The Challenges of Surviving (and Thriving) as a Progressive Blogger

What's been particularly interesting to watch as the progressive blogosphere have evolved since its founding in, say, 2003 or so is the myriad directions that bloggers spun off towards. Some left-leaning bloggers have gone farther down the activists route, joining up with campaigns, think tanks, and advocacy shops. Others -- many others -- went into consulting, selling their new media wares inside and outside politics. Some have made a go of it as journalists, whatever that word might mean these days. Back in the boom days, a relative described to me the Wall Street bank he worked at as "the Wild West." It's completely chaotic, he said, and there's a good chance you'll get shot (metaphorically, at least). But if you can survive in that sort of environment, it's a lot of fun and you can make an exciting life for yourself.

As goes Wall Street, so goes the progressive blogosphere? At least one prominent writer of the left has thrown in the towel of late, saying the game has stopped being fun and gotten too vitriolic. Open Left blogger and syndicated columnist David Sirota announced yesterday that he was entertaining the idea of calling it quits, posting on Daily Kos he was simply sick and tired of the slings and arrows regularly sent his way, even from his supposed compatriots on the left. The post has since been pulled down, but here's a taste:

I'm soon going to rural China for about a month, and after that I'm going to consider efforts to start winding down my writing career and seeking out a new line of work, or at minimum, a new line of reporting that has nothing to do with politics. It's not for lack of opportunity -- right now I have too much work to do. It's because of a realization that while I support the progressive movement, I'm learning that I may not be prepared to devote my life to a line of work that requires me to be told how awful I am all the time...and that's what my line of
work is becoming.

Another prominent blogger of the left and fellow Open Left veteran is figuring into the re-election bid of freshman Florida Representative Alan Grayson. Roll Call is reporting that now-congressional staffer Matt Stoller has become a favorite target of the online right as they seek to replace Grayson: "Republican bloggers have made much of the fact that Grayson hired a prominent liberal blogger as his senior policy adviser earlier this year." A quick poke around the righty blogosphere, though, doesn't turn up either much in the way of a widespread effort to turn Stoller into a liablity for his boss -- or evidence that the voters of Florida's 8th District care one way or the other.