At the 2006 Yearly Kos convention, in the big "Meta" panel in the ballroom, I made the point that DKos was fairly "user-friendly" but not all that "observer-friendly." Sites like Media Matters and snopes.com are easy for the general, non-expert public to use, but many find that DKos is not. I asked what we could do to change that and -- unsurprisingly, for a "pop-quiz" question -- didn't get much of a reply.
Since then, I've worked out this plan. I've circulated it to a few friends here, and the reaction has largely been that it would be great if it could happen, but that it's incredibly ambitious and would need to be done very well. I accept that, and accept also that sometimes ideas need to be broached more than once before they catch on. If this first swing doesn't work, I will take another one later, or someone else will. But eventually, this is where we have to go. High-information voters are the low-hanging fruit, and low-information voters are the high-hanging fruit. If we want those last few voters who can determine an election, we will need to climb after them. And this is something that many people who feel that their talents don't run to the rough-and-tumble of blog arguments may be able to do. It would be yet another way to serve. This will need to happen eventually. I'd like it to happen soon.
If, as you read what's below, you'd like to jump ahead to a small-scale (and not all that well-done) mock-up of what the sort of site I propose might offer, please take a look over here. The link is reproduced at the bottom of this diary, with more context.
CONTENTS:
- A summary of the plan
- The problem with Daily Kos as a political outlet
- What the Right does more effectively
- What the progressive blogosphere lacks
- A proposed new website
- Your role, and it won't be easy
- A sample issue
1. A summary of the plan
I'm told that my third biggest failure as a writer -- the first being non-productivity, the second, prolixity -- is that I tend to bury the lede. So -- here's the lede:
I want to start such a website to do what I think we can't do through DKos: reach average voters who aren't ready for the blogosphere with a site that looks a lot like other news websites but would provide the important, stunning national and international news taken from the blogosphere that they should be reading. These are the people we need to reach to change the country. Most of them aren't coming to us. So, to the extent that they're online, we need to come to them.
We should have a website -- in fact, unless someone else conveys a better approach in comments, I plan to start a website -- that will, on a continually updated basis (like the best news sites) present clearly and simply written stories conveying the important news discussed at Daily Kos and other prime sites in the progressive blogosphere.
- No commentary.
- In fact, probably no comments! The new site would refer people to blogging communities, but probably would not strive to be one itself.
- Occasional features -- human interest stories -- that showcase important issues and themes.
- "News analysis" limited only to making sense of a story in context, by giving its background or dispassionately detailing its links to other current or historical events.
- No original reporting; everything would be adapted from other sources. But this would not be a headline aggregator like The Drudge Report: full stories of 250+ words would be written based on the source material.
- While links would be offered to source material -- both to blogs and to the material linked to from those blogs -- all stories would be written to be self-contained; one would never need to click on a link to feel that one had gotten a good understanding of the issue at hand.
- Stories would be written at the prototypical USA Today "tenth-grade reading level" -- you can do a lot with that -- to make them accessible for the largest audeience.
The site would be designed to appear to be -- and would strive to actually be -- politically dispassionate in its discussion of the events, offering just the facts and necessary context. No proselytizing, no politically loaded language, no rabble-rousing, no slanted presentation of facts, no PR. Developing and maintaining a reputation for straight-shooting would be paramount. (Links to great editorializing would be included, though.) The difference between this news site and others would be in the selection of stories: we would be covering the news stories that truly matter each day. We would do so without spin, trusting that the facts alone would be sufficient to convince people of the truth. It would be the mainstream-style news site that we wish existed.
In other words, the site would be a portal to the news produced by the blogs for people who would not themselves ever go to blogs. It would be as familiar to them in form and style as the New York Times, CNN, or Newsweek sites. But the content would be better, because it would be presenting the amazing and critical factual material that can be found on blogs like Daily Kos, TPM, FDL, and many others. It would allow readers to gain the benefits of the work on those websites without -- unless by choice -- being immersed in the rants, profanity, speculation, infighting, snark and meta that we all know and love (or at least endure), but that would chase less hardy souls and hardened spirits away. Would some people follow the links to blog communities and start participating there? That would be great. But if they don't, that's OK too. What matters is that the facts that are currently presented on blogs get out to a wider audience that won't otherwise encounter or embrace them.
