“If this model works, we'll have proof of principle that a small group of writers and editors can be paid directly by readers, and that an independent site, if tended to diligently, can grow an audience large enough to sustain it indefinitely. The point of doing this as simply and as purely as possible is precisely to forge a path other smaller blogs and sites can follow. We believe in a bottom-up Internet, which allows a thousand flowers to bloom, rather than a corporate-dominated web where the promise of a free space becomes co-opted by large and powerful institutions and intrusive advertising algorithms. We want to help build a new media environment that is not solely about advertising or profit above everything, but that is dedicated first to content and quality.”
—Andrew Sullivan, Daily Beast. New Year, New Dish, New Media.
Sullivan, the commentator/founder of the Daily Dish, a blog that has found homes over the years at Time, The Atlantic and The Daily Beast, announces that he and his small staff are going independent.
To support the venture, they’ve set up a subscription plan ($19.99 per year, or pay what you want) through TinyPass, a startup payment platform similar to Press+.
The immediate business model is to convert some of the Dish’s million or so readers into immediate subscribers. Sullivan goes on to write that if that works they hope to get into longer form journalism via a monthly tablet magazine.
“I don’t know what’s going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths. But here’s what I DO know. If it’s one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. … This is a giant planet and we’re lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they’re pointed towards darkness. But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We’d have eaten ourselves alive long ago”
—Patton Oswald, on Boston.
the view from my window on "the view from your window"
Being a big fan of Andrew Sullivan, having my photo on his blog is very exciting. That is indeed a view from my office window.
What the Second Amendment really means
The order of the sentence is critical — the need for a ‘well-regulated militia’ is mentioned first, then the logical extension that as a member of that militia, a citizen has the right to bear arms. The twisted perversion currently held up by the right as the ‘Second Commandment’ is just that…a perversion.
A reader commenting on Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish put the matter about the best I can recall reading. Comments are anonymous there, so I can only link to it and tip my hat:
If your reader is interested in knowing what the Founders actually considered a “well regulated militia” to be, I refer him or her to the Militia Acts of 1792 passed by the second Congress, in which a good number of those Founders were sitting and knew perfectly well what they meant by “well regulated”. […]
Those acts conscripted every able bodied white male between 18 and 45 years of age in the country (with some exceptions based on occupation) into the militias. It mandated they be organized into divisions, brigades, regiments, battalions and companies organized by the state legislatures. It required all members in those militias to provide specific items of equipment (musket, ammo, knapsack, bayonet, gunpowder, etc.). To regularly report for muster and training. Militia members were subject to court martial for disobeying orders. And they were at the call of the president to either defend the nation against invasion or to enforce the laws of the nation if he felt it necessary to employ them to that end. One example is the Whiskey Rebellion, when President Washington personally marched 13,000 militia out to Pennsylvania to inform a bunch of farmers threatening tax collectors that, oh yes, they WOULD pay their taxes.
THAT is what the Founders idea of a well-regulated militia was. We know because they created them. The idea that it was any yahoo with a rifle who wanted to call himself a member of “the militia” is a modern invention created by people like the NRA.
Who Is Behind Occupy Wall Street? Ctd
andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com“Protests should do three things: they should express anger, through marches and targeted civil disobedience, at a particular political or social situation. They should give people the opportunity to see that other people, even people different from themselves, share that anger. And they should provide a vision of how life would be better if the world were different. Occupy Wall Street is doing all three of those things.”
- A commentator on The Daily Dish (Andrew Sullivan)
