It is the Dog Days of August and the news and blog traffic has slowed down a bit as Congress is in recess and President George W. Bush vacations at the ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Meanwhile back in the suburbs, Editor and Publisher Glynn Wilson has been spending most of his time this past week figuring out how to master the new Nikon D50 pro-line digital camera, and contemplating how to take this new media organization at LocustFork.Net up to the next level - to financial independence with the power to truly make a difference.

In case you missed it, the Washington Post ran a story the other day under the headline: Rich Liberals Vow to Fund Think Tanks.

The group highlighted in that story flies under the name the Democracy Alliance. Our question is: How are they going to spend the projected $200 million they plan to raise?

It would seem wise to fund some alternative news outlets like the one we are developing here. We have e-mailed them about a grant and it will be interesting to hear their response.

Over the weekend, National Public Radio featured another group founded by a former CBS Sixty Minutes producer, which has been doing more investigative reporting than all of the mainstream media in the U.S. combined in recent years.

The Center for American Progress has been doing some great work.

So are the folks over at FreeRepublic.Com and Robert Parry over at Consortium News.

The problem is that progressive or populist news outlets have never made money in American society because all of the money tends to concentrate in corporate hands, which now owns most of the press and media outlets in the U.S. Liberals also seem to fight and compete amongst themselves, rather than coming together like the conservative groups.

This has been widely documented in academe and liberal publications such as The Nation, but largely ignored by the corporate media on the national and local levels.

The result is that the masses in America have no inkling that the happy news they depend upon is so corrupted by this corporate control, just as they blithely shop at the local Wal-mart for the choices of goods at relatively low prices - never realizing how it is bad for American democracy for one company to hold such a monopoly on business.

Will it take a dirty nuclear bomb in New York or the nation’s capital to wake Americans up to the problems in our society? Will $2.50 a gallon gas do the trick? Will it take a complete collapse in the housing market? A failure of the American dollar?

It would be nice to think the press would do its job of watch dogging the bastards who are now running the country like a giant oil cartel. But it doesn’t look like that is going to happen. These things called blogs are also helping at times. Although the right-wing bloggers have more money and are able to get just as much media attention if not more than those of us who actually believe in freedom and democracy, not just run amok corporate capitalism.

This is an appeal to the readers of this Web site who we know share the same concerns, but have trouble opening their wallets and helping us fund the kind of journalism it is going to take to turn this situation around.

To conduct great investigative journalism that could make a difference, it takes what those in the biz call “resources.” That means money. So please consider advertising on this site, clicking on the ads we have already obtained, and sending us a check to help fund our operations.

This is not a tax deductible contribution because the Bush administration and the Republican-controlled Congress have screwed up the rules for non-profits to the point where we are not ready to seek 501C3 status for the Locust Fork Artists and Writers Institute. Until a new regime is implemented in Washington, we will hold off on those plans, which is why there is no Web site at LocustFork.Org yet. We own it and have plans for it, but will not deal with the Bush IRS.

So all of you liberal lawyers and others out there with more money than you know what to do with, please consider investing some money in this site. We will cover the issues in a way you can be proud of - once we have the money. Thanks much and get in touch.

Tags: Fund Raising

This entry was posted on Monday, August 8th, 2005 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.