Planting Liberally

Right on the heels of my discussion of infrastructure for progressive entrepreneurs comes the NetSquared Mashup Challenge, a $100,000 contest seeking innovative mashups for social change. NetSquared is a project of TechSoup, the non-profit technology folks.

The Challenge is now in its third year, and it has an interesting structure. Applicants are only required to write out their ideas, without doing too much to prove that the ideas are implementation-ready. Those ideas are then voted on by NetSquared members, and the top twenty teams get an all-expenses-paid trip to San Jose for the NetSquared project, as well as a shot at a slice of $100,000 and collaborations with web experts capable of putting the ideas into practice. This fairly low barrier of entry has results - already there are about a dozen applicants. One project that caught my eye was the Social Actions project, which promises to "free peer-to-peer social change campaigns from the social action platforms on which they were created", apparently by allowing social network organizers to readily find out about other campaigns across the social network-o-sphere.

For more on NetSquared, check out the project's YouTube video:

I am thinking about submitting an application to the contest, although I haven't fully decided what to work on. One idea I have kicking around is a project to mashup corporate securities filings with state and federal labor relations records, in order to help labor organizers identify new opportunities for unionization. But that's just a thought, I haven't really worked on it.

At any rate, if you're in the mood to shoot for a slice of $100,000, feel free to use the comments to trade ideas and thoughts about mashups for good. It'll be great to see what kinds of ideas we can come up with!

Last night at Drinking Liberally, I spoke a bit with a friend about liberal entrepreneurship and this site, and I got to thinking a bit more about what's really needed to support progressive entrepreneurs on a grand scale (or even a not-so-grand scale.)  I'm thinking about things like progressive venture capitalists, willing to lend out a lot of money to seed a progressive for-profit venture, and also willing to forego liquidation whenever a hotter opportunity comes along; or progressive angels, willing to lend out comparatively less money for not-for-profit ventures.  Alongside this sort of standing institutional support, I think we could also use some flashy contests - things like Blogpac's progressive entrepreneur contest last summer, and other kinds of business plan competitions.

I'm also thinking about social infrastructure - perhaps something like a marriage between StartupWeekend, BarCamp, and networking groups.  I'd really like to see a network of meetups for progressive entrepreneurs to discuss what they're working on, network, incubate ideas, get support and useful tips, etc.  In fact, I have half a mind to start something just like that on meetup.com.

There's more to think about here, and I think we have a lot to learn from the world of social enterprise.  For the most part these are just half-baked ideas now, but I'd love to see some of this support system come into place eventually.

This is a bit of a quick hit, and perhaps a bit dated as well, but I think it's too fascinating to pass up. About a month ago Chris Anderson (author of The Long Tail) wrote a post exploring media revenue models, which is to say, revenue models for businesses which produce a lot of content, and hope to somehow make some money off the whole enterprise. The post touched off a bit of a mad dash by commenters and other bloggers to name as many revenue models as possible.

There are a few revenue models which come to mind immediately - subscriptions and advertisements, mainly. But there are also some fairly obscure models which are nonetheless potentially very lucrative. Those models include selling access to an API, having the audience create something of value and monetizing it, live events, customized content feeds, and consulting, which essentially amounts to using your blog as a big advertisement for your business.

Naturally, all of this has got me thinking of my posts from last summer about sustainable blogging, in particular with regards to cost per action advertising on the blogosphere and blog profitability. After all, a blog is a classic case of a media outlet which gives away a lot of content and needs a good monetization strategy.

As the primaries wind down - and I hope they do, within a month or so - it occurs to me that we'll be seeing a massive outpouring of activist energy, as one campaign or another's supporters will, temporarily at least, gradually release themselves from the intensity of campaigning. If those activists remain committed to seeing a Democrat win this year, and I imagine they will, then the natural next step will be to do something activist-oriented but not campaign-oriented, and blogging fits that description to a T.
I think that it's possible to turn some of that activity into new, sustainable blogging, under a few key criteria. In particular:

• The new bloggers identify and pursue niches that are not particularly well-trod.
• The new bloggers pursue revenue models outside of (but not necessarily to the exclusion of) advertising, like consulting, API access, etc.
• The new bloggers post consistently, participate in discussions ongoing within their niche, and follow news sources particular to their niche - in other words, the new bloggers follow the generally-accepted rules for being a good blogger.

It occurs to me that none of this will happen spontaneously, or in any event, not much of this will happen spontaneously, and we might be on the cusp of losing a great opportunity to create a new wave of self-sustained progressive bloggers.

I think what we'll need to address this opportunity is a kind of meta-blogging service, or a blog consultancy operation, which trains new bloggers on the tricks of the trade, and helps them capitalize on some of the interesting, lucrative, but not entirely obvious forms of blogging revenue, such as those highlighted in Chris Anderson's post. Such a consultancy could become profitable by taking a cut of revenues from each of its clients.

