The next speaker is Rob Stein, one of the leaders of the group the Democracy Alliance. We shouldn’t be sanguine or smug about the positive developments for progressives in recent years — that the right seems to be in disarray. The institutions on the right are doing well and are raising money as good as ever. They will find new faces in the next year and if they lose, they will make things very difficult for whoever wins.
9:27 – The machinery of politics: At one point almost all money went through parties and committees. “Survival of what we call the free enterprise system…lies in…organization, in careful longrange planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinie period of years, in the scale of financing available only thorough joint effort….” Powell 1971. The conservatives went on to form think tanks, state-based policy centers, activity centers (idea machinery). They created leadership training institutes and more than 100,000 leaders have gone through their training since the 1960s (training machinery). They built a civic engagement machinery that built a grassroots movement growing out of the national party and reaching out through religion, guns and business. We don’t necessarily need to replicate it, but we need to understand it. Through each of these outreach groups, every community has dozens of offices with phone numbers, fax machines, copiers, etc. An infrastructure is in place that can rally around policies and isues. It’s paid for with small dollar contributions, mostly through non-profits. This created a market. Finally, they created a right-wing media machine. They created a lot of personalities (Rush, Cal Thomas, Ann Cuolter, etc.) and pushed them through right-wing media outlets on TV, radio, websies, publishing. They only care about the 60 million people who voted for George Bush.
9:38 – Every conservative has a daily access point to the conservative movement, this keeps them in touch with the talking points, issue stances and arguements they need to know about.
9:40 – They have integrators. They have organizations that marry movement leaders with political leaders around specific issues and policies — Wednesday Morning Group, Library Court Group, Council for National Policy, Philanthropy, Arlingon Group, Salem Communications, etc.
9:43 – To obtain and maintain power, you have to coordinate movement assets and political assets.
9:44 – New integrators on the left: America Votes, Leadership Forum, Democracy Alliance, Tuesday Group, the progressive web.
9:45 – The right is actually using the web strategically in more recent years and is doing it methodically and with a lot of money. They have three basic formats:
*Mainstream (Fox, Drudge) and activist news (Human Events, Townhall, Newsmax)
*Social/values web presence (Focus on the Family, NRA, MoveRigh.org?, Conservapedia).
*The Conservative Blogosphere
9:54 – Salem Comunications is a new group designed to reach audiences interesed in Christian and family conent and conservative values on air, online and in print. They have a massive radio presence and everything is connected through the Salem web network. The point of their efforts is to keep a connection between the right-wing idea machine and the base.
9:57 – Townhall.com is now owned by Salem and has transferred it into a major echo chamber for the right and leads people to action.
10:01 – Key elements of the conservative online strategy: Augment existing brand, create new ones, promote leading voices, aggregate leading websites, inegrate online and offline elements of the movement.
10:04 – The next speaker is Lisa Seitz Gruwell of Skyline Public Works. She thinks the right-wing approach to the web is a bit antiquated and that the progressives are cutting edge.
10:05 – Skyline was focused on outreach to young people and the Latino/Hispanic community in 2004. In 2006, they moved more toward state-based groups and hey had much more success with that.
10:09 – One of the keys to reaching out to young people is having a good online outreach program.
10:11 – Challenges they face in funding bloggers:
*Funders are held responsible for the things bloggers say.
*The blogosphere is massive and fragmented — who is the best and who should be funded?
*Huge lack of diversity in the blogosphere, most bloggers are white men.
See also the Center for Indepdendent Media’s work such as the New Journalist Program.
10:18 – The next speaker is Mike Lux of OpenLeft and American Family Voices. A lot of the big donors at this point don’t really understand the blogosphere and its potential benefits, although some bridges are starting to be built.
10:22 – We can’t just complain that the blogosphere isn’t getting enough money, we have to come up with specific strategies for creating opportunities for giving/receiving funds.
10:23 – We have to create organizations that fund bloggers, since most donors are hesitant to give money to individuals. These should be Democratic in structure, not serving as gatekeepers.
10:28 – There will be a website, hosted by the Commonweal Institute, that continues connecting donors to the blogosphere.
10:39 – When talking to donors, talk about what it is you are trying to change, not about your blog.
10:41 – Be careful with the specifics of donors, such as maintaining anonymity.
10:43 – Articulate what you need with clarity. Come up with specific ideas the community can be supported.
Ken…
I take it back. I’m glad you attended YK for this post alone…:)
I thought you might find something I was able to gather here useful. I’ve got enough stuff from this convention so far to blog for 3 monts. And that doesn’t even include the other ideas I’ve goten that can be implemented in Florida…