Welcome to Message Box Mailbag #3. Hope everyone has survived Halloween and that those with young kids and dogs are prepared for daylight savings tomorrow.
Another great set of questions this week — far more than I can answer. Like last week, I tried to pick questions that reflected consistent themes and covered what many of you asked about.
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Don’t forget to post your questions for next week’s mailbag in the comments section of this post.
David
Why do you think Democratic billionaires haven’t joined forces to, say, buy Fox News and shut it down? Or create a new news organization with the values we wish NYT had? Not a blog like The Contrarian, but an honest-to-goodness news org with reporters and journalists.
I know money and power corrupt, but I’m curious on your take, based on your own conversations with ostensibly-well-meaning one-percenters (if those exist). You’ve seen the upper echelons of power and politics firsthand.
Answer
This is a question near and dear to my heart. I have spent the last decade traveling the country, going from meeting to meeting, boardroom to boardroom, trying to convince the Democratic donor class to take some of the billions lit on fire every cycle on TV ads and invest it into content and progressive media. After years of failing, we are finally seeing some money move toward winning the information wars.
But your question isn’t about progressive media like Pod Save America or investments in content creators like Brian Tyler Cohen or Carlos Espina. You want to know why they aren’t spending their money on traditional journalism.
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