On May 11th, BuzzFlash Celebrates Nine Years of Pro-Democracy Journalism. It's Our Birthday!

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

May 11, 2009, marks the 9^th anniversary of BuzzFlash.com, which began as an impassioned, feisty progressive news and commentary site out of disgust.

Disgust with the Republican Reagan-era framing of issues by the corporate media; disgust with the spinelessness of leading elected Democrats in the face of withering and take-no-prisoner attacks by the GOP; disgust with the steady erosion of our democracy by the well-heeled and insider D.C./Wall Street financial elite; disgust with the preposterous years-long effort to frame Bill Clinton, heavily funded by Republican wingers like Richard Mellon Scaife.

There weren’t many progressive sites on the Internet then and political blogging was still a few years off, but BuzzFlash quickly attracted a large and loyal "Mad-as-Hell-We-Want-Our-Democracy-Back" following. We knew we were having an impact when the Wall Street Journal editorial page called BuzzFlash the most outrageous and "dimwitted" liberal site on the web. Our visitor sessions climbed to 4 million a month by 2003.

Together with our readers, we experienced the mugging of democracy when the presidency was stolen from Al Gore by a robbery organized by 5 members of the Supreme Court, with Antonin Scalia serving as the ring leader. And the emotional bond of our band of Lexington and Concord Patriots grew even stronger.

As we thought about what to write to celebrate nine years of pugilistic, pro-democracy and – yes – wry journalism, we received this comment in an e-mail this morning, and it touched us to the core: "Let me assure you BuzzFlash, that there was nothing else to cheer me in that sick time of 2001 and the depths of 2002, 2003, 2004....etc....till this very day......and there still is nobody else who brings it all home like Buzzflash !"

And we thanked the reader – someone who is a member of our national (and actually international) community – and he responded: "My God....you can't imagine what it was like on this machine before you started.....and you did it just in the nick of time....because I swear, I was inconsolable during the 2000 campaign, and when one day I clicked on a link to Buzzflash from I can't recall where....well, remember in the Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy gets to Oz and it goes from black and white to intense Technicolor....well that was how I first experienced Buzzflash. And there's still nobody else who can come close. And there's tons of folks I know here in NY who feel like I feel."

Oh, yes, we know we have a bare bones, Spartan homepage. And we know sometimes the software gets a little quirky (although reader financial contributions have recently allowed us to start conducting a software overhaul: and incremental design changes on the main BuzzFlash.com site are down the pike). But it has been the sense of communal responsibility for preserving our democracy through the concept of one-person/one-vote (regardless of income), economic justice, and the Constitution that have sustained us.

And, ironically, most of our readers are not in New York or California. They are spread out in small cities and rural towns throughout America, where BuzzFlash is a welcome, accessible alternative source of information to the prevalence of FOX propaganda in Red America.

It’s no time to rest on our laurels. Today marks the 9^th year of never being off line, of running more than 190 news stories and increasing original BuzzFlash staff journalism articles every single day since May 11, 2000.

Like most websites in the early days of the political web, BuzzFlash was started out of a sense of mission and operated and updated by one person. Since then, through the financial support of our beloved community of readers, we have grown to 14 people who are full-, part-time, or information technology consultant members of the staff. Since we don’t accept advertising – and never have – because we don’t want to become slaves of corporate dollars and outlook, it’s you – our readers (who are ever patient as we try to financially scrape through) – who have gotten us to this day.

You have made this wonderful, unique model of journalism possible. There’s nothing else like it on the web: progressive consumerism and financial support serve as the basis for funding progressive journalism. Buy liberally and read liberally: BuzzFlash is changing consumption patterns, and that supports changing minds.

Some days, we wake up with just a few dollars in our checking account and the editor and his wife borrow money to meet payroll. But then our wonderful, generous readers come through and most of it gets paid back. Yes, it would be easier to accept ads from Shell Oil or British Petroleum that claim that they are making our planet green, but who wants to become financially dependent on lies?

It’s been a heck of a nine years.

Our BuzzFlash readers remind us that we are a community and nation of great promise, if we dare to build dreams with courage, determination and a commitment to democracy.

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

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