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If You Don't Invest In Your Ideals And Principles, You Leave The Playing Field To The Corporations To Make The Decisions.

Submitted by BuzzFlash on Fri, 01/15/2010 - 6:15am.

BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

After 10 years (in May) of being the feisty, tenacious progressive online publication, BuzzFlash is facing a decimating financial shortfall.

By now -- to many of our readers -- BuzzFlash appears to be a street beggar always hat in hand.  But at this point, our existence is at stake, ironically on the year of our 10th anniversary.

We understand how readers would become annoyed with our main headline being a chronic plea for buying liberally and donations (we are too; we'd rather it featured news or our original commentary) -- and we understand that is a natural life cycle to some publications.

But we think that there are unique reasons to support BuzzFlash now with a large purchase or gift, reasons that make us distinct from other fine progressive sites.

In a series of editiorials to sell or receive donations of $100,000 over 8 weeks to celebrate our 10th anniversary, and hopefully save us, we will be detailing some of those reasons.

So here's the first one: BuzzFlash is the only progressive site that offers a full model potential for progressive journalism funding that also helps nurture an alternative sustainable, economically and socially just consumer economy.

We won't rest on our laurels by saying you should make a large purchase or donation now because we deserve it since we were around speaking truth to power before other progressive sites, and were pretty much a lone fierce voice on the Internet in 2000.

What we are talking about is the future, not the past.

Here is how BuzzFlash essentially has been funded.  As you know we accept no advertising or corporate money. In another editorial, we will explain, again, our reasons behind our belief that such money is ultimately corrupting.

Instead, BuzzFlash has been building a Progressive Marketplace that generally embodies the concept of selling products that either support economic justice for workers here and abroad (including job training and community development), eco-products purchased generally from small struggling companies that are socially driven, and products that celebrate progressive culture.

There is no other site on the Internet funding journalism and activism with such a model.

And we have plans to enlarge our Fair Trade (living wage) and eco-sections more, but readers still tend to buy more of progressive "culture" products  -- and we barely survive as it is (we only get about 30% of your cost back to pay our bills after we deduct all our expenses for buying the product, paying postage, paying a person to ship it, packaging, etc.). 

But the goal has been to create a seamless circle of moving toward a generally non-corporate socially and economically just marketplace to support a non-corporate journalism.

Right now, many progressive sites have been forced to take corporate advertising that often touts the likes of Ann Coulter, oil companies, Wall Street banks, the parent organization of the Tea Party, or even shilling credit cards.

BuzzFlash will go under before we will do that.  If American progressives cannot divert a few of their consumer dollars to support economically and socially just journalism and leave it to big corporations to eventually co-opt the "netroots," we are doomed to global corporate governance.  We firmly believe that.

BuzzFlash does need to raise $100,000 in 8 weeks. Our options are not great if we don't get near or exceed that figure. 

It may appear like a lot of money, but it's a pittance compared to what corporations have spent fighting watered down healthcare reform. And we are already down to the bone on our minute staff, including salaries that are barely livable on.

If you don't invest in your ideals and principles, you leave the playing field to the corporations to make the decisions.

You can purchase a progressive gift for yourself, friend or relative, at the BuzzFlash Progressive Marketplace and be proud of what you are doing to substantially change social and economic justice in America -- and the way we consume.

$100,000 is what one of those Wall Street Bonus babies might spend on an exclusive, exotic vaction in Fiji.  For BuzzFlash, it's about the future of our nation and building a just society through helping alternative, sustainable consumption.

BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL




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Subscriptions

Submitted by Andy Swamp on Fri, 01/15/2010 - 2:18pm.

Buzz,

I'm open to the BuzzFlash pitch for donations (and I've made a few small donations), but ultimately the site has exactly the same problem next month, quarter, or year.  I know that you are open to subscription payments (automatic monthly payments deducted from PayPal or a credit card) because I've been to the donation page.  However, other regular readers might not know that.  Also, soliciting subscriptions more broadly than donations says that you are here to stay, that you are looking further ahead than next month, and that you do have a plan where readers need not be badgered constantly to meet the current emergency.  This approach treats your readers with a bit more respect and asks them to do the same for you. 

It would probably help if Buzz could offer some benefit with a subscription.  I'm not suggesting anything that threatened reduced access to your content.  Instead, perhaps Buzz could offer experience enhancing improvements to the site to subscribers.  For example, you could eliminate all (or almost all) of the donation pleas from the displayed website page for those who have subscribed (particularly the big headliners at the top of the first page). 

We don't need much to move up to the next level since we've largely bought into your pitch about no corporate donations.  But, some small, but tangible improvement that our subscription(say $10/month) gets us may be the pitch needed to help us move up to the next level of "donating" for your services.

Thanks for the incredible service you offer.

Your ready-to-move-up-reader,

Andy Swamp

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Transport Prior To The Equine?

Submitted by neoconned on Fri, 01/15/2010 - 11:09am.

I have watched the expansion of BuzzFlash in these trying times with some trepidation. Economic declines are poor times for an organization whose income depends on donations from people. They have to be earning pay at levels sufficient to provide discretionary income after covering necessities before they can support anyone or anything else. One has to help one's self to be able to help others

While I am not advocating that you cease the activities you have taken on, it might behoove you to adjust the scheduling of their initiation (if not yet begun) or their expansion (if already in progress) until the readers are more able to support the venture. Right now, you are up against the relief efforts for Haiti. People who have to make choices with their money might not see BuzzFlash as the more important recipient (I am able to send money to both, so I don't speak about me here).

I want BuzzFlash to expand. I just don't want to see it get too far ahead of its financing (that foul reality!) and collapse like too many alternative news sources did during the Nixon campaign to rid the nation of the left-wing media. They were sorely missed during the Reagan years, and you will be in our future if you succumb to not dealing with economic reality.

I will continue to support BuzzFlash as best I can, but you also have to do your part and tighten the belt. When one chooses not to accept the poison of commercialism to maintain one's existence, one has to live with the consequences that moral decision and adjust accordingly.

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BuzzFlash Has Had to Lay Off Two Senior Staffers

Submitted by Mark (not verified) on Sat, 01/23/2010 - 11:26am.

We appreciate your support.

As far as budget, we have had to lay off two senior staffers in the last year.  We have cut our budget to the bone. The editor and publisher has a total gross salary of $22,500 a year.

Meanwhile, many progressives pay several hundred dollars a year for cable TV, which has advertising to boot, buy newspapers, support the profits of the corporations which buy our elections and politicians, but complain about supporting the paltry budget of BuzzFlash.

Progressives need to walk the walk and not just talk the talk.

If we cut staffing and salaries anymore, we will be operating BuzzFlash on the sidewalk.

We've been creating an alternative progressive economic engine to support an alternative progressive media and advocacy journalism.

If progressives want change, they need to support it financially before taking the next trip to the mall to support the global corporations.

We have had some wonderful, generous supporters over the years, who get progressive products in return.  This is not just donations.  But generally progressives let the Republicans buy the media and think somehow progressive news will just appear for free.

Mark Karlin

Editor and Publisher

BuzzFlash

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