It's an interesting idea, though perhaps a bit far-fetched. Although I doubt something like this will take shape, I do hope someone is thinking about what to do with the giant wave of activist energy that is certain to be released from one of the presidential campaigns within a couple of months. More than that, I'm curious whether there are other progressive bloggers who have given much thought to their media model and have some wise words to share. What does a path to sustainability look like for a good progressive blogger?

Amy Gahran has a very interesting piece at Poynter Online about the importance of teaching journalism students to use content management systems (h/t joshb).  Her basic point is that Dreamweaver, which many schools teach their students, is utterly pointless in the modern journalistic office, since no one uses Dreamweaver to run a modern newspaper website anymore.  Moreover, she asserts, Dreamweaver teaches prospective journalists to think of their newspaper as an isolated island, while content management systems teach them to think of their newspaper as a hub of information, connected to a much broader web of interconnected information.

Those are both fair points, although I'm not sure I'm convinced that the latter is so crucial.  I imagine most journalism students understand the web by now, and have some idea that newspaper websites are frequently the hubs of interaction and discussion.  Then again, I could be wrong.

What I find most interesting, though, is Gahran's assertion that most journalism schools simply don't teach basic CMS skills.  That strikes me as odd, but entirely believable.  Moreover, it seems like a great opportunity for a liberal entrepreneur to make some money while reaching, and hopefully helping to shape, the minds of prospective or up-and-coming journalists.

Teaching users how to use a CMS is not very difficult.  It's a core practice of my company, in fact.  While we've only been doing it for about a year, we find that even our most technophobic clients generally "get it" pretty early on in the process.  I'd venture a guess that there are a lot of self-taught CMS users out there, judging from the size of the blogosphere.

So here's what I think a clever liberal entrepreneur could do to exploit this situation, and help push journalistic enterprises to the left.  Start up a one-day or two-day training course on popular content management systems, like Drupal or Wordpress, and target it at journalism students.  Then, use that opportunity to give journalism students a taste of the importance of democratic conversation in the world of journalism, and the ways that web-based technologies can help media outlets attract a good-sized audience without resorting to gossip-mongering.

Certainly, a one- or two-day course is not going to move mountains, and it won't change journalistic practice overnight.  On the other hand, providing a key set of professionals with valuable skills, and pointing out the ways that progressive journalistic practices can be supported by those skills, can be a money-making and, in some small way, profession-changing enterprise.

I just caught this story about MySpace's startup incubator in the New York Times (h/t Mashable). The incubator will go toe-to-toe with Facebook's fbFund, which funds companies creating Facebook applications.

I find all of this very exciting, since incubating progressive startups is exactly what I had hoped to do with my own company. (We're getting there, by the way, slowly but surely!) These startups are playing around, naturally, in very much the same waters that I imagine many liberal entrepreneurs like to get their feet wet - namely, new, online media. While it's unclear what kind of ventures MySpace's startup incubator will support, fbFund's focus on Facebook applications is clearly amenable to progressive causes. Facebook applications can be used to promote participation in liberal religions; to organize workers and labor activists to support unions; organize students on college or high school campuses; spread the use of progressive media; and on and on.

Naturally, I'm a little skittish about the fact that MySpace's startup incubator is ultimately owned by News Corp., the ultra-conservative parent of Fox News Channel.  Launching a progressive business under the wings of Rupert Murdoch is hardly a credible strategy for sustainable progressive movement growth.  Nevertheless, if the incubator doesn't take too much equity, it might be a good source of valuable revenue for progressive entrepreneurs.

In any case, I'm glad to see these kinds of organizations getting started.  Especially in light of the decline of Skyline Public Works, and particularly during an election year which is bound to produce a bumper crop of new ideas for building the progressive movement, we need to focus keenly on the problems facing progressive entrepreneurs.  Startup incubation is a valuable service for those entrepreneurs, and we should do what we can to make those services available for progressives.

Over the past couple of months, I've blogged quite a bit about the prospect of creating cable TV networks which feature progressive news and opinion.  These pieces range from an exploration of existing satellite progressive TV, to a proposed strategy for leveraging leased access into a progressive network, and thoughts about pushing MSNBC to the left in the near future.

There is another avenue slowly opening up for progressive TV: internet TV, which is taking baby steps toward broad adoption.  The past two years have seen an explosion in Internet TV technologies, from traditional-TV-on-your-PC Joost, to internet-video-made-easy Miro, to iTunes-to-TV solution AppleTV and video-on-demand-via-Tivo Amazon Unbox.  Of these technologies, I think we should be most interested in those which bring video from the public internet onto the living room TV sets.  This kind of technological innovation has the most potential to distribute progressive voices in a widespread way, since most people still like to watch video, especially video clips that are longer than 5-10 minutes, on their living room TV sets.

