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Blue Pundit Plan New Voices Project An Institutional Framework to Promote Progressive Values Executive Summary OVERVIEW The New Voices Project (working title) is an organization designed to provide a sustainable institutional framework for advancing progressive worldviews, values and ideas in American public discourse. NVP will achieve this goal by increasing the prominence, volume, frequency and effectiveness of progressive voices in the media and all other public and political forums. The right-wing has dominated American public discourse for decades. Even if the next President is a progressive, and even if progressives increase their numbers in Congress, there is no guarantee that progressive policies will be enacted – unless progressive values are brought to the fore in public and political discourse. NVP will provide a fundamental, missing element in the media infrastructure to bring about a shift in the critical thinking filters of the American public and their representatives. Through the nature of its programs, NVP will also catalyze conversations that will help flesh out progressive solutions to the big problems of our age. NVP has been founded by a seasoned group of professionals, whose expertise spans communications strategy, media coaching, television production and transmission, web development, participatory online media, broadband video distribution and public relations. The founding group also has considerable experience working with political campaigns, advocacy groups, think tanks and policy debate forums. They have been involved with organizations such as Daily Kos, the New Politics Institute, People for the American Way, the National Democratic Institute, LinkTV, the ACLU and numerous campaigns. NVP is in the position leverage the assets and resources of its founding organizations, Daily Kos and MediaOne Services. In light of that, the ramp-up period for its initial activities is quite short. We are targeting a launch in summer 2008, assuming seed funding is raised in the next few months. According to David Brock of Media Matters, conservative organizations spend upwards of $10 million per year to advance their values in the media. With the new political wind at our back, NVP can provide an effective response with an initial budget of less than $2.5 million per year. To ensure our ability to focus and execute on our mission, we are seeking $7 million to fund our first three years of operations. A seed round of $325,000 would enable us to launch our initial phase. NVP seeks funders who are interested in a dramatic increase of progressive values and actions in this country. NVP will seek to earn revenue for services, but that will not be its primary objective and will always come second to increasing the number and quality of progressive voices on every media distribution platform, every major media outlet and every sector of society. THE NEED In the last several years, a growing realization has taken hold among progressive leaders that the political success of the right can be credited to a concerted investment and effort to dominate mainstream media and shift political discourse. For several decades, right-wing organizations have invested in training, supporting, promoting and deploying thousands of spokespeople to appear on television and radio, comment in news articles, and publish journals and books. They have created a © 2008 MediaOne/Kos Media/Zoomedia Confidential Information Page 1 of 13 complete institutional framework to get their message out ferociously and consistently and have been successful in framing the terms of public discourse. As a result, they advanced the conservative agenda in all policy realms, including international affairs, social policy, economics, energy, education and civil liberties. Examples of their tactics abound. During the Terry Schiavo controversy, for instance, the right had 15 full-time booking agents working around the clock to get their people on the air. More recently, the New York Times broke a story alleging that Senator John McCain had an inappropriate relationship with a high-powered lobbyist. Within a matter of hours, an organized right-wing media response was in place. Using spokespeople on radio, television and in print, conservatives effectively discredited the Times’ story and shifted the focus of media attention from Senator McCain’s ethics to the “questionable” reporting. In contrast to the well-funded apparatus on the right, progressive efforts have not been supported on a large scale. Progressive media-related organizations include: • Policy reform organizations like Free Press and the Center for International Media Action, which organize campaigns against media consolidation. • Monitoring groups, like Media Matters for America and Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), which serve as watchdogs, alerting their members and the media to inaccuracies and conservative bias. • Progressive "framing" efforts and think tanks like the Center for American Progress, which use their research to shape messages that define progressive values. Closer to NVP’s mission are the Mainstream Media Project (MMP) and the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA). They both work to funnel progressive activists, academics and policy analysts into the mainstream media. MMP was founded in 1995 and books radio program interviews for progressive experts. IPA was founded in 1997 and issues several news releases every week that provide a brief progressive interpretation of breaking news, along with the names and bios of experts who can address the given topic in depth. MMP and IPA do valuable work but it’s fair to say that they have not made much of an impact on the orientation of public discourse. NVP will seek to partner with them. The lack of a well-funded, sustainable progressive media infrastructure allowed the right to reshape American society and international affairs to conform to their worldviews. The need for NVP could not be clearer. THE OPPORTUNITY In the early part of this decade, the right-wing reached the zenith of their political power in America. The mainstream media had become assimilated into the conservative message machine. Helped along by the progressive blogosphere, the political pendulum in this country has started to swing against the right. The results of the 2006 mid-term elections were the first concrete political expression of this swing, returning control of Congress to the Democratic Party, and many committee chairmanships to members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. However, this political success has not yet translated into significant policy success. © 2008 MediaOne/Kos Media/Zoomedia Confidential Information Page 2 of 13 The reason for the ineffectiveness of the current Congressional majority is that the broader political landscape within which policy debates take place has been largely shaped by the right over the past four decades. The hollow arguments of a discredited administration still resonate with a large part of the American public – including the broad middle – because the right has managed to inculcate many of its values. Nonetheless, the pendulum is swinging. Why Now According to analysts who research political attitudes, the trends suggest that many people are newly receptive to progressive narratives. Now is an opportune time to inculcate, activate and validate progressive values among a broad cross-section of the American public In 2007, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press released a massive report entitled Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes 1987 – 2007. Pew found "increased public support for the social safety net, signs of growing public concern about income inequality, and a diminished appetite for assertive national security policies." In addition, the study also found “steady, if slow, declining support for conservative social values in such areas as homosexuality and the role of women in society.” So while polls show that Americans are still about twice as likely to identify themselves as conservatives as they are to identify themselves as liberals, changes in their views on actual issues has opened a window of opportunity to bring progressive values to the fore – the kind of values that enabled previous generations to enact New Deal and Great Society programs – values that say we can afford to share, we can afford to care, that a good quality of life for one individual inextricably linked to the quality of life of all, that we have a responsibility to each other, to the planet and to future generations. The ethos of a shared purpose has been articulated powerfully in the Democratic primary contest. But the run-up to the November election cannot be the culmination of this argument for shifting values and priorities. The argument has resonated, particularly among young people, but the task ahead of us is to repeat it and reinforce it for many years, so that even the silent majority accept and adopt these values. A recent article (in Tikkun) told of a meeting FDR had with leaders of the labor movement. After hours of discussion, FDR said: “Gentlemen, you have totally convinced me you are right. Now go out into the world and force me to do it.” Even the most sympathetic president will face a huge challenge posed by the spread of right-wing values. NVP can change the playing field. Our window of opportunity is now. Why Here This may be self-evident, but worth mentioning. The Bay Area is an ideal place to launch a major progressive organization. NVP will benefit and draw synergies from the existing progressive ecosystem and NVP will, in the course of time, make significant contributions to this ecosystem. An analogy can be made to the reasons Silicon Valley attained and has maintained its status as the pre- eminent hub of technological development in the world. The Bay Area has a critical mass of talent, creativity, entrepreneurial drive, sources of funding and other institutional support, to launch and ensure the success of a game-changing organization. © 2008 MediaOne/Kos Media/Zoomedia Confidential Information Page 3 of 13 Why Us Put simply, the founding organizations bring critical assets that can be deployed immediately, and the intention to combine them in a powerful way.
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