Gloat not, Eric Boehlert

Checking for the latest news about Tucker Carlson's DailyCaller.com, I came across this recent gloatfest from Eric Boehlert of Media Matters:

[T]here is not one site in operation today on the right side of the Internet that consistently produces original and dependable journalism. And why is that? Because conservatives don't do journalism. They don't respect it and they don't have the foggiest idea of how to produce. They're clueless.

Now, as every regular reader knows, my reaction to Carlson's May announcement was not one of enthusiasm. Announcing at a Heritage Foundation luncheon that you're going to create the "Huffington Post of the Right"? Bad move. As I said, it had better not suck.

The seven months that have since elapsed -- first a projected July launch, then October, then November, now Jan. 11, with an announced capitalization of $3 million -- have not exactly inspired confidence. Neverthless, it occurred to me this evening that, my own profound doubts aside, failure of DailyCaller.com would give the Eric Boehlerts of the world an opportunity for more of their "conservatives don't do journalism" gloating.

So I've resolved to stop slagging Carlson and his project. He's obviously got enough problems without my perching on the bust of Pallas by his chamber door, croaking proclamations of impending doom.

UPDATE: Richard McEnroe of Three Beers Later commented below:

Not sure I agree with your decision to lay off Carlson.

Let me explain it by reference to Culture 11. I saw that as a debacle from the outset, but said so privately in an e-mail to a friend -- who had solicited me to write for the site -- and then mostly ignored them, until they started publishing idiot crap.

It would not be fair to continue slagging Daily Caller until we see whether it sucks or not. If Daily Caller turns out to be non-sucking, it will be a very helpful addition to the Right's online presence. And with $3 million in start-up capital, they're likely to be around more than the 6 months that Culture 11 lasted. As long as they are an ongoing effort of the Right, they are likely to have some beneficial impact.

I'm clearly on record about my doubts, so continued slagging would be redundant and vicious. And here's another analogy: John McCain. On the day Mitt Romney quit (Feb. 7, 2008), effectively ceding the GOP nomination to Crazy Cousin John, I resolved to vote Libertarian in November.

What was I to do, as a conservative political journalist, under those circumstances? Among other things, I covered the denouement of Hillary Clinton's campaign and the LP convention in Denver, and then turned my attention to the prospects for an Obama meltdown.

While much of mainstream journalism was swept up in the "historic Hope" theme, I noted with skepticism the Obama campaign's electoral calculus for winning without Ohio, and their belief that they might win Alaska (heh). And on July 14, I published this:

Evidence of conservative despair isn't hard to find nowadays in Washington.
"We're doomed!" one veteran communications operative of the Right exclaimed last week when I asked her to assess the current campaign.
Similar views are expressed privately by many other Republicans, including some professionally employed as part of the GOP election apparatus. Talking to them is like walking into the Redskins locker room before a Dallas game and being told by Washington players that the Cowboys are unbeatable. . . .
Perhaps overwhelmed by the media enthusiasm for Sen. Barack Obama . . . many conservatives seem to have accepted the Democrat's victory as inevitable, or even desirable. . . .

You can read the rest, but the point is that I can't stand to see a team just lay down and quit. Although there was never any possibility I could vote for my erratic cousin, nevertheless I wanted to see the GOP at least try to win the election. And the fact that there were people on the Republican Party payroll telling me they had zero hope of winning -- well, it infuriated me.

So I kept reporting about reasons to doubt Obama's inevitability until, finally, on Oct. 7, I published "How John McCain Lost," explaining that his endorsement of the Wall Street bailout had irreparably doomed the GOP ticket. (A verdict that has since been vindicated by every other account of the campaign.)

Looking back on the 2008 campaign, then, despite my vehement opposition to Maverick's nomination, I gave the Republican every benefit of the doubt until it was finally time to stick the fork in.

Same deal with Daily Caller. The possibility that it might succeed requires me to hope for its success -- or at least not to be a cheerleader for failure -- so long as there is a chance the venture can accomplish anything useful.

UPDATE II: Thanks to the commenter who tipped me to this background on Eric Boehlert's journalism career as a defender of jihadist professor Sami Al-Arian:

The American Left sprang to Al-Arian's defense. Their efforts included articles in The Nation and Salon.com, whose reporter Eric Boehlert lamented "The Prime Time Smearing of Sami Al-Arian." . . .
One FBI surveillance video of Al-Arian's fundraising tour of American mosques showed him being introduced as "the President of the Islamic Committee for Palestine . . . the active arm of the Islamic Jihad movement." . . . Al-Arian declaimed, "God cursed those who are the sons of Israel ... Those people, God made monkeys and pigs ... Let us damn America, let us damn Israel, let us damn them and their allies until death."

In other words, Eric Boehlert defended a man as dangerous as Jeremiah Wright!

