In his widely read blog, New Media Musings, respected writer/blogger J.D. Lasica promotes the efforts of the Portland community to find funding for b!X’s Portland Communique.
Just before Thanksgiving, the Willamette Week newspaper in Portland came out with a Giving Guide, which — at the behest of many of b!X’s Portland fans — included a piece on the Portland Communique as a fitting recipient for charitable donations.
As Lasica states:
b!X’ has already announced that he may have to shut down his Portland Communique weblog at the end of December unless it begins to generate some revenue. The Communique
Yeah, here’s the deal: While all the big national-news-covering names get the attention and the donations — and I don’t mean this to be whiny or disrespecting of what they do — local attempts such as mine with Portland Communique simply don’t serve markets large enough for local reader contributions to fund it as a full-time job.
So with this latest WW Give Guide thing, I’ve abandoned any pretense to shame and am asking the wider (meaning outside of Portland) community concerned with weblogs-as-journalism to help out what observers keep telling me is a unique endeavor.
Meaning there are two ways you can help: Contribute to The One True b!X/Portland Communique via the WW Give Guide, and/or post items to your own weblogs suggesting that others do the same.
The WW Give Guide is also running a competition amongst its recipients, giving extra $1000 bonuses to those of us who manage to get, for example, the highest number of donations, or the highest total accumulated dollar amount.
So, well, help! Or else the site is done come December 31.
Then again, only New Media Musings responded to my shameless call for plugging my need, so perhaps the wider weblogs-as-journalism world really isn’t all that interested after all.
Which is another way of saying, should anyone actually be reading this thread, that I suspect December 31 will indeed be the drop-dead date for Portland Communique. If and when y’all see a post titled simply “Fini” — well, then you’ll know.
I think that they are very interested intellectually. Just not financially.
No. If they were interested intellectually, more than just NMM would have posted about it. The feelers I sent out weren’t for people to contribute, it was for them to bring the situation to the attention of others.
It’s hard to know what motivates others to lend a good word. It’s possible, I suppose, that some figure “why should I help promote him when I need the support myself.”
Except most of those in question are people with careers, not people trying to get paid for their blogging.
Perhaps it’s time to consider a joint partnership / collective venture with other organizations / initiatives — perhaps those with a focus on art and its role on civic / public policy? . . . maybe with a focus on media reform (heh) and ‘new media’ as an emerging experimental art-form that serves to provide a model in how it addresses:
1) the role of art and the (in this case – new media) artist (writer) in shaping civic/public policy
2.) media reform initiatives (by example — it is a journalism ‘experiment’ after all)
….well you get the idea …
I know of at least one arts advocate that’s interested in this (with some leads on venture capital once there’s a cohesive business plan) — but the question is: are you open to such things?