this just in [3 PM EST], from Mike Tronnes of Cursor/Media Transparency:
"I just got online because I'm on Media Patrol for the next three days and I like to get a little sleep saved up for that long slog. ...I couldn't be more thankful. It looks like we've raised almost $2,000 so far, part of which will go to keep the M & F Media Patrol guy happy, part of which will pay Bill Berkowitz, and the rest will buy us some peace of mind."
Beyond that immediate cash influx, which in the short term will allow Cursor/Media Transparency to keep on, there's talk of a volunteer committe to help with fundraising. That's the long term solution.
So, once again the Daily Kos community saves the day !
OK, we have a plan... if anyone reading this is a nonprofit development professional [or has that background] with time to volunteer, for an eminently good cause, to join a team working on this, please email me (see my user profile) - Best, Bruce Wilson
Media Transparency tracks the money. Cursor tracks the media...
Many people have praised the work Cursor, Inc. does, but after I ran my first iteration of this fundraiser, last night, I got an effusive email reponse from Mike Tronnes, who has been, he told me, running the organization unpaid for almost a year and saving meager funds simply to pay for website costs and to pay the person who does the "Media Patrol".
This is a fundraiser, and if you can afford to contribute to keep these key pieces of progressive movement infrastructure going, click on any of the pictures in this post to make a tax deductible contribution to Cursor, Inc. a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, but more than that...
This is a call to community: there probably is more coherence on the American left than there has been in a long time, and websites such as the Daily Kos have played an invaluable role in that.
But it's far from clear the developing new left, whatever and wherever that may be, has achieved the ethic of reciprocity and mutual self support needed to succeed over the long haul.
So beyond Cursor/Media Transparency's immediate financial needs, what can we do in the long haul to creatively financially bootstrap such worthy efforts ? One approach would be to create a rolling fund-raising and financial management/entepreneurship effort that would help political efforts/nonprofits/orgs to both raise funds [I'm sure just a single talented, paid person could achieve a tremendous amount & possibly could raise enough extra to self-fund], or do that better, but also figure out how to raise money by selling products & services.
Looking at the big institutions of the "new right" which have arisen since the 1970's one thing that strikes me is its business savvy: huge Christian right ministries, for example, are always selling. They move huge amounts of product - books, DVD's, music, t-shirts, all manner of bricabrac. The right gets lots of $ from big money donors, sure, but it also excels at self-funding.
In the end, if the new left is to succeed, it must achieve sustainability.
Cursor and Media Transparency are in the edge of financial insolvency and so the critical work they do may soon cease without more funds. But, beyond that, I'm asking for your ideas on how Media Transparency & Cursor can raise more revenue on a regular basis. Go to these website & think about it. Ideas are welcome.
The bottom line is this : beyond the issue of the websites in question and the critical work they do in covering the media % helping to keep it honest, and in tracking the money that funds the American right, Cursor and Media Transparency are maintained by people who are barely paid if they are paid at all.
To the extent the resurgent American left is to succeed, to mature into a coherent and self-sustaining movement it needs to look to the people who are doing important work.
Often those doing critical jobs in the political and media ecosystem and in the blogosphere are not especially good at self-promotion, and some of those who wind up receiving new cash infusions invested in progressive political infrastructure are not those with the deepest political insights.
[ below: what Media Transparency does ]
Media Transparency follows the money fueling the right-wing movement, to show how conservative philanthropies, through their tax-exempt funding strategies, shape public discourse.
The big givers include Milwaukee's Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Scaife, Koch, Coors, and Walton family foundations. They alone have poured $28 million into the American Enterprise Institute. That kind of money buys a lot of "experts."
With coordinated giving on a grand scale, they've led the way in funding a movement to radically alter the social, legal, educational, media, political and religious landscapes of the United States, building a supply-side machinery for implementing a hard-right agenda.
Media Transparency follows their money and what it buys with a unique database -- 50,000 grants to 9,000 recipients for $3.5 billion -- and 60 to 70 original articles per year that connect the dots between the money and the movement's radical public policy goals.
