Let me see if I understand this --

First, you argue that traditional advertising doesn't actually give journalists true autonomy, and as evidence show that some (rare, it looks like) blogs have posts thanking advertisers. This is what constitutes failure to be "walled off" from advertising?

Then, you make the case that liberal bloggers actually don't want independence from liberal institutions, and see said institutions as indebted to their efforts (hence, they want money).

And you find this "speaks... strongly to the weirdness of the traditional media business model".

Okay....

Liberal organizations invariably believe that earnest liberal professionals and writers should be willing to work for an promote these organizations out of the goodness of their hearts. It's why the jobs they offer pay poorly and why they think that liberal blogs should be promoting them rather than selling those liberal orgs advertising space. Liberal blogs were borne of a feeling of isolation and lack of support that liberals felt from the Democratic party and major liberal organizations. So the liberal bloggers are now more interested in selling their talents to those liberal orgnaizations who are going to value their contributions rather than try to ingratiate themselves to those organizations for free.

Conservative organizations are much more cognizant of the fact that if you want to build long term relationships, you need to support people financially. If you want to benefit from someone's work and efforts and want to make use of their contributions, you compensate them. It's fairly simple. It's why even the lowliest movement conservative feels valued and why liberal activists get burned out and leave for law school.

I really have no problem with the idea that the organizations should pony up more money to keep the "institutions" that blogs have become going, but I think we need to recognize two important concerns before we go running after it. For some people, I imagine they are enough to turn them off the idea completely.

1. The more institutional support there is for liberal blogs that, one assumes, have reached a certain audience size, the harder it will be for blogs outside that circle to become influential. The funded bloggers will be able to devote additional resources that newbies just won't have (especially time). It's already very hard -- much harder than it just a few years ago -- and further barriers are exactly the sorts of things that lead to Beltway-think. Journalists aren't just insulated because they live in DC, although that contributes; they're insulated because they're insulated. They bristle at blogger "competition" or changing business models because the very idea that such things should exist is so foreign.

2. A few years ago, there was a rather stillborn effort to make blogs subject to FEC laws. Red State & DailyKos, among others, got out to fight it, and it never really got moving. All this was to the good. I know far less about campaign finance law than I should, but concerted efforts to drive interest-based advertising for people who advocate for their issues and for their candidates seems to make the line between bloggers and campaign apparatus much fuzzier.

Both this and the Journolist "controversy" hinge on a basic fallacy: what you call "lefty blogs," quite simply, don't do journalism. They (you, Ezra) do advocacy. Not that there's anything wrong with that! Once we accept this we can park all these conceptual hangups and things become much clearer. We should accept this and move on.

I used to (before this thread) enthusiastically support blogs, but after I've seen first hand how they too censor and attack, especially about this issue, I've given up. They already have their "alliances" as their censorship of differing opinion has proven. Whether conservative or progressive causes, both sides are the same. What the bloggers call the "villagers", they call themselves the "regulars" and tell you how lucky you are they let you post on their "private" web sites. Power definitely corrupts. We have met the enemy and he is us.

Full disclosure: I'm the Principal of CommonSense Media, which represents several of the progressive publisher brands as an outsourced advertising sales arm.

A couple of points I'd like to add to the discussion. First, these folks are very independent. For example, I had no idea myself they were going to make any public statements like this until someone sent me a link.

I'd also say, anyone who thinks these publishers are lockstep stenographers of others' talking points just doesn't read them. They criticize Democrats like Philadelphia fans boo and jeer: loudly, sometimes persistently, and in a heartbeat. Sure, they're rooting for outcomes they want, but they can be really tough on the home team, as the very fact of these quotes probably demonstrates. They've been really tough on the Obama administration's economic policies, for example.

All this is to say, while they are activist/journalists, of a kind that harkens back to the earliest days of dead tree newspapers in the US, from my experience, they'd be tough to coopt on an editorial basis. And since my company does the ad sales for many of them and is separate from the editorial side, there is a functioning firewall.

What they really want, I believe, is to make the case for the value of their audiences and of sustaining their brands to the many groups who rely on them. Advertising and outreach do have value, and that's not a shakedown, that's a business case they're trying to make (they are all essentially small business people). They feel as if they're on the bad end of a tragedy of the commons dynamic: lots of groups want to reach their audiences, but these groups don't include advertising in their approaches.

The big reason for that, I think, has to do with how much politically oriented ad strategies often lag behind profit sector strategies in the use of online components, the 2008 election cycle notwithstanding. Political buyers devote a lot less of total ad spends to online than non-political buyers do.

That's in part because donor funded political groups often get money from foundations and the like led by people who don't come from the online media generation, and donors tend to dictate strategy. Their predominant thinking tends to be more traditional, and they're not media professionals.

So, as an ad guy who represents the publishers, knowing them as I do, I'm not sure their message as I understand it from long work with them is being understood and discussed all around without misunderstanding or, on some front, outright distortion.

Anyway, just thought I'd add those pieces to the discussion.

Funny--scary?--that you cite Gawker's reaction as an example of the "traditional media's" view on the matter. In any case, what does the fact that Gawker Media blogs have published staff-written sponsor shout-outs have to do with the whether or not it's appropriate or hypocritical to call it extortion? If Gawker had ever publicly threatened an institution that it writes about with differential coverage, or a news blackout, unless that institution pays it money, then you'd have a better point. There's the softening ad-edit divide, and then there's demanding money in exchange for continuing to positively write about a given institution. Those aren't two things on the same continuum.

I believe in having a wide breadth of news sources. I think that good reporting does take funding, and that it's a difficult problem what to do when any news source becomes beholden to advertising and advertisers. I was just listening to an episode of The Joan Kenley Show (progressive Bay Area podcast) called The Media: What’s True, What’s Not about following the money trail in reportage and the Madison Avenue dramatics that are used to sell wars. Ties well into this post.