We want to bring up a delicate topic. How do we fund our projects? What is our, for lack of better terms, business model? Of course it is strange to bring this up as anti-capitalists but it is also naive to think that the way we get and use money isn’t part of the “what we do,” rather than what we think.
This project, a relatively inexpensive one, has largely (like 99% of it’s 12 year run) has come out of one persons pocket. It has cost somewhere between 60-100 a month (hosting, legal expenses, technical help). These details have a lot to do with the capacity for this site to make unpopular decisions. It also is why this site continues even when oh-so-many people have called for (anon on its pages) its dissolution.
Other sites (alternet, MJ, infoshop, Zmag, etc) are constantly asking its users for donations (or kickstarters or other crowd fundraising methods). Most of the independent and radical press feels like the poor mans NPR half the time. Our press is often lowest-common denominator because we can’t afford to piss anyone (or their demographic) off.
Are these our only options? Is there a better way to fund raise our information/communication sources? Should we just do and insist everything we do is free? Should we accept ads? Let us discuss how our financial decisions, even here on our media, impacts the kind of coverage we have and what we are capable of planning.
Happy New Year. May 2017 be a creative year for anarchist thinking and practice.
