US Conservatism online is not doing well.
Culture11, a corporate model for social conservatives never got out of beta. Now several people including former Evangelical Outpost/Family Research blogger-tech Joe Carter is out of work. From an optimistic interview in September 2008:
Culture11 is a new online magazine/social network for “cultural conservatives.” We launched the site last week with the goal of building a community around 11 key areas of culture: arts, commerce, community, education, faith, family, ideas, leisure, media, politics, and technology.
Bill Bennett, David Kuo, and David Gelernter started the project because they wanted to create an online destination where cultural conservatives–conservative people who think culture is more important than politics–could find both engaging content and a vibrant community.
To say Bennett was buried in his bid for chair of The Republican Party this week would be a kind understatement. David Kuo is continuing his work at Beliefnet.
Culture11, online for five months, tried to rise against the swamp that is RedState, Weekly Standard, World Net Daily, Townhall and other Rupublican offerings,  and I think for the most part the site was successful in staying out of the some of the discourse mud. Â
The community of a couple of thousand pushed back when Carter got over eager as managing editor and deleted a post on the only female blog part of the network. That members pushed back is a good sign, and an even better sign was the apology of CEO David Kuo, a former White House staffer. However, social conservatism attempting to take a high road isn’t playing well these days.
Then the Fall’s fall occurred and we stretched money as long and far as we could without incurring any debts. With no new money in the door the board decided the most prudent thing to do was suspend business operations. That is a way too technical way of saying that there are now 14 people who worked very hard for this company who are looking for new jobs because theirs disappeared. These people do not deserve to be out of jobs and yet they are. The economy racks up more victims.
Most start ups fail, and while it is a sign of the economy, I think it is also an indicator of polarization and demoralization in the Republican Party. Â
Pajamas Media is going the way of old corporate models, closing down it’s ad network, it’s blogging network and throwing what’s left of itself into it’s PJ TV. Oh good, more Joe the Plumber ‘reporting’ from the Middle East. Pathetic, we live in a 500 channel universe and YouTube already. There was a site that took bets on how long Pajamas Media would be online, no one won: PJM started in 2004, took a lot longer to die and had a lot more capital behind it to keep it going.
Interesting