talk isn't cheap, bits are

posted by tom / September 28, 2004 /

It shames me deeply, but I agree with Michelle Malkin on one thing: Andrew Sullivan is kind of a whore. Sullivan has raised nearly $200,000 in his last two pledge drives to cover "bandwidth costs". Now he's just signed up with blogads, explaining that doing so "will soon provide a real revenue stream for this site". Sure, the guy deserves to earn a living -- which he does through his various print journalism gigs, too. But pretending these drives are for bandwidth is disingenuous. Kos says his site costs him $6000 a year -- and dailykos, being more of a community site, has significantly greater needs in terms of bandwidth and hardware than andrewsullivan.com.

Like I said, I don't begrudge Sullivan his ability to earn a living, but it seems like he's making a very good one while only slightly-smaller bloggers like Atrios or Kos can't make one at all -- which makes me think people are responding to his lame complaints about hosting costs rather than intentionally giving money to provide him with a salary. Misleading people with geekspeak in order to maintain such an arrangement is a little shady -- although I wouldn't hold my breath for Sullivan to see a problem with this or any other income disparity.

Comments

I liked the part where the day after his pledge drive ended, he announced a month-long sabbatical. Brilliant! Or maybe he needed the time to install all that bandwidth?

Posted by: Kriston on September 28, 2004 11:58 AM

$200,000? Is that for real? Surely not. I would lose a lot of respect for him for painting himself as some sort of starving blogger overwhelmed by his art.

Posted by: matty on September 29, 2004 03:57 PM

Those are Malkin's numbers, but I believe he disclosed the exact amount the first year -- just shy of $80k. Not sure where she got the $120k for year two, but I assume it has some basis in reality.

Posted by: tom on September 29, 2004 04:07 PM

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