Leading Progressive News Site ThinkProgress Is Dead. Why Progressives Should Care.
This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by Yonnie3 (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).
Source: Blue Virginia
So now, it appears that ThinkProgress 14-year run has come to an end, and it kind of feels like the T.S. Eliot line, not with a bang but a whimper. I mean, since the Daily Beast article, its difficult to find much of anything else written about ThinkProgress imminent demise. Perhaps, at this point, people are just overwhelmed with so much crazy stuff going on, but it seems to me that the demise of such a high-quality source of news and analysis, from a progressive perspective, should not be brushed off as just another media outlet going under whatever. To the contrary, Id argue that this is a significant loss for progressives, both nationally and here in Virginia, and that progressives definitely should care. Why?
For starters, ThinkProgress got a lot of traffic (at least in its heyday; apparently, its declined in recent years, in part due to changes in Facebooks algorithm). According to its Wikipedia entry, ThinkProgress was averaging 8 to 10 million unique page views per month as recently as 2017, and was ranked among the ten most popular news blogs on the Internet. That included coverage of topics ranging from the climate crisis to healthcare to immigration to LGBTQ issues to
you name it, pretty much.
Also among the many topics ThinkProgress covered was
yep, Virginia politics. See below for a screen-shot sampling of the breadth of ThinkProgress Virginia coverage, starting more than a decade ago. Back when, Matthew Yglesias (now with Vox, which he co-founded in 2014), was busy writing about Ken Cuccinelli, Bob McDonnells Thesis, how Northern Virginia Doesnt Need New Highways, etc. In recent years, Josh Israel took on a lot of the Virginia politics beat and did an excellent job at it! Unfortunately, thats not going to be the case anymore, at least not at ThinkProgress (note: Josh Israel announced the other day that hell be joining liberal news site Shareblue Media). Id argue that losing ThinkProgress coverage of Virginia politics is very bad news, particularly when one considers the decline in coverage of Virginia politics at the Virginian-Pilot, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Washington Post, etc. let alone the relentless (and mindless and cowardly
) both sides false equivalency in the corporate media. At this point, facing dire threats to our democracy, our climate, our rights, etc., it seems to me that one of the last things we need is to lose a leading progressive news site.
Which, of course, raises the question as a very smart, national progressive friend of mine asked me (rhetorically) the other day: What is wrong with our donors?? They saw we had one policy shop 1/10 of the size of Heritage and that was too much?? Yet, even as the right continues to invest in conservative (or whatever it is these days) media, while dominating talk radio (and arguably, cable news), the Democratic Party and wealthy progressive donors dont seem to have any interest in building progressive communications infrastructure. The result: in most states, if you want to read or hear about politics, youre a lot more likely to get a right-wing view than a progressive one. Here in Virginia, for instance, there are multiple conservative blogs, as well as a right-wing/Trumpster radio network, far outnumbering the progressive side of things (e.g., theres no progressive Virginia politics radio to speak of). And its even worse in many other battleground states. The question, as usual, is WHY? And more to the point, what if anything are Democrats and wealthy progressives going to do about it?
Read more: https://bluevirginia.us/2019/09/leading-progressive-news-site-thinkprogress-is-dead-why-national-and-virginia-progressives-should-care
RAB910
(3,445 posts)eppur_se_muova
(36,227 posts)RAB910
(3,445 posts)cannabis_flower
(3,764 posts)I clicked on the first three links and they were dated the 5th.
tblue37
(64,980 posts)msongs
(67,194 posts)Maggiemayhem
(804 posts)Brainfodder
(6,423 posts)When backers stop backing....
LiberalLovinLug
(14,154 posts)Not only do they never get a true picture, but there's a tendency in human nature to ASSUME that the weakest voice obviously has the weakest position. That if the Democrats are right, you'd think they'd hear about it.
appalachiablue
(41,053 posts)I never thought of it that way, interesting. The media disparity should have been addressed years ago, or never begun. Look at what 25+ years of consolidation has done to the US mainstream media. Somebody should have picked up TP, I saw the notice several months ago.
Yonnie3
(17,376 posts)This discussion thread violates the Statement of Purpose for the Latest Breaking News forum.
Post the latest news from reputable mainstream news websites and blogs. Important news of national interest only. No analysis or opinion pieces. No duplicates. News stories must have been published within the last 12 hours. Use the published title of the story as the title of the discussion t
This article is analysis
Blue Virginia is not considered a reputable source for Latest breaking News.
The non-analysis part of the article is a duplicate of https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142364281