Huffington's Post

I went to hear Arianna Huffington speak Monday evening, shortly before she made news by claiming in an online column that presumptive Republican nominee John McCain told her shortly after the 2000 election that he hadn't voted for George W. Bush. McCain promptly denied the charge. Given his obvious taste for good looking women twenty years his junior, it isn't hard for me to believe both of them are telling the truth.

But I digress. My real purpose in attending a signing event for her new book, "Right Is Wrong," was to talk about journalism. Her three-year-old online site, The Huffington Post, now has over a half million unique visitors daily. It recently surpassed the Drudge Report in traffic, is chock full of ads (and profitable), and recently began hiring real, full-time journalists.

All well and good. I'm all for entrepreneurial success in journalism, especially when the proprietor isn't Rupert Murdoch.

In her talk, Huffington lashed out at the mainstream press, who "act as if there is no such thing as truth and are more interested in cozying up to those in power than in holding them accountable." Though a frequent guest on talking-head TV, she dismissed the limited reach of cable television's endless chatter. "We have our own platform now," she said, pointing to the success of her own site, Talking Points Memo, Daily Kos and other stars of the leftwing blogosphere firmament.

But add it all up and what do you get? There's maybe 200 jobs that have been created by all the online political ferment on the left. Most of her site is made up of blogs like this one, created by people who have other, full-time jobs who get nothing for their effort. She herself is independently wealthy.

Meanwhile, in the real world of MSM (mainstream media), the Bureau of Labor Statistics will report on its annual job survey later this week. It measures the number of people in each job category. The number out Friday will be for May 2007.

Before going over to hear Huffington speak, I looked up the number of "reporters, correspondents and editors" in the U.S. in May 2006. The total came to a shade under 160,000. In May 2001, the total was a shade under 170,000. Given the accelerating job losses of the past two years, I suspect the total reported later this week will be around 150,000 and the actual number now well below that.

The point is: What will happen when there's no one left in the hated MSM to write the primary dispatches (like that wire copy) that tell us news consumers what's actually happening in the world and gives the endless army of pundits fodder for their commentary? It's great that a tabloid-style news outlet like the Huffington Post can blast away day after day about the Bush administration seeding television news shows with former military men still on the Pentagon payroll. But it took a team of investigative reporters at the New York Times a year to unearth and document that story.

Her response was somewhat heartening. A new round of venture capital financing will allow the Huffington Post to expand its reporting staff. They are forging deals with non-profit investigative outlets like the American News Project and angel-investor-funded start-ups like The Washington Independent, a feisty new voice in the nation's capital edited by Los Angeles Times veteran Allison Silver. The non-profit Center for Public Integrity, started by Chuck Lewis and run now by NPR veteran Bill Buzenberg, is still doing its thing and ProPublica run by former Wall Street Journal editor Paul Steiger has been on a hiring spree. It plans to grow to, gulp, 25 full-time journalists. The Kaiser Family Foundation is about to launch its own primary news service to cover health care issues.

What is most notable about all this activity is that it is non-profit and primarily funded by foundations. Many of these benefactors have agendas. There's nothing wrong with that in and of itself. Most of these new non-profit outlets have gone to great lengths to ensure that there is the same separation between funders and news managers that the MSM always claimed to have between advertisers and its news managers (I say "claimed" because I could tell some hair-raising stories about stories I had spiked because they would have alienated advertisers.)

But will benefactors lose interest? The economics of that model ultimately creates an environment where the primary audience for reporters and editors is their funder, not the public. I have seen this dynamic at work in the non-profit world.

I hope Huffington is economically successful with her online venture and hires a thousand journalists. It will prove that there really is an economy behind the New Economy.

I spent most of my work life in the private sector. In the end, I believe there really is something to be said for creating a product that meets a marketplace test, and that includes the written, broadcast and online word. I suspect the general public will always be somewhat skeptical about journalism that depends on the kindness of strangers.

Posted by gooznews at May 6, 2008 08:32 AM