BlogoMathematics: Word Problem

On Nov. 14, The Other McCain notched its 3 millionth visitor. On Dec. 11, The Other McCain crossed the 3.2 million threshold. -- that is to say, 1/5th of the way to 4 million in 27 days. Therefore:

• At the current rate of traffic (roughly 7,000 per day or 200K per month), on what day will The Other McCain reach 4 million?
• How much faster would that goal be reached if Allahpundit would occasionally link me in the Hot Air Headlines?
• What would happen if Alyssa Milano re-Tweeted one of my posts?
• While we're at it, how much faster would the traffic grow if I could convince a rich guy to give me $3 million?

Show your work. This might be on the final exam. And if you're a rich guy, please hit the tip jar. Three million bucks would be OK, but so would $10 or $20.

Sad times for The Washington Times

Via Memeorandum, I notice my buddy Jimmie Bise has blogged about the recent sad news at the Washington Times. I left a comment there:

You know, Jimmie, I tendered my resignation in January 2008, two days after they hired the Washington Post's John Solomon to replace Wes Pruden as editor. Right after Solomon's hiring was announced, one of my newsroom colleagues said to me, "If I had wanted to work for a Postie, I would have applied at the %$#&ing Post!"

Exactly -- but that colleague didn't quit. I did. And my decision proved to be the smart move. I got out before things went to hell, which has given me a two-year head start on establishing an independent career online, while most of my former colleagues who haven't already been kicked to the curb soon will be.

Understand this: I never had anything personally or politically against John Solomon, and Dave Bossie (a staunch conservative) described Solomon as a good guy. But I've always felt that any good organization should promote from within, which had been the general policy of the Washington Times.

During my decade-plus at the Times (1997-2008), the top jobs were almost always held by people who had proven their ability and their loyalty through years of hard work for the company. The most notable exception to that policy was when they hired Tony Blankley as editorial page editor and, given Blankley's national reputation, there was not much grumbling about that.

The decision of the newspaper's management to pass over Fran Coombs in favor of Solomon as Wes Pruden's replacement was a mistake. Solomon's subsequent hiring of his Washington Post buddy Jeff Birnbaum as a managing editor was a worse mistake, and hiring USA Today's Barbara Slavin as assistant managing editor was worse still.

With three top newsroom positions filled by recent outside hires, the effective message to the newsroom staff was: "Screw you, you're not good enough to deserve a promotion."

The Disgruntled and Dysfunctional
Like I said, I'm glad I got out before that happened. In any large organization, just about everybody will eventually get passed over for promotion at some time, and it's easy to become disgruntled.

The promotion I got in 2003, from assistant national editor to editor of the "Culture, Etc." page, was not the job I wanted -- I actually begged them not to put me there -- but loyalty is loyalty. And I did such a good job at it as to make myself irreplaceable. (After I left, the new editors eliminated the culture page, which President Bush had praised as his favorite feature in his favorite paper.)

When I was hired at The Washington Times in November 1997, I'd promised my wife I'd only stay three to five years, then parlay that national-level experience into a job at some paper in her native Ohio. Ah, but then there was the Lewinsky scandal, the impeachment, the 2000 election deadlock, 9/11 . . .

How could I walk away from the thrill of being smack-dab in the middle of stuff like that? So I stayed, even if I was stuck in a desk-job that wasn't exactly my cup of tea. In doing so, however, I was violating career the advice I've always given to others: "If you don't move up, move out."

An Ounce of Loyalty
Life is too short to waste time being bitter because you didn't get the promotion you wanted. Either make the best of the job you're in, or else find another company that will recognize and reward your abilities. If you're really good at what you do, you'll success, and the company that failed to make full use of your abilities will regret your departure.

Beyond the general decline of the newspaper business, much of what has gone wrong at The Washington Times was a function of faulty organizational dynamics. The spirit of teamwork was undermined because of a relative handful of spiteful, selfish, disgruntled malcontents who did not heed Elbert Hubbard's wise advice:

If you work for a man, in heaven's name work for him!
If he pays you wages that supply you your bread and butter, work for him -- speak well of him, think well of him, stand by him and stand by the institution he represents.
I think if I worked for a man I would work for him. I would not work for him a part of the time, and the rest of the time work against him. I would give an undivided service or none.
If put to the pinch, an ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness.
If you must vilify, condemn and eternally disparage, why, resign your position and, when you are outside, damn to your heart's content. But, I pray you, so long as you are a part of an institution, do not condemn it. Not that you will injure the institution -- not that -- but when you disparage the concern of which you are a part, you disparage yourself.

There were too many people at the Washington Times -- only a handful, really, but enough to destroy the spirit of effective teamwork -- who thought they knew how to run a newspaper better than Wes Pruden and Fran Coombs knew how to run a newspaper. They have had their way and, as a result, the newspaper has been run into the ground.

