RIP ThinkProgress: The Top Progressive News Site Has Shut Down

[brooklynite]

Source: Daily Beast

ThinkProgress, the influential news site that rose to prominence in the shadow of the Bush administration and helped define progressivism during the Obama years, is shutting down.

The outlet, which served as an editorially independent project of the Democratic Party think tank Center for American Progress, will stop current operations on Friday and be converted into a site where CAP scholars can post. Top officials at CAP had been searching for a buyer to take over ThinkProgress, which has run deficits for years, and according to sources there were potentially three serious buyers in the mix recently. But in a statement to staff, Navin Nayak, the executive director of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, said the site was ultimately unable to secure a patron.

“Given that we could find no new publisher, we have no other real option but to fold the ThinkProgress website back into CAP’s broader online presence with a focus on analysis of policy, politics, and news events through the lens of existing CAP and CAP Action staff experts,” said Nayak. “Conversations on how to do so are just beginning, but we will seek to reinvent it as a different platform for progressive change.”

A dozen ThinkProgress employees will be losing their jobs, a CAP aide said, as many who were on staff had already gone to work elsewhere and some were incorporated into the larger CAP infrastructure. Those who are being laid off will be given a severance package that runs through the end of November and health care coverage that lasts through the year, said the CAP aide.

Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/thinkprogress-a-top-progressive-news-site-is-shutting-down

[msongs]

1. tis what happens to business that cannot convince customers to support it nt

[DeminPennswoods]

2. This would be a good vehicle for a guy like Tom Steyer

imho.

[MadDAsHell]

3. We have nearly the entirety of Hollywood at our beck and call.

And yet Air America and ThinkProgress can't make it.

There are billions of progressive dollars; where are they being spent?

[dalton99a]

4. Excellent question

Meanwhile, every redneck truck driver knows who Rush Limbaugh is and when he comes on

[orangecrush]

14. +2

[appalachiablue]

5. +1

[Codeine]

6. Well, with Air America

the problem is that radio is dead. It’s an increasing moribund form of media with an aging listener base. Modern listeners have access to an infinite amount of content that they can curate and control individually, and are thus unlikely to spend a lot of time listening to one-size-fits-all programming.

The world is ever-changing and all things come and go. Cranky old people hang on to cranky old media, so shit like Limbaugh manages to eke out a living, but his numbers are nothing like they were back in the day.

[MadDAsHell]

7. Air America was struggling before smartphones made the curated content as ubiquitous today.

The iPhone didn't come around until mid-2007. Air America had already gone bankrupt a year earlier in 2006.

[Codeine]

8. A fair point.

Things evolve so quickly one can lose track.

[orangecrush]

15. If radio is dead

Why is the right pumping megabucks into keeping Rush and his verminous ilk on the air?

[Codeine]

16. Because old people

still listen. Old cranky white people aren’t our demographic in the main.

[maxsolomon]

18. actually, a lot of working class dudes listen to radio all day

delivery guys, truckers, plumbers, electricians. they don't all listen to talk radio, but if they want to, the RWNM is right there.

and many people listen to radio during their commutes - traffic reports, sports, and local news drawing them to news radio. many (most?) "all-news" format stations have a conservative bent.

liberals ceded the field to hate radio and evangelical nutjobbery.

[orangecrush]

19. Agree 100%

[orangecrush]

20. EXCUSE ME?!!!!!

[FakeNoose]

17. A lot of rural folks don't have cable TV, so they listen to radio

... also spend a lot of time driving in cars and trucks, listening to radio. That's the target market for Rush Limbaugh advertisers.

I'm a city-dweller, and before I retired I had a half-hour commute but I never turned on the radio. I played music CDs or books-on-tape exclusively and I'll bet a lot of city people can't be bothered with radio.

[RandiFan1290]

9. A lot of DUers prefer Morning Joe

That is a major part of the problem.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

10. "Progressive dollars" are spent on private jets to environment conferences.

Over 100 private jets to one conference on Sicily. Gotta burn a lotta carbon to be green.

https://infostormer.com/rich-and-famous-take-114-private-jets-to-global-warming-conference/

[Maxheader]

11. Well you have those that follow..

the national enquirer and info wars....slash bang stuff... 3 ring conspiracy theories..and then you have

us cnn followers...we appreciate what the liberal shows are trying to do...but don't necessarily follow them..
too closely...I could learn,

[Hassin Bin Sober]

12. Not a big loss

[themaguffin]

13. really? they've been a voice a for a longtime.