2. The problem with Daily Kos as a political outlet
I love being part of DKos, but I know that it has some serious limitations. The most critical one is this: we fail to reach too many of the people that we need to reach.
Have you tried to send people to DKos, or e-mailed or sent them diaries? How did that turn out? Most people I've tried to turn onto the site give it a shot and then back away slowly. (If they read a vicious comment section under a diary, maybe not so slowly.) Some love it; most don't. Even those that love it don't have time for it.
DKos -- with its proudly progressive viewpoint, freewheeling diaries, pugnacious commentary, insider lingo, snark, and loads of meta -- confuses and alienates a lot of potential readers. (It doesn't alienate you and me, of course, but we're a self-selected group: we're already here, and staying here.) Where do people taking baby steps onto the Internet go for simple recaps of the excellent, fresh, overlooked news that blogs provide? Where is the USA Today of the Left Blogosphere?
I don't think that such a venue currently exists.
In saying that, I don't intend to disparage any part of DKos. This is my home on the web. It's right for me, though it's wrong for many other tastes. And while I enjoy the analysis and the ranting and the humor and the camaraderie and the essays and the artistry and the meta and all else, it's the news I discover here that makes DKos indispensible to me.
It's the news that people beyond DKos, and beyond the blogosphere generally, should be reading. I think that we frequent participants on the inside often lose sight of that. (It's certainly true of me; my own diaries are usually meta, commentary, or community, rarely news.) Maybe non-blogocentric readers should be exposed some opinion columns as well: they should click on links to Digby and Greenwald and some of our diaries here. But that's secondary: above all, they should read the news.
3. What the Right does more effectively
We can learn something important from the Right in this regard. We can't pick up all of their lessons, of course, because of (I'd argue) a serious difference between most Right and Left thinkers. Talk radio, which the Right dominates, feeds people emotionally provocative talking points. And a site like Drudge's largely gives out links with screaming headlines to serve as marching orders for Dittoheads: tell them what the talking point of the day is and they'll repeat it, with the gleeful abandon of pro wrestling fans for whom it has been made very clear which side to root for. (Note: there are exceptions. There are thoughtful and analytical conservatives. But they are not an important part of the Right Wing Noise Machine, which works on red meat and soundbites.)
Those of us in the center and on the Left, by contrast, tend to be a bit less willing to take programming for granted. I don't think that a left-wing news aggregator -- a counterpart of Drudge -- would be as effective. (Certainly, especially with RSS feeds, such sites exist.) On our side of the spectrum, I think that we usually need a little explanation of what's going on beyond the mere headline to pique our interest. And -- compare our comments with those at RedState and the like -- we're more attentive to, and resistent to the prospect of, being manipulated. I think that our attitude towards is more similar to those who are not currently part of the blogosphere, but who do want to know what's going on in the world.
What we can learn from the Right is that they know how to use the Internet to get in touch with the people they want to reach. Through the liberal-dominated blogosphere, we've been able to do some of that sort of work -- but we're leaving a lot on the table. We need to figure out who it is we're trying to reach, and go after them. I think that the people we want to reach outside of the blogosphere are those who are thoughtful, not partisan, not well-informed, suspicious of manipulation, but open to persuasion about what's actually going on in the world.
Do we reach these people now? How can we better reach them?
4. What the progressive blogosphere lacks
I worry that this next section of this diary will come off as critical; it's not intended as such. Almost every site I discuss is one I find valuable; most are resources I'd like to use for this new site. I'll review them one by one, explaining why I think they don't suit the bill.