It's a crying shame, and it remains to be seen whether The Washington Times can ever again become what it once was: The most important newspaper in the world, providing an invaluable balance to the liberal Post, reporting stories in the nation's capital that would have otherwise been ignored.

Tuckpo Update
Last night, I saw a friend who gave me the latest word on Tucker Carlson's long-delayed DailyCaller.com. They've reportedly gotten a new investment of $3 million and now expect to roll out in January -- at least six months later than Carlson promised in May.

Well, good luck with that, but I'm reminded of a conversation I had this past spring. After seeing what I'd written in the wake of the Culture 11 Hindenberg-at-Lakehurst implosion, I was contacted by guy who is affiliated with a major conservative foundation. He wanted to "pick my brain," as they say, about how an online news operation could be developed, and we talked for more than an hour.

Among other things, I explained that personnel is policy. What went wrong at Culture 11 had a lot to do with the fact that David Kuo was hired to run it. Kuo is a second-rater who couldn't make a profit on the snow-cone franchise in Hell, and there was nothing on his resume to suggest he knew anything about running a news operation. Hire the wrong guy at the top and you'll get bad results every time.

What I told my foundation-funded friend was this: If you're going to start a conservative news operation, the first thing you need to do is to hire Fran Coombs to run it. Nobody in Washington knows how to do it better, and anybody who tells you otherwise is wrong.

That was last spring. Given the subsequent success of BigGovernment.com, I'd say the second guy you need to hire if you're going to start a conservative news operation is Andrew Breitbart.

Whatever other decisions were subsequently made, any conservative news organization that could combine the Old School journalism savvy of Coombs with the New Media brilliance of Breitbart would be unbeatable. And you wouldn't need seven months and $3 million to make it happen.

As I say, I wish all the luck to DailyCaller.com. But it had better not suck.

Tucker Carlson continues slow-motion rollout of DailyCaller.com

Having missed its previously expected Nov. 9 debut, the site is still "coming soon" but at last Tucker has finally hired an actual reporter, my old buddy Jon Ward of The Washington Times:

I'm excited to announce that I have accepted a job as senior political and White House reporter for "The Daily Caller," the new political news website being launched by Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel. . . .
As I told Tucker the first time I met him, I'm invigorated by the opportunity to inhabit the new media space while reincarnating timeless journalistic values . . . I also think the Daily Caller's revenue-based compensation system for freelance work is going to be an innovative and precedent-setting part of being successful in a web-only venture. . . . (Emphasis added.)

Right. If Tucker ever actually gets the site online, his "revenue-based compensation system" will separate the haves from the have-nots. Whereas Tucker and the permanent staff (presumably including Ward) will receive actual salaries, the freelancers will be paid on a page-view basis.

When this plan was first described to me, I was like, "Whoa!" Having worked as both an editor who commissioned freelance work and as a freelancer, this sounds an awful lot like what we call "working on spec" -- first, you write the article, and then we'll decide if we're going to publish it and what we'll pay you, if anything.

That's OK, if you're a beginner looking to break into the game. But it's an insult to offer that kind of arrangement to an experienced professional, a known quantity in journalism who can be relied upon to deliver quality copy on deadline. The freelancer pitches an idea via phone or e-mail and the editor says "yea" or "nay." The fee is agreed in advance, and acceptance of the finished piece is more or less guaranteed, providing the writer can deliver what he promised. The freelancer gets that kind of commission agreement before he ever begins writing the article.

It's a simple fee-for-service arrangement and, while feelings can sometimes get hurt by a rejection, as least if when the freelancer gets the assignment, he knows up-front what the payment will be. This "revenue-based compensation system" that Carlson projects for the Daily Caller looks like a recipe for resentment from writers who feel they're being gypped: "Hey, why did you promote So-And-So's story at the top of the page, and not my story?"

When Jimmie Bise and I have occasionally discussed our own ideas for an online news operation -- and I agree with Jimmie that such a site could be launched on $500,000 first-year budget with no problem -- I've always insisted there should be a budget category for payments to freelancers. Fees might range from $20 to $200 per item, but if your average fee were $75 per item and you had a $75,000 freelancer budget, that's about 20 items a week right there. And in the world of online journalism, the freelancer who could reliably deliver three items a week would be earning more than some reasonably successful bloggers.

Anyway, if Tucker's partner Neil Patel is the same Neil Patel who wrote "Beginner’s Guide to Finding the Right Business Partner" -- irony alert! irony alert!

Of all the things that Tucker Carlson's ever done in his life, there is nothing in his biography to suggest he knows how to improvise a news operation on a shoestring budget. He may yet succeed wildly, but given that he announced in May that he'd be online in a matter of weeks -- and that the Daily Caller roll-out has now taken nearly six months, which is eons in the Blog Age -- the omens do not appear fortuitous.

To repeat: It had better not suck.