This Holiday Season BuzzFlash Needs Your Financial Support, Just Buy Progressively.

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

Begun in May of 2000, BuzzFlash was among a lonely group of progressive Internet sites agressively challenging the then seemingly invincible right wing juggernaut. 

Shortly before and then after 2004, other large sites, some such as the Huffington Post with big investors and brand identity, came online.  And, of course, there is the incredible progressive mansion of blogs known as Daily Kos.

But for years, BuzzFlash was out there alone, at first living on nothing but the adrenalin of its editor and publisher.

Over the years, we have never run a paid advertisement on any of our sites (because we don't want to end up in a position of making an editorial decision based on a need for advertising revenue from a particular source), and we have never charged for reading our content (which is even more important in the era of a national depression).

Instead, we simply ask you to redirect your consumer spending to buy progressively from BuzzFlash.com. Yes, only about 30-35% of your purchase price ends up supporting our operational costs and modest staff salaries (the editor and office manager each have a salary of $20,000 a year; our other staffers do modestly better).  But this model has kept BuzzFlash provocative, irreverent and running 24 hours a day for years. And the best is yet to come.

You can also make a donation (not tax-deductible), which goes 100% to covering our expenses.  Last year, approximately $28 billion was spent online for holiday gifts.  You can help change the world and support a unique progressive, no-holds-barred Internet site by doing some of your purchasing at BuzzFlash.com.

Because one of our goals is not just to raise money, but to help steer our readers to progressive consumption.  We sell Fair Trade items that help train moms to move from welfare to skilled jobs, or that pay a decent price to coffee growing cooperatives in Central America.

We choose books from progressive authors, and celebrate progressive music.  We try and support independent DVD makers with features like "BoogieMan" and Naomi Wolf's "The End of America."  We buy, when we can, from independent artisans (our peace jewelry) and unions (when we can find union shops making the goods we sell).  We've even offered self-published books if we believe in them and their message.

But most importantly, we urge you to buy progressively from BuzzFlash because otherwise we cannot grow -- or even exist.  Our readers are the only people to whom we are accountable.  Without your financial support, as the Internet becomes more commercialized, sites like BuzzFlash will go the way of independent music on the radio: we will cease to have a voice.

We could offer testimonials that we have received over the years from the likes of Tipper Gore, Bernie Sanders, Paul Begala, Henry Waxman, Joe Wilson, Randi Rhodes, Thom Hartmann, the late Mollie Ivins, and so many more.

But you, reading this now, are the most important members of our independent progressive community.

We may at times make you feel hopeful, at times infuriated, but always we will engage you and the nation: boldly and without apology for standing up for democracy.

This holiday season, BuzzFlash needs your purchase of our progressive merchandise. 

Where you shop and what you buy can help change the world, because you can steer our economy with your personal consumer choices.

What Americans buy and where they buy it can have a dramatic impact on the direction of our advertising-driven, wasteful consumption economic structure.

You can start making a difference this holiday season by buying some of your gifts at BuzzFlash.com, the progressive marketplace.

And tell your friends and relatives about our liberal alternative for shopping that puts dollars toward economic justice and a powerful voice for democracy, the BuzzFlash Internet News Network.

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

Note: Donations to the BuzzFlash News Network are not tax-deductible.

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