A comment about “New Media” and the BfA Tip Jar

by David Safier

I just read a Daily Kos post by Bill McKibben about the value of the New Media.The purpose of his post is to tout Daily Kos and ask people to contribute.

McKibben used to write for the New Yorker and numerous other publications and has written books, so he's not some Nobody turned Blogger — like, say, me. But he speaks to the importance of getting voices out there other than his own.

I’ve come to really treasure DailyKos. There are two reasons.

One, precisely because it amplifies the voices of people who didn’t make writing their career, who don’t have all those other opportunities to get their voices out. One of the great revelations of the rise of the web was how many talented writers and thinkers there are out there in the world—the quality of a good piece on the Recommended list  is higher than the average pundit’s column, usually because it’s about something more than the distillation of the conventional wisdom. I don’t work in a retail store; I’m glad to read the experiences of those who do. Ditto for the great range of age, experience, race, creed, and so on.

Two, even more important, this site serves mostly people who want to do something. Sort of by accident, I seem to have become as much an activist as a writer. When I helped organize the civil disobedience outside the White House this summer that sparked the Keystone protests, one of the reasons it turned into the largest action of its kind in three decades is because we had a way of getting the word out. Not on tv, which wasn’t paying any attention; not in the newspapers, whose correspondents were all on the Vineyard with the president; but through the web, and particularly through the daily updates that PDNC organized here. We got helpful ideas, but mostly we got involvement.

I like to think we here at BfA are reasonably "talented writers and thinkers" and that what we do is "more than the distillation of the conventional wisdom." We do it out of personal commitment, without any financial compensation, but we don't mind a little something coming our way once in awhile. So if you see fit, put something in the Tip Jar, always waiting in the right hand column, and also at the bottom of this post.