What’s good for the nation is bad for The Nation.
No weekly magazine tracked by the Media Industry Newsletter has lost more pages of advertising this year than The Nation.
As of Nov. 8, ad pages were down 30 percent compared with last year’s figures, remarkable even though advertising accounts for only a 10th of the revenue. Traffic to TheNation.com has also declined recently. And since 2008, the magazine has run an operating deficit of about $500,000 a year.
The Nation has almost never turned a profit since it was introduced in 1865, but it did manage to be profitable at times during the Bush administration. Their problem over the last two years had been obvious. With the White House and Congress in the Democrats’ control, a lot of Democrats tuned out. Suddenly, reading about the latest travesty perpetrated by the right didn’t seem so urgent. This isn’t a problem unique to The Nation. Air America went out of business for good in January. Advertising on progressive blogs dried up after the 2006 elections. The Republicans have the House again, and they’re going to start acting very badly soon. I know, you thought they were already acting badly. Well, it’s all relative.
The main thing is that the more heat a media enterprise puts out, the more attention it gets, and the better it does in cool times. There hasn’t been a viable financial angle in backing the Democrats for a while. The best available strategy has been to blast them vehemently. It’s a bit of an upside down world where progressive media has a financial incentive to being in the minority. The same is true to a lesser extent for conservative media. But they enjoy wingnut welfare, so it doesn’t really matter to them.
In any case, you can create a niche audience by being level-headed, but you’ll probably go under.
Every once in awhile Chris Hayes gets a good zinger in and on this Morning Joe he responded to a Joe railing by saying, ‘If the Rep’s are serious about dealing with unemployment as they said they were out on the campaign trail then they can’t hide behind the Health Care Reform Bill because it does provide for jobs’
This, again, comes back to the difference between Conservatives/GOPers/Neanderthals and Liberals/Progressives. They have wingnut welfare. What do we have? They have Murdoch willing to subsidize losses for 5 or 7 years to get a project off the ground. Air America, for all the good, was never more than a bad joke. Why? Could Boo ever get it on his radio? No!! And remember, Boo lives in the suburbs of a supposed liberal bastion. Basically, the people behind Air America never ran it right. Rich liberals/Progressives just aren’t willing to fund things like Conservatives/GOPers/Neanderthals are. I think I know part of the reason. It’s called return on investment. Anyone have any other ideas why?
Yes, it is about return on investment.
Also, too, you don’t see Josh Marshall and Markos being quoted during the slaughter of election night with a glass of champagne in their hand.
Something has always struck me as off about KVH. How is The Nation able to run deficits forever? How is KVH able to donate 25,000 to Emily’s List if the magazine is in such deep doo-doo? I guess my point is, I just don’t see KVH as someone who will lead marches in the streets if it comes to that. As weird as it seems, I can see someone like Bernie Sanders doing it, not anyone from The Nation.
Well, something has always struck me as “off” not so much about KVH as about The Nation, until I consider how it’s been a rather smug in its views and its musty ways, lefty-lib establishment outlet for decades, with a mix of rather curious columnists like so lefty he might be righty Alex Cockburn and (formerly) the so hate-filled he’s righty Christopher Hitchens. The latter in his day might have wanted to lead street protests against Bill Clinton during the MonicaMadness (CH fed info to Kenny Starr) or lead pro-war demonstrations as Junior got his Iraq War underway.
But as to KVH, establishment left she is, though as publisher she’s an improvement over her predecessor Navasky, the man who worshipped the weird off-kilter jottings and rants of people like Hitchens, and who brought to The Nation’s pages the pro-CIA take on the Kennedy assassination of curious intel-insider types like Max Holland, with no rebuttal except the occasional LTTE.
How does TN stay afloat financially? Probably from the consistent decent-sized donations of people like, well, I’d guess Bernie Sanders and those lefties of a similar older vintage — or their estates — even better off in the bank accounts.
And where would Bernie Sanders get that kind of money? He’s been in politics his whole life. He’s probably the 2nd poorest Senator after Russ Feingold.
Not trying to diss Bernie who’s a solid and honest pol who hasn’t enriched himself unfairly by his position in public office, but just wanted to note, since you brought up his name and asked about how TH stayed afloat, that it would be enough people just like him — financially stable, not rich, older lefty-libs — sending in $75-100/yr beyond their subscriptions to help keep it going.
