-- and shall kogan be king?

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

when i brought the netroots into my previous post, it's true i was primarily looking at finincially sustainable systems, rather than "similar content"

but another element of overlap was (i sort of felt) actually content-related -- which is that the netroots gather round a cluster of highly critical pundits (viz atrios) whose energy and lure derives from the stubbornness with which they say NO to established media structures, habits, cliches and (this last important obv but not i think overridingly so) actual partisan political positions

so i was interested also -- less clear-headedly, somewhat intuitively -- in the idea that a broad self-generating structure could exist (and, to the point, already perhaps semi-exists) in which kogan-esque commentary MATTERED, precisely bcz a key part of his thought manifests as REFUSAL

i feel within what frank is asking is a potential conflict -- he wants DDR to be all-encompassingly open to types of voice and types of topic, and yet a lot of his personal project does in fact consist of saying (usually correctly) [xxx] IS ACTUALLY STUPID AND UNHELPFUL; in other words, while radically inclusive in one sense, it is also very much defined AGAINST something already in existence (or rather, two related things: what cultural journalism has become; and what the academic humanities have become)

my gut feeling has always been that this apparent contradiction, far from being disabling, has enormous potential gathering energy and liberating attraction, IF YOU CAN SET IT UP RIGHT (my motto when i wz editor of "the wire" was after all "have fun starting arguments")

Comments

[koganbot]

Might make sense to start from my preliminary posts:

http://koganbot.livejournal.com/14386.html

http://koganbot.livejournal.com/14638.html

Those two posts are very preliminary, so there still may not be enough to make the proposal understandable (also, the "proposal" is searching for itself, isn't really a proposal yet); a reason you should attempt to understand it is that you have a fine mind and I would welcome your ideas. Of course, that is my reason for you to attempt to understand.

Here's another reason: People like me have no place in the world. I am writing down what is so far a pipedream on how I can create a place for people like me. You seem very much like a person like me. I could use your help, and maybe you could use mine.

(Also, when you get the chance, read my book.)

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Hrmm I have had a look at that and something approximating a think (as close to one as you can get while simultaneously trying to work out what to do with 65 pages of Excel spreadsheet which aside from having what is patently the worst layout EVER also contains data which for some reason they haven't labelled with anything sensible meaning constant checking is required to know WHAT THE HELL ANY OF IT MEANS but yes, some sort of thought process) and have concluded that I am in agreement with at least 90% of the sentiment here and indeed would be more than happy to go along with it to whatever use I might be (o hi dere, sentence stucture) I think the whole concept isn't a million miles away from a lot of ideas I have toyed with myself, although on a much lower level, certainly it seems to hold a resemblence to a lot of what I sort of mess around with in my head with regards to desperationism.

Regarding funding it might be easy enough to simply get people to pay to be allowed to write/participate, facilitating one and then increasing numbers of people to be able to be supported off it, assuming a success, in the style of a pirate radio station (actually what is springing to mind is a trade union more than a pirate radio station but still) until possibly it would be possible to start charging people to *read* it or at least, netroots-style advertise with it and thus ...actually I think this is basically just me saying I don't think it necessarily needs the massive windfall it might look as though it would. That said, I was going to illustrate the point with the face most international relations academic journals are glorified fanzines, however, the entire discipline was started by Lord David Davies getting philanthropic on my university's arse so that is possibly a bad example.

I have confused myself now. I hope that made sense.