A major center for online political activism on the left, Daily Kos*, pays for its activities exclusively through the free market.
It’s an experiment of sorts. I’m not crazy about the look of banner ads, but it promises to be a huge revenue generator. And while the site is in good financial shape, I’ve started funding “fellows” to do great activism work. The more revenues the site generates, the more of those fellows I can fund. Currently, I’m funding two of them (in addition to a paid staff of three working on dKos and SportsBlogs).
[…] I’ve learned that us netroots activists can’t depend on traditional funding sources to get our work done. And quite frankly, I suck at asking for money. But if Daily Kos can pay for those activism efforts, then I don’t have to waste time begging for money and can focus on the important things — building infrastructure.
Unless I am misinformed, Josh Marshall’s growing empire can probably say the same thing. If any major centers of rightwing activism support themselves on their own revenue, off of the Olin/Scaife/etc major-donor spigot, I don’t know about them. That doesn’t mean that they do not exist of course, only that I have not heard about it. But as far as I can tell it seems very ironic.
(*) Bigger than Jerome? Dunno. But big.