Thread by @espiers

This was a thing that was referenced to me several when I talked to people about wanting to build a decentralized liberal media org in 2017 and tried to raise money for it.

https://twitter.com/paulwaldman1/status/1488596910516715521

I had to explain to several potential investors why we weren’t Air America even though we weren’t a radio operation and were not commentary focused.

Liberal donors have a low tolerance for risk and failure. Conservatives do not and it matters in terms of who invests where.

Hypothetical conservative donor, let’s say “Blob Purser”: here’s $20 mm, throw it against a wall, see what sticks, come back to me and we’ll double down.

Lib donor: oh you need $5 million? Show me what you can do with $500 in 12 months.

Also libs: And by the way here’s a person who has no experience building a media co that we gave a relatively giant check to and their media co failed! Obviously this model doesn’t work.

Several times, rather. This is why I want an edit button. I do it when I write columns too. Brain goes faster than fingers and I skip words. Once I skipped half a sentence genuinely convinced I put it in there.

And btw I think there were a lot of brilliant people associated with Air America. Failure was not a function of lack of smart people.