Is conservative new media worth as much as the occupods?

I must admit I’m a bit jeal­ous of the occupods in one respect when I see this post at Don Surber’s blog.

Some­how, they were able to spend a few months in the fall camp­ing out and protest­ing against the work­ing class while not work­ing themselves.

They are in that upper 1% who do not have to work.

I don’t begrudge any­one what they already have, if they are rich enough to hand out then that’s fine. My jeal­ously is based on how, well their friends on the left (and in the unions until the use­ful idiots were no longer use­ful) man­aged to kick in to keep them in tents, food and protests for two months. The tens of thou­sands of dol­lars that occupy New York, Occupy Oak­land and occupy Port­land (before their 20 grand was stolen) came from some­where.

The left makes an effort to keep those who fight their bat­tles sup­plied and ready to fight. On the right it is a bit leaner. Con­sider when New York Mag­a­zine men­tioned Mitt Rom­ney raised over 10 mil­lion in under 8 hours what Stacy McCain wrote:

we are struck by the sharp con­trast between how George Soros employs his wealth — to build a media infra­struc­ture for advanc­ing his broad polit­i­cal agenda — and how wealthy Repub­li­cans spend their own money: To advance the nar­row per­sonal ambi­tion of Mitt Romney.

Why are rich Repub­li­cans so clue­less? They are shov­el­ing money at a can­di­date who suf­fers tepid sup­port among the GOP grass­roots and is there­fore unlikely to win the nomination.

And lets remem­ber when Jim­mie Bize crunched the num­bers fur­ther based on not even Mitt’s 10.3 mil­lion or Her­man Cain’s 7 mil­lion sit­ting in the bank but on Char­lie Crist’s 4.3 mil­lion dol­lar quar­ter from 2010:

Do you know how much good report­ing we could get with a bud­get of just $500,000 a year? Think about it. Play with the num­bers. You think I couldn’t land Vadum and McCain for 70 grand a year, plus add in Ace and Moe Lane for blog­ging power at the same amount? That’s only $280,000. Set aside fifty grand for tech stuff (host­ing, design, trou­bleshoot­ing) and adver­tis­ing, another 60K for expenses (to pay reporters to go on the road and for free­lancers), 60K for an edi­tor, and 50K to me for super­vis­ing the whole oper­a­tion and there you go. There’s $500,000 a year. And that doesn’t count any poten­tial income the site might get from out­side adver­tis­ing, which you know it’ll get. As the site grows, the bud­get can creep up, but only for peo­ple who will add direct value to the site, but we add on as adver­tis­ing rev­enues war­rant the increase.

Think of a major league team build­ing a farm sys­tem and look at the long terms from those num­bers as Jim­mie Does

Divide $500,000 into $4.3 mil­lion. That’s how long I could run a hypo­thet­i­cal con­ser­v­a­tive news site with the money dun­der­headed con­ser­v­a­tives gave Char­lie Crist in just three months. Mean­while, Stacy had to rat­tle the tip jar so hard his teeth ached to get just a few hun­dred bucks to do some orig­i­nal report­ing in rural Ken­tucky. That’s ridiculous.

No what’s ridicu­lous is what hap­pened a few days ago. Before the blog­ger con­fer­ence call with Rick San­to­rum Fri­day Stacy McCain sug­gested I should make a point to record the call so I can use clips on the radio show. I replied I don’t have the nec­es­sary equip­ment for my line. He men­tioned it is avail­able at any Radio Shack for $50 – 75 bucks and I was forced to reply that I don’t have the $50 – 75 to spend for it.

The left is fund­ing it’s occupods and its new media to the point where TPM is get­ting ques­tion time on GOP can­di­dates con­fer­ence calls. Mean­while for­get the $70K in Jimmie’s exam­ple. Since June I cov­ered the St. Anselm debate in NH, the Dart­mouth debate from the spin room, reported live from blog­con includ­ing reports on the occupods, Cov­ered Her­man Cain, Mitt Rom­ney, Sarah Palin and Rick San­to­rum in NH, Bar­ney Frank’s press con­fer­ence and tea­party and GOP events and more. Yet although the radioshow is man­ag­ing to cover its expenses the results of my Novem­ber fundraiser were so dis­mal that I’ve closed out my 401k (tax hit not with­stand­ing) to keep up with the house bills for the next sev­eral months.

For­get the 70K that Jim­mie was talk­ing, for 70% of that I could not only sup­port the blog and the house but travel to cover the can­di­dates with­out won­der­ing if Free­dom­works can help with the cost of a plane ticket. For 40% of that I could sup­port the blog and house for a year and still cover events in a 150 mile radius with­out help and with the 10K that Mitt is will­ing to bet that pays for 3 months and 300 posts not count­ing the Under the Fedora Col­umn at the Minor­ity report and the Conservatory.