Throw in some wealthier libs — Gore Vidal, the Newmans, Rob Reiner and some other Hollywood money folks– with annual sizable donations, and you’ve got enough to survive if subscriptions don’t fall too far.
Calvin,
KVH’s mother is Jean Stein. Her grandfather was Jules Stein, founder of Music Corporation of America; the Michael Ovitz of his day – but more powerful. KVH grew up in Beverly Hills in a house with Monet’s on the wall. Real Monet’s. You know a bad Monet is still worth $50 million.
I like KVH and she sure is good looking, but she’s not going to be on the barricades for you.
Given her position, I figured she came from some kind of wealth. I had no idea who her relatives were. It does make me wonder if she is indeed funding The Nation(the shortfall obviously) out of her own pocket. But you are right. She’s not going to be the leader of any movement.
You don’t need any explanation beyond return on investment.
Big money conservative backers have both ideology and an obvious ROI with their political funding. They can see exactly what their money is getting them – power. Influence. Lower taxes. Less regulation. Socializing the costs while privatizing the profits. They stand to reap a lot of money back for their investment.
Big money liberal backers have only ideology. Occasionally they can make an ROI argument – Democrats have historically been better stewards of the economy, the market performs better when Dems are in charge, some of the things that Dems want really would lower costs for businesses (health care comes to mind) – but these things all tend to come with a downside – a loss of influence from the guys with money. Because the liberal/progressive part of the Dem caucus has always been about diffusing the influence of the wealthy and enhancing the influence of the less wealthy. Add to that the fact that buying influence in the Dem party is a scandal, while buying influence in the GOP is standard operating procedure, and you get a mix where it just isn’t terribly good business sense to spend a lot of money trying to take over the Democrats the way the conservative moneymen have to take over the GOP.
Add to that the fact that buying influence in the Dem party is a scandal
If the person buying the influence was Bernie Sanders Jr., I don’t think people would have as much of a problem? Is it hypocritical? Yes. But the money buying influence now is hurting the Democratic Party, not helping it.
Well, maybe ROI, but if so, too many rich libs have a too-narrow view of ROI. And I’m not sure strict bottom-line considerations are the only reason.
I think too many libs still hold to a naive and unskeptical view about the so-called “objective” approach that our MSM pretends to offer. For these people, the somewhat flawed corp media merely needs some tweaking — given another 1/2 hour of nightly news with Katie Couric/Brian Williams/Diane Sawyer, and the American people would be a lot better informed, in their view.
And then these same well-intended libs also tend to believe that PBS really is Public Broadcasting, and because the News with Jim Lehrer doesn’t carry commercials and doesn’t involve a lot of cable show shouting, it’s basically doing a good job of informing the public about what it needs to know. Ditto for their attitude towards NPR, especially as liberals get their moment in the sun with a lot of the cultural programming and interviews with musical stars from the 60s and 70s.
Liberals, too, also seem naturally repulsed by notions of strong partisanship and political bias underpinning a news outlet — to them, it’s tantamount to producing propaganda like Fox News. Liberals have traditionally liked to pat themselves on the back as fair-minded and open to listening to a variety of points of view.
Finally, libs have traditionally been more motivated to fund discrete do-good charity programs — or safe establishment orgs like the UN or the Sierra Club — as opposed to funding new information outlets. They get to feel good about it with the bonus that little of what they support is going to be very controversial or adversely affect their careers. Funding a fearless, left-leaning new media outlet, however, by its nature involves ruffling some powerful feathers and therefore will create controversy and possible problems for the donor’s own fundamental career interests.
So why does Hillary pal around with people like Murdoch? When someone like Murdoch is out to kill their careers if he could. And yet Liberals/Progressives are afraid to hurt people’s feelings.
Hillary has nothing to do with our discussion, if you are referring to her brief “courting” of Rupert in the 2008 cycle. That was politics, and hoping she could at least neutralize or reduce the extent of the anti-HRC venom coming out of his media empire.
As for Rupert, he showed business savvy by accepting the major losses for FNC in the early years knowing that eventually, with the right RW model, it would take hold with a targeted know-nothing dittohead audience, turn around, and become such a major money maker and political influence that his early losses would be easily made up and then some.
Our side just doesn’t have that kind of business boldness and/or strong political/ideological motivation. They’d rather be open minded and bipartisan and support “public” tv and radio and do good elsewhere by planting a tree.
But my question is .. who do they owe the million dollars to? If they are running deficits of a half million a year.
I tuned out of The Nation because they’re all-anti-Obama-all-the-time.