So it's exciting to see that AppleTV and Amazon Unbox (the latter of which garnered some well-deserved harsh criticism upon its initial launch in Sept. 2006) will soon be getting competition.  Netflix will be offering its video download service via set-top boxes later this year.  And StumbleUpon is latching onto the Wii to launch Stumble.TV for the Wii, which will give StumbleUpon users the chance to enjoy user-acclaimed video on their living room TVs.

At this point, the market for Internet television devices is still too cluttered with proprietary devices, awkward computer-to-TV interfaces, smarmy insider media deals, and similar cruft to make it ready for prime time.  But it's clear that the day that Internet TV is a widespread phenomenon, and has the maturity to take on cable TV as a mechanism for distributing niche content, might not be far off.  My belief is that widespread Internet TV will be a boon for the progressive movement, because it will enable us to more widely distribute our news and opinion, communicate with and grow our base, put an end to the ridiculous way politicians kow-tow to conservative print and TV news media, and more fairly compete with conservative news and opinion outlets.  If I'm right, then accelerating the Internet TV industry, and preparing for the day when Internet TV is widespread, should be important priorities for the progressive movement.  What can we do to meet those priorities?

The key to building a mature Internet television industry friendly to the progressive movement is an open, fast, cheap, and user-friendly pipe that goes directly from content producers to content consumers (and possibly in the reverse direction as well.)  In particular, that means building (or latching on to) a cheap set-top box that attaches easily to a living room TV, and works with a reasonably easy-to-use remote control.  It also means a set-top box that offers programming from an open network, and doesn't lock viewers into a closed network.

Perhaps the best model (and also, perhaps, a good partner) is Miro.  Distributed by the non-profit Participatory Culture Foundation, Miro which embraces open technology and democratic content.  (Indeed, it was formerly known as the Democracy Player.)  The software is open source, the platform is open, and the interface is slick and relatively easy-to-use.  The main trouble with the player is that it's limited to computer viewing.  What we need is a solution that brings the open technology spirit and user-friendly interface of Miro into a TV set-top box.  A good near-term solution would probably incorporate video game consoles, which are now complex enough to rival desktop computers for versatility, if not raw processing power.  A port of Miro to the Wii, PlayStation, and Xbox would bring us a long way towards an open-access, user-friendly Internet TV experience.  (I imagine that porting Miro's search interface, which assumes a keyboard, into the living room would be a fairly significant challenge.  It would also be the crux of the problem of making Long Tail content available in the living room.  But I'll leave that to the hardware entrepreneurs.)

Hardware is only half the problem, however.  If Internet TV ever gains enough market penetration to rival cable TV, we will still need to work on offering attractive, compelling content, and properly distributing that content.  There are some valiant efforts along those lines already, ranging from Democracy Now! to Free Speech TV, Link TV and The Real News.  While I do think we can get a lot of mileage out of simply marketing this kind of existing progressive TV programming to a wider audience, I think we will also need to develop more - much, much more.  After all, Internet TV is a Long Tail medium, and we will need a Long Tail of progressive content to match it.  In other words, we'll need progressive TV that matches a very broad array of diverse interests.  The progressive programming that's currently available is something akin to the limited content available at the dawn of the broadcast TV era - it's trying to be all things to all (progressive) people.  At the same time that we try to expand access to Internet TV, we are going to need to boost the amount and diversity of progressive TV programming.

Of course, the progressive movement has succeeded emphatically, at making a very diverse range of content available through one medium - the blogosphere.  The key to this success was the low barrier to entry in blogging, and the lack of daily updated progressive news and opinion in print media.  Our challenge is to extend that success into the sphere of video content, and in particular, into the arena of regularly updated video channels, through podcasting, vlogging, or other means.  There has been a bit of success along these lines, as evidenced by the mushrooming of green Internet TV, including Earth Focus (a production of Link TV), Green.TV, Tree Hugger TV, and others.

I'm hoping that barriers to progressive Internet TV will soon be lowered.  The fact that Democratic candidates readily adopted YouTube as a mechanism for distributing their message means that there's now a solid chunk of Democratic campaign staffers with significant know-how and experience in working with online video.  As the campaigns wind down over the next few months, some of these staffers will inevitable begin to look for work elsewhere.  Just as the demise of Howard Dean's campaign, and the dispersing of his Internet team, led to the creation of progressive web development shops like Blue State Digital, I'm hoping that the end of most of the Democratic presidential campaigns over the next two months will lead to a boom in progressive Internet TV stations.

The final challenge in making Internet TV work for the progressive movement is organic adoption.  We will have to ensure that once the hardware and content are readily available, consumers begin watching our content.  There are a number of ways to drive this kind of adoption.  First, by creating "progressive set-top boxes" which are pre-programmed with progressive TV channels.  Second, by spurring netroots activists to digg, stumble, and otherwise socially recommend progressive video using the social bookmarking venues available.  Third, by embedding progressive content within our blog posts.