- Daily Kos, Eschaton, FDL, MyDD, etc.: nice and broad content, but not accessible to readers due to in-jokes, patent political bias, harsh language, etc. Format looks quite different from online newspapers.
- TPM & its family: maybe the closest thing that we have to this, but it's not pitched at an unsophisticated level, nor does it systemtically provide the broad coverage of the days events (as opposed to whatever JMM and his gang is interested in that day.) A great resource, though.
- Salon.com: now contains some great blogs, but behind a firewall and some limits to breadth of coverage. Blog format may be offputting to some. The Daou Report, located on Salon, serves as an aggregator for both Left and Right blogs, but doesn't give people the ability to get the news without traveling to blogs, and in any case focuses more on opinion than news.
- ePluribus Media: excellent investigative stories and would be a great source, but not covering day-to-day events and not set up to be an "entry-level" site for less politically informed readers.
- Media Matters and Think Progress: these both do a great job, but in a relatively limited area. They're not simplified, generalist, daily digests. Both are also considered, rightly or wrongly, to be partisan. (A new site may fall into the same trap, but will ideally be less likely to do so if it sticks to the news.)
- Raw Story: This is a good contrast to what I'd want to create. It is a headline aggregator and is seen as highly partisan, political, and often less than fully trustworthy. For people who are already part of the blogosphere, it can serve a great time-saving function -- but those are not my target audience.
- Huffington Post: A couple of people with whom I've discussed this said that it reminded them of HuffPo. It's an insightful comparison, but I think that the differences are telling. Speaking only for myself, when I go to HuffPo it might be a little but for the "Raw Story" type progressive news aggregation, but more to go gawk at the celebrity posters. (Who did Arianna bring in today? What's Harry Shearer saying?) I was a HuffPo believer from Day 1 and I'm glad it's there, but I think it's aimed at a different sort of audience, looking for a different sort of experience, than I think would come to this site. Just as the Right has both National Review and the New York Post, bringing readers with different tastes in information to similar destinations, so do we need a variety of different kinds of venues to get people to read the truth.
What I don't see in this list is anything that takes low-information readers and brings them up to speed on the issues of the day, every day. That does not mean necessarily turning them into activists. Creating more informed voters, who will be more open to hearing the factual information that is not on most news sites, would be accomplishment enough. In politics, I have faith that the facts are on our side. We don't need to bamboozle people; we just need to make the truth palatable to them.
5. A proposed new website
Here's my bold statement: I would like to put together a site that would look like a newspaper, attract serious advertising, and provide non-slanted information in readily readable form. It would not be written for activists, but for grandparents, teenagers, busy people, people who don't much like politics, etc. It would be a simple and accessible, attractive and unironic, vanilla news website without much attitude, but with one difference: it would print the news that matters.
I don't want to compete with DKos or Daou or Salon or ePluribus or Fark or TPM or FDL or Media Matters or Think Progress or HuffPo or anything cool. I do want to compete with nytimes.com and cnn.com and newsweek.com and your local daily newspaper. I want the site to appear completely benign --except for the fact that telling the truth is the most subversive thing in the world.
I would want not to have a burgeoning comments section, if any. At most, I would want moderated comments, with links to diaries here and elsewhere for people moved to discussion. If this leads people to DKos or FDL or TPM, so much the better. But I want readers of the new site to be comfortable reading and commenting without being pelted with rancor. That site would not be intended to become a community. This is the community. That is just -- the news they need to know.
I would want to write stories based on reportage from DKos and other news-providing sites. (Some sources could even be conservative, if such sites actually break important news; fair is fair. But I won't hold my breath on that.) Facts are not copyrighted, only their expression. A short summary article to explain what's going on with a given topic, even with some quotations, would fall within fair use. (I might be able to use even more material given the licensing of many blogs, but that prerogative might be limited. This would be an ad-supported site and I don't want to run afoul of the blogosphere.) Ideally, someone who came up with a great story on a blog could share in ad revenues, which will probably be puny.
