TUESDAY, APRIL 23, 2013
And our plans for the upcoming year: At this time of the year, we ask you to consider supporting our site. For the record, this is our fourth or fifth “annual” fund-raising drive in what is now fifteen years!
We pledge to be less unpleasant this year, especially about our own tribe’s leaders. That said, we see four basic areas we plan to explore this year.
This is the first of the four:
The ongoing growth of liberal media: The liberal world was asleep in the woods when we started this web site during the Clinton/Gore years. No matter how much bullshit the mainstream threw, you simply couldn’t raise a complaint from the liberal world.
That’s how George Bush got to the White House. To this day, the career liberal world refuses to discuss or explain the process by which this happened.
In the aftermath of Iraq, a liberal world began re-emerging. We think this is still the most important ongoing development in our political media.
What will MSNBC turn out to be like? What sorts of issues will end up on the liberal world’s play list? To what extent will the liberal world eschew the practices of Fox? What kinds of forums will we build for outreach to non-liberal voters?
We still think these are the most important issues floating around in political media. We’re going to continue to ask you to critique and challenge the work of your team as the liberal world reinvents liberal media.
In our view, our tone has been too negative in this area—but liberals should challenge the conduct of liberal media. We’ll still regard that as Mission One in the coming year.
Tomorrow, we will continue our list of emphases for the coming year. But we’re asking you to support this site. Nexis ain’t free, to cite one example. We’ve used it for all these years.
Analysts need a new pair of shoes! If you want to support our theoretically less caustic site, you know how to do that: Click here.
I donated, won't you consider donating, too?
ReplyDeleteMy memory may be faulty, but I remember JB saying "Papa needs a new pair of shoes", NOT that the "analysts" need a new pair of shoes.
ReplyDeleteYou annoy me every day but that's OK. I'm a liberal.
I'll be sending a few dollars to your site so you will-hopefully-keep on excoriating MoDo, Gail Collins, Charles Blow, Joe Nocera, etal; and the farce that is the NYTimes.
I need you to watch (and report on) the one true liberal channel. My stomach cannot take watching them.
Keep it up.
I've been set up for a while now to automatically donate $10 a month. I'm happy to do it because this site is important to me. Like Krugman and precious few else, Bob attempts to shed light and explain the world we live in. If you feel the same way, stop and think what life would be like if this site were to disappear.
ReplyDelete"In the aftermath of Iraq, a liberal world began re-emerging."
ReplyDeleteYes, and politically at least, it largely threw off the triangulating shackles of Clinton-Gore-ism and won resounding elections in 2006, 2008, and 2012. Thank you, Howard Dean and others for re-igniting a progressive fire that was snuffed out during the Reagan-BushSr-Clinton/Gore years. And I suppose we ultimately have George W. Bush to thank, too.
I appreciate you and am contributing, but as far as I am concerned be as tough as necessary because I think it is warranted.
ReplyDeleteLTR
By all means, criticize members of the liberal team, but keep it to specific failures and avoid lurking for the opportunity to pull out marginal failings -- yes, cherry-picking -- to prove the pre-determined point. Keeping the pressure on them to tell the true story of our schools, for example, is valuable. So was the criticism directed at shoddy work by alleged supporters on the Susan Rice TV appearances.
ReplyDeleteAccept the reality that every media star, like every politician, is a narcissist with an eye on the next and higher-paying gig. Instead of just bemoaning how horrible some people are, it would be helpful to try to be constructive and imagine strategies that blog readers could use to put pressure on the liberal stars to raise the issues. As much as you hate Rachel Maddow, and it does seem highly personal, there should be recognition that her show and most of the others on MSNBC do discuss issues -- union rights (in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan), gun control, women's rights, unemployment -- that the mainstream press barely acknowledges exist.
As far as the War on Gore, saying nobody will discuss it isn't very helpful. It's not easy now for a journalist today to have an angle that justifies dredging up 13-year-old muck. People like Chris Hayes were barely out of high school then. But yes, when that history either is misstated or clearly could have been (or certainly should have been) readily included in someone's media critique, by all means identify the failure with as much support establishing the cravenness of the omission as possible.
Keep the "tribe" metaphor if you must, but it's not a very good one unless it is referring specifically to members of a party who reflexively follow its leaders even when they adopt stupid positions. Having carefully thought-out political positions and advocating them forcefully -- and forcefully attacking the opposing positions -- does not make someone a member of a tribe.
Whoa! This blog looks exactly like my old one!
ReplyDeleteIt's on a completely different subject but it has pretty much the same page layout and design.
Excellent choice of colors!
Also visit my web blog - cars wallpaper border walmart - www.lineacasafonto.it -