Existing progressive Internet TV producers are already exploring these avenues for organic adoption.  The Real News, for example, has a volunteer "blog squad" whose goal is to evangelize Real News programming on blogs and social networks.  On the whole, unfortunately, I think we are not yet at the point where these efforts are very successful.  Outside of the three left-leaning shows on cable - Countdown, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report - there are very few progressive video clips which regularly get embedded and virally spread online.

However, I believe that our present moment is a perfect opportunity for liberal entrepreneurs to create an Internet TV infrastructure for the progressive movement.  On the consumer side, we have widespread demand for a la carte cable TV, and we will soon see deep dissatisfaction over the lack of original programming caused by the studios' greed in the writers strike.  We also have incredibly expensive cable TV (PDF), and with Stumble.TV, we now have a model for leveraging existing hardware into set-top boxes for Internet TV.  The technology for creating an easy-to-use, cheap set-top box for Internet TV, and the demand for it, are readily available; what we really need is an entrepreneur capable of packaging and marketing the technology properly, and doing so while under-pricing existing cable TV offers.

On the production side, we will soon be awash in progressive professionals exiting Democratic campaigns and capable of creating Internet TV channels, and their availability coincides with the writers' strike.  (Indeed, some writers are already looking into the possibility of creating startups which will produce professional online video.)  So there is a lot of loose talent available, and there's an opportunity to create compelling, progressive Internet TV that's free of corporate control.

I'm curious to see what will happen to Internet TV in 2008.  My guess is that the industry will mature considerably in 2008.  The only question is, how will the progressive movement use this potentially powerful tool to communicate its message?

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Yesterday I wrote about an important opportunity for making cable TV a bit more progressive - the possibility of replacing Tucker Carlson with a progressive on MSNBC. The comments on that post showed clearly that there are a lot of people thinking about how to make cable more progressive - ranging from a wide-ranging debate on who should represent progressives on cable TV, to a thoughtful post on how to schedule a progressive evening lineup, and more. I think this kind of energy is really valuable, and I hope that it's not wasted on MSNBC. While the channel does appear willing to experiment with progressive voices, it will never be a reliable progressive cable channel, and we shouldn't expect it to be. Instead, we should be planning to create our own progressive cable channel. Luckily, recent FCC rulings have just made that a little bit easier.

On Wednesday, the FCC slashed rates on leased cable access to 10 cents per subscriber per month. With leased access, independent programmers can pay to gain access to part of a cable carrier's lineup. Rates on leased access were about four times higher prior to Wednesday's decision.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've exchanged a few emails with Bob Fertik, President of Democrats.com, about the FCC's various efforts to regulate cable. We both agree that this decision opens a door for liberal entrepreneurs to begin laying the groundwork for a national progressive cable news channel. (And I should also give credit to a friend of Bob, who spoke to me about some of the broad outlines of a strategy for progressive cable, which I outline below.) The basic strategy is simple: line up prime time leased access on cable channels in a number of major media markets, and put progressive programming in that time. If that strategy can succeed with representation in many major markets, then we might be able to leverage it into a dedicated national channel. While the strategy is simple, it's certainly not easy. Over the flip, I'll have more on what we will need to pull together to get this idea to be successful, and opportunities for liberal entrepreneurs to make money while creating a national progressive cable network.

Costs and advertisers
As a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation, let's consider a cable channel like the Ohio News Network, which clearly covers an important area from an electoral point of view.  The ONN has about 1.5 million subscribers, in markets that include Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus.  Under the new FCC regulations, leasing 24 hours of access to the channel will now cost about $150,000 / month.  Leasing two hours of prime time will cost significantly less - obviously not 1/12th the cost, but perhaps 1/6th the cost of a full day's access; we'll call it $25,000 / month.  What that means is that a progressive cable news channel will have to earn at least $25,000 / month in advertising - and probably considerably more, to cover the costs of programming, equipment, facilities, personnel, and so on.

This is the first problem which liberal entrepreneurs hoping to create a progressive cable news channel have to solve: finding monthly advertising.  Fortunately, there's not a lot of competition.  There are only a handful of shows where an advertiser looking to reach a targeted progressive cable audience can go.  The existing progressive satellite TV channels (Link TV, Real News and Free Speech TV) are all non-profit and don't take advertising.  Progressive shows like Countdown are not particularly well-marketed to progressive audiences by their corporate parents, and I suspect that the marketing flubs are mirrored in a similar inability to attract advertisers who want to reach a progressive audience.  I believe that there is an opportunity to get considerable advertising from companies who are reaching a progressive audience.  What's more, as the 2008 election picks up steam, there will be more and more money available from Democratic candidates to advertise on progressive TV.  (Whether the candidates wise up and take advantage of the opportunity to reach a geographically and politically segmented audience is another matter.)