It’s a frus­trat­ing thing. In 2011 so far over 560,000 vis­its have been recorded on this site and the old. There has been a lot of words both writ­ten and quoted in sup­port of con­ser­vatism, here on the blog, else­where on the net and even a piece than ran in the New York Post dur­ing Wein­er­gate. How much is that worth to the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment? How much is a radio show that reaches six states fea­tur­ing and high­light­ing con­ser­v­a­tive writ­ers from all over the nation? You would think it would be worth at least as much to the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment as the occupods are to Soros and the left.

Yet, as a con­ser­v­a­tive I under­stand that my work is only worth what some­one is will­ing to pay for it. It doesn’t mat­ter if I drive north to check out the Gin­grich Hunts­man debate today, the ques­tion is. What is that grow­ing set of eye­balls on the blogs and ears on the radio worth to the con­ser­v­a­tive movement?

I sub­mit that it’s cer­tainly worth the $200 a week I need to pay the house bills, or the $500 a week that can sup­port the blog for a year. In fact I’d dare to say it’s worth the $800 a week it would take to finance 6 trips a year to cover big events.

And I’m just one blog­ger, there are at least a dozen other blog­gers on the right worth at least as much if not more. Stacy again:

For the $4 mil­lion that the per­matanned RINO Char­lie Crist col­lected dur­ing that sin­gle three-​month span of 2009, you could fund eight spiffy lit­tle New Media oper­a­tions for a year (or four such oper­a­tions for two years). And FEC con­tri­bu­tion lim­its do not apply to peo­ple mak­ing “invest­ments” in news oper­a­tions, so that the rich Repub­li­cans would not be restricted in their gen­eros­ity toward New Media, as they are toward polit­i­cal candidates.

Soros has fig­ured this out. Rich Repub­li­cans have not.

As I’ve said before my adver­tis­ers are look­ing for a return on their invest­ment and that what they should be look­ing for, but if you are look­ing to advance the con­ser­v­a­tive cause in both the short term (an elec­tion cycle) and in the long term (to get the word out there and change minds) I sug­gest that if you are a con­ser­v­a­tive this site and sites like it are an invest­ment in chang­ing the nar­ra­tive or as Stacy put it:

Does it not occur to you, my clever read­ers, that these are not merely busi­ness losses, but are in fact a sort of char­i­ta­ble endeavor to sup­port the prop­a­ga­tion of fash­ion­able liberalism?

There are an awful lot of us work­ing very hard to advance con­ser­vatism, I sug­gest it’s made a dif­fer­ence. If that’s not worth con­ser­v­a­tive sup­port and con­ser­v­a­tive dol­lars I’d like to know what is?

Update: How Ironic is it that this post gets an Insta­lanche while I’m up at St. Anselm Col­lege cov­er­ing the Gin­grich Hunts­man debate
[cap­tion id=“attachment_33144” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“The stage just before the debate”][/​caption]

(pho­tos, video and inter­views to be up soon)

Update 2: Appar­ently I was up too soon after being sick and crashed in the mid­dle of writ­ing my Newt & Hunts­man post. But if those who hit DaTip­Jar yes­ter­day want to know what they paid for here is my cov­er­age.

I’ll have the Hunts­man event up later today.

Update 3: Boy I really struck a nerve in Kim Du Toit from comments:

DTguy: this is the actual rea­son I quit. I worked over ten hours a day, every sin­gle damn day, on my blog, which gar­nered tens of thou­sands of unique views daily. Every­one praised me and told how great a blog it was, right up to the time I would need money to pay the bills. Then I’d pub­lish a bleg and get more angry com­ments about “spong­ing” than I got con­tri­bu­tions, like my own time, hun­dreds of hours per week, was just… worthless.

It’s not just me. For some rea­son, con­ser­v­a­tives think that media spon­sor­ship is beneath them – why else do you think that even wor­thy orga­ni­za­tions like National Review and Patriot Post have to grovel for money all the time? If they’re strug­gling, what chance do indi­vid­u­als like you (or me, for that mat­ter) stand?

Read the whole com­ment.

Update 4: Now a Meme­o­ran­dum thread and linked by Atlas, the Lonely Con­ser­v­a­tive, the west­ern expe­ri­ence and Gold­fish and Clowns

Update 5: Ladd Ehlinger weighs in:

Con­ser­v­a­tive donors would rather donate to celebri­ties like Chris Christie or Mike Huck­abee, or pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates they’d pre­fer to see win — with­out rec­og­niz­ing how much “oomph” a par­tic­u­lar blog­ger or other might give to that candidate’s efforts.

Through all of this, one has to won­der why Mike Huck­abee needs a PAC. Or Karl Rove. What exactly are these PACs doing? Are they “win­ning” any­thing? Or are they sim­ply churn­ing donor money for the aggran­dize­ment of the celebrity?

Soros and his ilk fund Media Mat­ters, Think Progress, et. al. Con­ser­v­a­tives toss their money into landfills.

And for those who may be tempted to jump into the com­ments and screech about the Koch Broth­ers, as far as I can tell, their pat­tern of fund­ing is the same as all the other con­ser­v­a­tives. I may be wrong, but the impres­sion I get is, when they’re not fund­ing NPR doc­u­men­taries on string-​theory, the Kochs are toss­ing their cash into the celebrity land­fill, too.