Author and Civil Libertarian Naomi Wolf Asks You to Support BuzzFlash.com's Progressive Mission

NAOMI WOLF FOR BUZZFLASH.COM

Hi all, I am writing with an urgent appeal for you all to support Buzzflash.com. Buzzflash.com, a website devoted to news overlooked by the corporate media--news with a focus on civil liberties and with an editorial eye that calls corporations to accountability. It is run on a business model that hopes to create sustainable, truly free journalism. The site also sells books, DVDs and so on in an effort to subsidize a non-corporate-owned journalism.

But in an internet era in which news is taken for granted to be consumed for free, Buzzflash desperately needs readers to put their financial support where their interests lie. Buzzflash has consistently broken important stories in the fight for liberty, including being regularly at the forefront of reporting on stories about interrogation abuse and even deaths in custody that the mainstream media have been determined to ignore.

Think about all the things we spend money on that are not as critical for our collective well being as fearless, not-corporate-owned, accountable news reporting. Then please dig deep and give whatever you can to help Buzzflash keep giving you cutting edge, non-corporate news and investigative reporting-- real Republic, and journalism that lives up to Jefferson's ideals, it is up to us!

Sincerely,

Naomi Wolf


The following background on BuzzFlash's wideranging progressive journalistic, advocacy, and funding of the progressive community mission appeared on Naomi Wolf's Facebook page at Naomi's request:

We can't change America by continuing to enhance the profits of the mega-corporations who suppress the rule of the people.

That's perhaps the most fundamental premise of BuzzFlash.com, which accepts no corporate funds or advertising. BuzzFlash was founded 10 years ago and was denounced bythe Wall Street Journal, around 2001, as “the shrillest and most dimwitted political site on the web.” We took it as a compliment because it meant the right wing was feeling the sting of the punches BuzzFlash was throwing in its new uncompromising progressive journalism.

Somewhere along the way, as BuzzFlash was approaching 5 million visitor sessions a month, the blogs came along, doing great work, and then in recent years investor funded sites loaded with corporate advertising entered the scene to join the corporate branding through which much of America sees the world. Progressive readers started to have many news options to choose from.

BuzzFlash has remained steadfast to a vision of building progressive, populist journalism and advocacy through a unique model: we sell readers goods that help fund progressive ideas, progressive culture, provide funds to ensure economic justice for the dispossessed, and help fund ecological start-ups to improve our planet's well-being. In short, we combine talk of change with change. We fund BuzzFlash's work (which includes several affiliated sites) by asking readers to shop liberally with us instead of buying from the mega corporations who suppress change in D.C.

This has been a hard message to get across. Right now BuzzFlash is on a precipice where we may not survive if more progressives don't shop “in their own Internet community.” Donations are deeply appreciated (because we have to pay for the progressive goods), but all we ask is that readers buy from the BuzzFlash Progressive Marketplace. In doing so, they are making positive change on multiple levels, and keeping profits from the obstructionist big corporations, just by shifting shopping habits. We even will find books, DVDs, CDs, etc. if progressives e-mail us with their requests.

Naomi Wolf knows well the value of having a site like BuzzFlash not only reporting news through a progressive filter and launching advocacy campaigns like “Turn off FOX,” because BuzzFlash helped launch her recent books and DVD about the danger of tyranny coming to America and publicizing them to a wide community.

But BuzzFlash's very existence is now threatened by the rise of “corporatized” websites that make money off the same kind of advertising that got us into a nation that is run by corporations in D.C., with politicians bought off by them.

All we ask is that progressives buy from the BuzzFlash Progressive Marketplace instead of big corporate sites. It's a triple win-win: for progressive writers and artists,for economic justice and ecology, and for progressive journalism and advocacy.

You just need to support your values with your dollars to make for a world of good.

Mark Karlin
Editor and Publisher
BuzzFlash.com