I think it'd be interesting to see a liberal entrepreneur create a cable television advertising representation company to sell prospective advertising spots on a progressive cable news channel.  Such a company would focus on market research, would identify the demographics of those likely to watch such a channel, would identify products and services which would likely be popular among those demographics, and would make a case to businesses that advertising on such a channel would be good for the bottom line.  Naturally, it would be difficult to sell advertising on a channel that doesn't yet exist, but if such a company could succeed in lining up potential advertisers, we could solve an important piece of the puzzle.

Programming and Marketing/Adoption
Lining up programming for progressive cable is a challenging but fun problem to solve.  Fortunately, there are already a few solutions on offer - in particular, the lineups for satellite networks Link TV, Real News, and Free Speech TV.  The comments on yesterday's blog post also brought to the surface a whole flurry of suggestions for potential progressive media figures who could become talk show hosts and cable pundits, and some pretty interesting thoughts about structuring the lineup to maximize audience flow.

Unfortunately, programming is only half of the problem.  The other half of the problem - and what appears to be the reason that Donahue floundered on MSNBC - is marketing the programming to a progressive audience, and/or organic adoption of the programming.  Back in 2003, Donahue didn't have executives willing to market his program to a targeted progressive audience; the progressive blogosphere was not yet strong enough to drive organic adoption; and YouTube was nowhere to be found.  He simply could not find an audience. (Update: An alert reader points me to an interview posted at Media Matters - conducted on Hannity and Colmes, of all places - which points out that Donahue's numbers were higher than anyone else's at MSNBC in early 2003. Execs just didn't like the fact that he was so liberal. Yet another reason why we shouldn't trust MSNBC to be a progressive standard-bearer, and should form our own network.)

Nowadays, the progressive blogosphere and other elements of the netroots, like DFA and Drinking Liberally, are plenty strong enough to drive organic adoption of a cable lineup.  Indeed, we are already doing just that for Countdown, the Daily Show, and the Colbert Report.  What I find a bit surprising is that we are not really doing the same for the three progressive satellite TV channels which are already up and running.  I'm not entirely sure why that is, although I have some guesses.  For example, it's possible that the channels aren't widely enough distributed (they each reach about 20-30 million households); or that their programming does not really relate to the kinds of topics we tend to talk about in the progressive blogosphere; or that they don't do enough to post their shows to YouTube.

This question is important, because if a progressive cable channel will succeed, it will require either a hefty marketing budget, or broad organic adoption of its programming through YouTube and blogosphere embeds.  Since a hefty marketing budget for progressive cable isn't likely to appear out of thin air, we'll have to build the audience for progressive cable through cost-effective blogosphere advertising and word-of-mouth embeds.

Yesterday's comments, incidentally, provided an interesting idea which could both generate new programming, and help drive organic adoption: a YouTube-driven, American Idol-style competition for talk show hosts.  (Full disclosure, this idea was provided by my Drinking Liberally co-host.)  I could easily see this idea turning into a fantastic website, focused on building a fan base for a variety of progressive media personalities, who would eventually become hosts, guests and pundits for a progressive cable channel.  It would be easy enough to monetize a site like that with advertising or ticket sales and other merchandise related to real-world appearances by those media figures.  (My guess is that some of the next generation of TV pundits will come from progressive comedians.)

Regardless of whether such an idea would actually fly, I believe it's important to tie together programming development with marketing/adoption concerns.  We now have a whole movement capable of driving organic adoption of progressive cable, and we should design programming and outreach efforts which take advantage of that.

Getting a foot in the door, and tying it all together
So far, I've focused on problems in progressive cable development with liberal entrepreneurs can directly address in a way which is sustainable and feasible without a significant investment of capital - things gathering prospective advertisers, building a prospective audience online, etc.  However, the success of all of this clearly hinges on the possibility of actually putting together blocks of leased access cable time in a variety of major metropolitan areas.  That means finding a string of existing cable channels for which we could actually lease prime time hours.  To return to my earlier example, while ONN might be an attractive network on which to lease access from an electoral point of view, the network isn't required to lease access.  Particularly for prime time, finding leased access availability is very difficult, because many cable channels already make lucrative use of that time.

The trick will almost certainly revolve around finding channels which are struggling, and cannot currently successfully compete with other channels in their market.  It will also probably require at least a few individuals with good connections in the world of cable TV, who will be able to guide an application for leased access to successful completion.

