6 Responses to FDL vs. Rush Limbaugh vs. Michelle Malkin vs. Ann Coulter Websites compared wrt spreading their messages beyond their readership

1. wendydavis July 25th, 2011 at 2:52 pm 1

   Rec’d, and agreed! The Copyright info you might have to get from Ms Hamsher; haven’t a clue. Each diarist might have to sign off on their work being used. I’d think it would be an honor.

   But a compilation expressly designed for some simple messages, easy reads, might be better than investigative ones, IMO.

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2. Freedom From All July 25th, 2011 at 3:11 pm 2

   The people that would actually “printing out LOTS of copies of FDL diaries and passing them out to the public” probably dont care about copywriters and would also know that you can just copy and paste anything that you want to print. And to share on social sites you only need to copy the address and link it, actual buttons to click are not needed at all.

   I would imagine that if an article had the address on it, that passing it out in printed form for free would not break any laws and would only serve as free advertisement.

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3. Mike Sax July 25th, 2011 at 3:40 pm 3

   Interesting how more an more we seem to be seeing this convergence of blue and red, left and right…

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4. ThingsComeUndone July 25th, 2011 at 4:07 pm 4

   As long as my name is in the print out print all my stuff as much as you want:) I like this idea/

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5. oicu812 July 25th, 2011 at 5:02 pm 5

   It’s a good point, however, what I am trying to do is be heard by these insulated people that have so much control over society and the way it affects me in my everyday life. I don’t have the national forum, the captive audience, so many of these people have. Truth be known, they would not want people like us expressing our views. We are beholden to no one but our honesty and our ethics. Traits like that are in small demand in Washington, and on political talk shows.

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6. metamars July 25th, 2011 at 6:40 pm 6

   In response to ThingsComeUndone @ 4

   I made some crude estimates re how FDL + dailykos + Democratic Underground blogs and their progressive supporters could combine their forces to create a ground game. Something that, AFAIK, no blog has even attempted. From Crashing Through the Overton Window: Can Low-Tech Help?

   My current situation doesn’t lend itself to being generous with time or money, sorry. When I get my next gig, I should be able to pay $$ to facilitate some activist activity.
   I will throw this out, though: With so many people out of work, it’s sort of a no-brainer that progressives should be hiring at least some of them to propagate progressive political messages in public areas. That would kill 2 birds with one stone: fighting the information war, and also giving somebody a chance to feed their family.
   Let’s look at this mathematically, and develop some estimates. Let’s say that, between the readership of FDL, dailykos, and Democratic Underground, you have 2 million progressives that have jobs. You get, say, 1/3 of them to contribute $10/week. That’s over $6 million dollars per week.
   A Reader’s Digest pamphlet version is created with condensed versions of “the best” of FDL, dailykos, and DU diaries. Local volunteers who have jobs also print out the blog diary/pamphlets on their own nickel. That saves all of the $6.7 million dollars for salaries. At $15/hour for wages plus withholding and insurance, you’d be able to hire 11,166 ‘pamphleteers’ for a 40 hour work week.
   THAT, my friend, is a small freaking ARMY, that will easily inject progressive memes into every major city in the US, and beyond.
   In one hour, a pamphleteer could probably average passing out 15 pamphlets, easily. (That would leave them time to chat, squeegee, do their best George Carlin routine, etc.) Let’s say that they’re 4 page pamphlets. Run off a copier, each one will still cost less than 1 cent, each, to print. Apparently, copy paper is about 1 cent per page, so the whole 4 page pamphlet will cost 5 cents.
   15 pamphlets per hour * 40 hours per week * 5 cents per pamphlet means an additional investment of $30 dollars per week. So, to supply your pamphleteer army with pamphlets, you would need 11,166 / 6,700,000 progressive supporters with jobs to contribute an extra $30 per week. That’s only 0.16% of them – clearly an attainable goal for more, ahem, affluent progressives who will also donate the time it takes to print out the pamphlets.
   What you’d want to avoid is having individual supporters preparing their own pamphlet .pdf files, hunting down copyright permissions, etc., on their own. They should be able to just download a file every morning after their morning jog, print it out, take it to the copier, print out their share of pamphlets (15 x 8 = 120), drop them off with their assigned pamphleteer, and then get back to their regular routine. You also don’t want the local supporters, with jobs, to be fiddling with employment stuff. Not sure how you’d tackle the logistics of a centralized hiring facility, but I think you’d start by talking to existing progressive organizations, that have a ground game, but that aren’t members of the Veal Pen. The PDA comes to mind, however they may only be useful for kicking this thing off. I know that they don’t even have local chapters in many counties of densely populated NJ. Since unions know all about employment stuff, maybe hook up with non-Demobot unions. E.g., firemen’s unions – they’re certainly everywhere! See Nation’s Main Firefighters’ Union Shows Spine, defunds national Democrats

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