6. Your role, and it won't be easy
Ideally I would like a team of good writers and editors doing this, 24/7. If and when ad revenue came in, "rewriters" might be paid once the set-up and maintenance costs are covered. Ideally, I would not be in charge of it for long; others have training more appropriate than do I.
Beyond that, I need to identify people who can do the back-end technical work, for deferred compensation if any compensation at all. (You'd make money if and when I make money, and being transparent and fair with whoever I work with is more important to me than what small amount I'd expect to make.) This would be a serious project that would have to be crafted to be up to professional standards. If you're interested, you know how to read me.
I'm interested in people's ideas here. And I'm interested in serious commitments to do something serious. This is the ultimate action item. By next January, I would like to have a site that is the site for people who want USA Today-level writing to come to for election news, as well as other national and international news.
I barely know how to begin. I have some money, some time, and a lot of inclination -- but I would need help. Beyond the back-end help, that means finding people who can volunteer to do rewriting and editing. That means finding people who can do organization and marketing. That means practicing this sort of writing and editing a bit, assessing our efforts, and seeing how it can be improved.
In short, that means being the news source we would like to see in the world. I've come up with an sample first edition below.
7. A sample issue
I was away from my computer all of last weekend, which makes it a good couple of days for me to go back, take a fresh look at the diaries from those days, and experiment with what coverage on such a website might look like. I limited myself to four stories per day; ideally each day would have at least ten stories, or as many as could be produced. I used jotter's list of the high-impact diaries for each day and put that material in a separate diary. (Please click on the preceding link to see the mock-up.) I chose, entirely subjectively, the diaries that seemed to me to reflect significant news stories. I then put them into comments (here serving the function that new web pages would be in the actual site) -- the exception of course being that I can't edit these stories -- with links in the body of the diary text; this shows (absent graphics) how the home page would be structured. Again, I don't think I'm the best-suited person for this task; I'm sure others could do a better job with it. However, this should give some idea about how such a website might look.
My own self-assessment: I'd give myself a C+. Not particularly good, but not bad for a first effort.
(1) The weekends aren't the "heavy news" days on the blog, so this was a hard couple of days to start with, but even so I think the stories are too long and too diffuse. In time, we'd develop "evergreen" sidebars (which would themselves need to be updated as events dictate) to put up along with each story. These would give longer-lasting background on health care, on the pet food scare, etc., which would allow the main developing news articles to be shorter.
(2) I think I'm still writing at too high a grade level. I don't have a technical writing background, but others who do could do a better job of this. I'd have to improve at this task -- but I also think it would be an excellent "training ground" for composition and journalism students.
(3) Saturday April 21 was a fairly typical day on DKos in that several of the top-ranked diaries were news stories. Sunday April 22 was atypical; I had to dip down into the mid-30s to find four newsy articles to summarize. As a result, there are two articles on labor issues -- fine with me, but atypical of this site, and of the new effort. Once this got going, the summaries would not be limited to DKos diaries, so there should always be news stories to find. And, with more stories, there will be more diversity of content.
(4) In running this "experiment," I was putting a premium on getting the story written fast. The rewrites involved reviewing the diaries in questions and at least some of the initial sources, and coming up with the summaries of them; a somewhat involved process. As you'll note, none of these rewrites took me more than a half-hour, and one took only 15 minutes. That makes me think that this can work. If 2-3 people a day are rewriting stories from DKos, I think there would be enough to keep the site lively. With 4-5 people per day -- no more effort than is currently put in by the good folks at Diary Rescue -- plus one editor, I think we could cover DKos, FDL, TPM, and most of the other top blog sites as well.
Conclusion
Right now, we're failing to reach people that we have to reach to amplify our impact on the political world. These are people that our opponents reach with their lies and distortions; we have to fight back in a medium that they will understand. It doesn't have to be me leading this project -- I have plenty of other things to keep me busy -- but I think that something a lot like this has to be done. To reach voters, we have to reach out to them in a manner they will find appealing. I will look forward with great interest to your comments and criticism.