In this case, I think there is some room for progressive activists to join in the effort.  For example, crowdsourcing can help identify struggling cable channels throughout the country - identifiable as those channels which are already struggling to field successful and stable programs during prime-time, or even during off-hours.  To consider a more elaborate example, progressive activists can work together, perhaps using wikis or similar tools, to develop a sort of pro-forma business plan for a progressive cable channel in a single major media market; such a plan could be adapted and tweaked for a string of channels throughout the country, and could help facilitate successful leased access applications.  (h/t to Bob Fertik for this idea.)

At the end of the day, I believe that creating a national progressive cable channel will be a huge and complex undertaking, which will require overlapping efforts from a number of overlapping entrepreneurial ventures, as well as a stable of well-connected cable executives who can help facilitate the process of obtaining prime time leased access.  Nevertheless, the FCC's decision this week made the effort much more attainable, and we should make use of this golden opportunity.

The FCC decided yesterday to postpone a vote on whether or not cable penetration has reached 70% of US households, meaning that the agency can impose regulations on the cable industry. However, the FCC did decide to slash rates on leased cable access TV, down to 10 cents per month per subscriber for 24 hours of access. This new decision opens a huge opportunity for liberal entrepreneurs to begin developing a framework for a national progressive cable TV channel.

I don't have time to write up all of my thoughts just now; more will come on the weekend. However, I have three quick hits:

• A liberal entrepreneur could begin taking bids on potential advertising space on progressive prime-time cable TV in major metropolitan areas, in order to demonstrate feasibility of such a venture. The FCC's decision means that the amount of advertising needed to sustain this kind of venture is now much lower (perhaps 3 times lower) than it was recently.
• A liberal entrepreneur could undertake a data mining experiment to identify stations which might be most likely to grant leased access, and which have coverage of major metropolitan areas. For example, data mining could help uncover stations which are financially weak and struggling to find advertisers.
• Finally, an entrepreneur could try and solve one of the biggest problems in gaining leased access: finding connections with TV operators. This is a very tricky problem, an I'm not really sure how to solve it. But it occurs to me that some form of social networking activism would be helpful along these lines.

That's all I've got for now. More coming this weekend, here and at MyDD!

On Monday, the New Progressive Coalition released its signature product, the Political Mutual Fund.  The mutual fund provides progressives with an easy way to donate intelligently to organizations which are pursuing a sound strategy towards a larger goal identified by NPC.  For starters, NPC has identified three large-scale goals which progressives can "invest" in: Victory in 2008 and Beyond, Health Care, and Energy Independence and the Environment.  To be selected for investment within a mutual fund, an organization must meet a variety of criteria. 
It must have a strategy consistent with NPC's goals; it must be effective; it must fill a gap in the political landscape; it must be innovative; it must provide a good "return", according to quantifiable metrics; it must have potential for growth and for changing the landscape; and it should have a good track record and a high-caliber staff.  Individual investors should not plan on getting their money back, except in progress made towards political goals.

The launch of the political mutual funds has been successful, with coverage at the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, DailyKos, ABC, CBS, Time, USA Today, CNN and Forbes.  In terms of real dollars, the three funds combined have so far pulled in just north of $100,000.  The mutual funds together include 37 progressive organizations, including Energize America, the energy legislation group begun on Daily Kos.  There is a relatively low barrier to entry; to join in the fun, progressive investors should chip in a minimum of $50, plus a 2% administrative fee.

The political mutual funds are the culmination of about two years of organizational soul-searching, market research, and some fairly intense grappling with the progressive political landscape.  When it first began, NPC's mission was to serve both progressive organizations (by providing them with resources, both monetary and otherwise, to help them succeed) and progressive investors (by giving them a chance to invest in effective organizations, and to participate in more meaningful ways as well.)  NPC devoted considerable resources towards studying the progressive political landscape.  It divided the alphabet soup of progressive organizations into six sectors: Advocacy, Electoral, Idea Generation, Infrastructure & Capacity, Leadership Development, and Media.  Inspired by the use of return on investing metrics in the world of financial investments, NPC developed the theoretical framework of a "Political Return on Investment" metric within each sector, measuring things like legislation passed per dollar invested.  Along the way, NPC shifted its focus; instead of creating a marketplace where investors would invest in, partner with, and mentor progressive organizations, NPC decided to create a pseudo-financial instrument for investors to "consume".  The political mutual fund is that instrument.

With the launch of the political mutual fund finally upon us, the progressive movement now has a broad-based mechanism which will allow individual investors of relatively modest means to participate in meaningful and intelligent movement-funding.  But what does the rest of the landscape for funding the progressive movement look like, and what is missing?



The movement-funding landscape
In a way, the political mutual funds are a blend of two radically different donation models.  One model, the ActBlue model, is familiar to most MyDD readers.  This model favors ad hoc social small-dollar giving.  Social networks, blogs, and other groups play a role in recommending candidates and organizations who deserve support via ActBlue, but aside from these sorts of peer-to-peer recommendations, very few donors thoroughly vet the recipients of their donations before making a contribution.  There is a very low barrier to entry - donations can be made for as little as $5, and the average ActBlue donation tends to be around $100.  Donors tend to be focused mostly on supporting candidates, and consequently donations tend to be higher during election years.

