Finding profit in politics online
Blogs and podcasts draw audiences that appeal to advertisers
On Tuesday, voters throughout America will have their say about how the nation will be governed. But millions of politically active Americans can't wait that long. They are waging constant political combat over the Internet in a campaign that never ends -- and for a host of ambitious entrepreneurs, it's an irresistible business opportunity.
"Most of my life has been writing fiction," said mystery novelist and Hollywood screenwriter Roger L. Simon. "Now I'm running a business. I can't say I'm eminently qualified, but I'm learning enough."
Simon, a lifelong liberal, began writing a blog after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, supporting President Bush's foreign policy. Last year he teamed up with several other bloggers to form Pajamas Media, an Internet site that publishes blogs, podcasts, and political news from a variety of sources. Among his partners is Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor and operator of one of the Internet's most popular blogs , Instapundit; and Charles Johnson, whose Little Green Footballs blog helped blow the whistle on CBS News's use of questionable documents about Bush's National Guard service.
"We decided, 'We're getting all this traffic; why don't we turn it into a business?' " Simon said. Founded about one year ago, Pajamas Media network's approximately 90 sites attracted 3.5 million visitors last month, he said.
Pajamas Media is one of a host of new politically oriented sites on the Web in time for this election season. Whether they cater to the left, right, or center, they are based on the idea that political junkies are smart people with money to spend -- exactly the sort that advertisers are looking for. "Peasants don't blog, at least not yet," said David D. Perlmutter, a professor at the school of mass communication at the University of Kansas. "Political bloggers tend to be middle-class folk." As a result, they're attractive to advertisers. "Compare them to buying an ad in a specialty magazine that caters to a niche audience," Perlmutter said.
The conservative political site Townhall.com said it's nailed down a particularly attractive niche. "We reach primarily men 45-plus making $100,000 a year or more," said general manager Chuck DeFeo. "A plurality of our readers have a college education or an advanced degree."
Like Townhall, Pajamas Media leans to the right politically, but Simon is unhappy about it. "Ideology is so last-millennium," he said, adding that he'd like to bring more liberal contributors to the site. But there are plenty of strong left-wing political sites. The stridently anti-Bush Daily Kos site attracted 695,000 visitors in September, according to Nielsen, while the Huffington Post, founded by liberal gadfly Arianna Huffington, had 1.1 million readers. Officials of the Daily Kos and the Huffington Post declined to be interviewed.
This isn't the first wave of commercial politics sites. A number of them sprang up in the 2000 election cycle, which came at the height of the original Internet boom. News junkies could track every aspect of the campaign on sites like Voter.com, founded by Boston entrepreneur Justin Dangel. But when the Internet bubble burst in 2001, Voter.com was one of many fatalities.
Today, Dangel doubts that political sites can attract a mass audience. "The political space at the time Voter was getting going was largely wide open," he said. "It was possible to aggregate a large portion of the Internet political traffic in one space. I don't think that opportunity exists now." But Dangel believes sites that appeal to political niche groups can attract a few million readers apiece -- quite enough for a lucrative small business.
Some businessmen think there's still room for a political site where everyone is welcome. Launched earlier this month by a band of Republican and Democratic political consultants and a former Associated Press reporter, Hotsoup.com wants to become the favorite online hangout for citizens with open minds. Hotsoup co founder Allie Savarino describes the site as "trans-partisan." It lets visitors swap opinions with people like Andy Stern , head of the Service Employees International Union, former US Attorney General John Ashcroft, and Donna Brazile, who managed Al Gore's presidential campaign in 2000. Savarino hopes that Hotsoup will become a haven for reasonable and civil debate.
He also hopes to attract advertisers looking to peddle products to smart, upscale consumers -- "people who influence how people vote and how they buy," said Savarino. After all, elections come and go, but shopping is forever.
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com. 