Media Transparency is the essential check on this extreme agenda, as witnessed by the dozens of progressive media outlets like Alternet, ThinkProgress, Media Matters, SourceWatch and Daily Kos that rely on our research, and the more than 30 books that have cited it.
But we need your help to continue helping them, and, to provide America's mainstream media with the help it needs. Please spread the word, and put your dollars to work fighting their billions, with a tax-deductible contribution, in any amount.
A few months ago, I made a popular post here, at the Daily Kos, about the new right-wing billionaire funded Freedom's Watch group, which reportedly has $250 million in financial pledges aimed at influencing the 2008 election.
I like to think I'm usually ahead of the curve and sometimes I actually am, but that story wasn't even remotely on my radar screen: I got it from Bill Berkowitz, who originally covered the story at Media Transparency and who has a knack for covering such stories far in advance of their breakout into mainstream media.
The emergence of MoveOn.org has scared be bejeezus out of some on the US right and Bill Berkowitz, I realized in retrospect, was watching, patiently and closely, for the emergence of the right-wing answer to MoveOn. Bill's been scanning the horizon for the right-wing response, and he's written about Rod Martin and Vanguard.org but he also was very early to pick up on Freedom's Watch which, now, is widely recognized as a looming threat to Democratic Party hopes of winning back the presidency in 2008.
There are few who do the sort of work Bill Berkowitz does, and in my opinion it's crucial that effort remains financially viable...
So, I'm staging a fundraiser.
Cursor and Media Transparency are run by the same nonprofit which, Bill tells me, is not doing very well...
Like many independent progressive outfits not mainlined to Washington elite backers, Cursor/Media Transparency has always been run on a shoestring and I have to deduce, from Bill's description of how donations to the nonprofit have dropped dramatically in the past 2 years, that the shoestring sustaining these institutions, which have served as invaluable information infrastructure for the emergent "new left", may be very close to breaking.
Remember Cursor, home of the unmatched Media Patrol ?
There's nothing like Cursor, and it isn't easy to put together the "Media Patrol" - I know because several years ago I applied for the position and made it close to the final cut but not close enough, so I deeply respect whoever did. Media Patrol is a fierce discipline, a sort of media panopticon or media Zen that, I can guarantee, many of the leading lights of the new progressive movement read weekly or daily. It's that good.
[right: sidebar ad you can put on your website. It's wrapped in a link to the Media Transparency/Cursor, Inc. donation page
And, so is Bill Berkowitz. For example, Bill anticipated the current shakeout in the leadership of the religious right and knew that younger leaders would soon come to the fore. One of the 800 pound gorillas is "A Purpose Driven Life" author Rick Warren who, lately, has been touring Africa and engaging in pronounced gay-bashing. Bill Berkowitz, it turns out, was writing about Warren, as the next American evangelical leadership heavyweight, about a year and a half ago. Most things Berkowitz writes have prolonged relevance, as does much of the writing at Media Transparency.
Over the last few years I've fronted for and participated in a number of Internet fundraisers on the Daily Kos and my sense is that none may have been worthier than this.
I'm writing this post under a tight deadline and can't say much more except this:
If you feel as strongly as I do that Media Transparency and Cursor must continue and thrive, here are a few things you can do:
- Donate to Cursor/Media Transparency.
- If you have a blog, put up the fundraiser sidebar ad I've made, above, or make your own ad (mine was a quickie, not especially fancy).
- Ideas are welcome.
Best wishes,
Bruce Wilson
ps:
Here's an interview I conducted with Bill Berkowitz early this March, on where he thinks the new American left, as a movement, is at.
excerpt:
"Conservatives used the seventies, and the ensuing decades, to build institutions, finance them, and create a conservative vision: advocating building the military and a muscular foreign policy; supporting free-market economics including deregulation, privatization and tax cuts for the wealthy, and getting aboard the so-called family values bandwagon.
New Deal and Post New Deal social contracts and programs, such as environmental protection, funding for public schools, workplace safety regulations, affirmative action and welfare were targeted for demolition. While the right applied a full-court press on these and other issues through its think tanks, public policy centers, conservative foundations, and media outlets, a splintered, factionalized, and marginalized left was literally left in the dust."