Another model, the Democracy Alliance model, is characterized by a very high barrier to entry, and a very thorough vetting process.  The DA expressly bills itself as an effort to build progressive movement organizations, and does not appear to participate in much electoral political work.  Membership in the alliance is on an invite-only basis, and donors must contribute a minimum of $250,000.  The vetting process for organizations funded by the DA, as well as the DA's larger strategic vision for building the progressive movement, have never been made public.

By way of contrast, NPC's barrier of entry is set very low, but not quite as low as ActBlue's; NPC mixes electoral work with movement-building work; and NPC has a rigorous vetting process and movement-building strategy, both of which are clearly outlined on its website.

Along different axes, there are mutual funds which focus on corporate social responsibility of various formats, including recent partisan arrivals like The Blue Fund and more traditional, non-partisan mutual funds, like Domini Social Investments.  These funds are financial instruments which purport to provide a return on investments, but have a secondary goal of supporting socially responsible corporate actors through their investing philosophies.  Furthermore, there are venture philanthropists who seek to invest in non-profit causes but want to see quantifiable results for their donations, and social entrepreneurs, who seek to create sustainable enterprises which create positive social change, and a variety of venture capitalists who invest in social enterprises.

While these various approaches to giving sound very similar, they are each fundamentally different from the other.  Socially responsible mutual funds give money to for-profit companies whose main goal is to sell a product or service, and which operate in socially responsible ways.  Social entrepreneurs seek to create social change through for-profit mechanisms, and are frequently not traded publicly (and are therefore usually incapable of receiving investments from socially responsible mutual funds). Venture philanthropists seek to apply the metric-driven approach of for-profit investment to the non-profit world, but ultimately their money goes to apolitical non-profit groups (rather than the blend of politically relevant non-profits and directly political PACs supported by the Democracy Alliance, NPC, and ActBlue.)

Despite comparisons made in the popular press, the Democracy Alliance, New Progressive Coalition, and ActBlue are not socially responsible investors, nor are they social entrepreneurs, nor are they venture philanthropists.  They are movement-funders, who are concerned with explicitly building a political movement by supporting political actors of various stripes according to a variety of metrics.

What's missing
What the Democracy Alliance, NPC, and ActBlue have achieved in the past four or five years is nothing short of astounding.  While Democracy Alliance (internally) and NPC (transparently) have developed sophisticated models necessary for evaluating the landscape of progressive movement organizations, ActBlue has created a social fundraising mechanism that coincides perfectly with the rise of the progressive blogosphere and participatory progressive political movement.  In terms of dollars raised, last year the Democracy Alliance poured $50 million into progressive politics, and as of today ActBlue is the largest Democratic PAC, with total disbursements of $32 million from small-dollar political donations.

Despite the impressive advances made by these movement-funders in recent years, there are three ways in which the movement-funding world has largely fallen short of the needs of the progressive movement:

• Movement funders are primarily involved with funding existing actors, and do not seek to instigate the creation of new organizations to fill gaps within the movement.
• Movement funders have not drawn up a picture of sustainability for the larger progressive movement.  The implicit model underlying donations made through the Democracy Alliance, NPC, and ActBlue is that political actors will rely on donations long into the future.  There is no concept of a self-sustaining segment of the progressive movement, perhaps started by seed funds but ultimately profitable in an ongoing way.
• Movement funders are largely concerned with the expressly political world.  They are concerned with actors who are pulling primarily political levers, whether they be engaged in making campaigns more effective, pushing ideas and narratives into the expressly political media, or recruiting leaders for political organizations.  They are not concerned with building and supporting progressive cultural institutions which will help construct the progressive cultural identity.

Now, to contradict a bit of what I just wrote, there is one movement-funding organization which I've not discussed very much, but is concerned at least partially with incubating new political organizations, and with creating sustainable political models: Skyline Public Works, which, like the NPC, is funded largely by Deborah and Andy Rappaport.  Skyline is primarily a grantmaking organization, and is largely concerned with mobilizing the remarkably progressive and civic-minded Millenial Generation through its GO! Grants Program.  (Although the organization temporarily suspended future funding of GO! Grants in August 2007, its website claims that applications for winter 2007 were accepted up until Nov. 15.)  While Skyline's list of grant recipients reads like a who's-who of progressive organizations, the group has also funded a few for-profit ventures, including Civic Space, the Huffington Post, and Goodstorm. 

So while my list of critiques of the progressive movement-funding world is not entirely accurate, it is largely true.  Building the progressive movement will require mechanisms for identifying gaps within our machinery; scratching together ideas for filling those gaps; developing sustainable business models for at least some of those ideas; and pulling together the venture and angel capital necessary to seed those ideas.

Moreover, this entire approach to intentional movement building must be under-girded by an understanding that the progressive movement will require not just a political infrastructure, but a cultural infrastructure composed of churches, schools, labor unions, political and cultural media, and other cultural institutions.  In other words, our movement-funders should be willing to incubate sustainable enterprises whose goals include building new cultural institutions, or strengthening existing ones.

This sounds like an incredibly tall order, and in some ways it is.  But of course, the progressive movement is not without cultural allies.  Labor unions, most colleges and universities, and many expressly or informally liberal houses of worship are already acting as organic creators of the progressive base.  In varying degrees, the progressive movement lacks strong connections to these cultural institutions.  Many of these institutions are also facing serious problems - including union-busting for labor unions, competition from charismatic conservative churches for liberal houses of worship, and a concerted effort to install conservative professors on college campuses.  Progressives should be aware of these assaults, and must be working to counteract or mitigate them.  At the same time, progressives should be working to pro-actively build the membership and cultural clout of their cultural allies.  These efforts are just as important as our expressly political work, and they should not be ignored by movement-funders.

The launch of the political mutual funds on Monday was another milestone in the evolution of the modern progressive movement, and in particular of the movement-funding world.  I wish the NPC the best of luck in building a donor base for its political mutual funds, and I look forward to the continued evolution of the funds.  At the same time, I also hope that there is more progress towards the incubation-minded, sustainable, and cultural movement-funding which I believe is necessary to the long-term growth of the progressive movement.

Earlier this week, the NYT noted that MSNBC is becoming a hub for left-wing talk on cable TV. The article's assertion that Chris Matthews counts as a liberal, or Joe Scarborough as a moderate, is a pretty big stretch. And the network's decision to replace Don Imus's racist and sexist morning talk show with Joe Scarborough several months ago hardly counts as a progressive programming decision. Nevertheless, Keith Olbermann calls MSNBC his home; Tucker Carlson's show is on the ropes; and until Wednesday, network executives were considering adding a talk show with Rosie O'Donnell to the mix. (The O'Donnell deal fell apart, apparently, because MSNBC wanted a longer commitment than O'Donnell was willing to make.) If Carlson does get the boot, and a new liberal talk show host akin to O'Donnell joins the MSNBC lineup, then the network will easily count as the most progressive of the three major cable news channels.
The cable news industry - indeed, the entire cable TV industry - is in a very interesting position these days. Poor service and high prices have led to widespread dissatisfaction with cable carriers, especially Comcast. There's significant buyer dissatisfaction with the overall cable-purchasing model as well, as most cable subscribers clamor for a la carte channels. At the same time, there are signs that the FCC will almost certainly begin regulating the industry more heavily.
The new FCC regulations, which appear to be focused on expanding access to cable news channels by liberalizing leased access rules, open up some interesting opportunities for bringing more progressive voices to cable news.
For example, an entrepreneur could undertake an experiment to lease cable access in order to air a progressive talk show, like the Stephanie Miller show, at a time that competes with MSNBC's Scarborough morning show. (When MSNBC fired Don Imus a few months ago, Miller auditioned for the morning time slot; despite several well-received Miller shows and a spirited petition effort on the part of progressives, Scarborough got the slot.) If the entrepreneur coupled that move with a concerted strategy to market Miller's show to progressives - incorporating YouTube excerpts, blog and social network marketing, etc. - then Miller's show might gain audience share against Scarborough. If the experiment could be conducted in enough major markets to put a dent in Scarborough's ratings, MSNBC might eventually be persuaded to replace Scarborough with Miller.
This kind of experiment would be novel. Most leased access shows are localized, and rely on local or regional advertising for revenue. Moreover, leased access is obtained through local cable providers, not on a national level, so it would be very difficult to string together leased access in enough markets to make a significant dent in the ratings of a national show. (For a good background piece on leased access, check out this Videomaker piece.) On the other hand, a liberal entrepreneur willing to try this out could crowdsource the process of obtaining leased access, by enlisting progressive netroots activists in the time-consuming effort of contacting and cajoling local cable offices. Moreover, because progressives are emphatically ignored on cable and broadcast TV, there's a large, untapped potential for capturing advertising dollars for products that are best marketed on TV and have a natural liberal audience - for example, progressive movies and documentaries. In other words, this kind of experiment would be massive and novel, but potentially very profitable.
Ultimately, the viability of this kind of experiment depends on the FCC's new regulations. Hopefully, we will soon have many more opportunities to challenge cable carriers to carry more progressive networks, and to challenge existing cable news networks to carry more progressive programming. Liberal entrepreneurs interested in cable should stay on their toes for a potential opportunity to make money while making way for progressive voices on cable news.