Charles Homans, writing for Washington Monthly, has a great article on a conservative site that found its demise in the aftermath of the economic crisis, and only months after it began.  The site was Culture 11, which aimed to discuss popular culture out of the confines of movement conservatism.  I thought it was a great site, with potential to become a rising voice in conservatism, but unfortunately it couldn’t stand up to the economy.  Its funding dried up, and it had to lay off all of its writers.  The site still exists, but only in the form of its user diaries, which its feed now broadcasts.

I was actually surprised to learn at least some of its people were paid, because anyone who pays attention to the blogosphere knows its difficult to actually get a job just doing that.

Some people, like Andrew Sullivan, do it, but it’s not the only thing he does; he has a weekly column in The Times of London, and then there’s his books.  And in any case, he has help.  His 40+ entries a day don’t all get posted by him.  The same is largely true of most popular bloggers.  They all usually do something else to supplement their blogging.

The article also notes that its lack of an ideological direction may have contributed to its demise:

The let’s-see-what-sticks approach with which the site was launched had produced contradictory ambitions—Carter’s socially conservative safe zone, Friedersdorf’s electric Kool-Aid conservatism—which, while not entirely incompatible, did make it a curious beast; there was a transparent absurdity to a journalistic enterprise with George Bush Sr.’s drug czar at the head of its board of directors attempting to take stylistic cues from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with have multiple perspectives.  We do it here, and within the space of a week just brought on both a conservative and a liberal.  Culture 11, meanwhile, was trying to air a bunch of views within the culturally conservative sphere.  But the task was becoming difficult to maintain:

And as some of the site’s contributors grew increasingly adventurous, one of the principals got skittish. In December, when a pseudonymous contributor to Ladyblog, Culture11’s “conservative feminist” forum, posted an entry titled “In Defense of the ‘Hook-up Culture,’ ” Carter yanked it off the blog. (“I didn’t like the content,” he later said. “We wanted dissent within the conservative perspective, but to me that fell out of line.”)

Interestingly, its former managing editor, Joe Carter, also noted the problem in his farewell article (emph. mine):

We disagreed, openly but politely, which seemed to confuse some and thrill others. We began to spend more time disagreeing with fellow conservatives than rehashing tired conflicts with liberals. We didn’t fear dissent or lack of consensus; we believed it was needed to improve our own positions. We had one editorial agenda: be intellectually honest. We didn’t think we were being brave or unique. But we did wonder if we were going to be read out of the conservative movement.

I think the last sentence there is important.  Culture 11 was running at a time when conservatives, particularly in the Republican party, were closing ranks.  Contrast the open-minded C11 with all the stories of Obama supporting Republicans getting chewed out by the idealogues.  There is also, of couse, the problem that moderate and more open-minded blogs in general simply don’t do as well as the more hardline sites.

One wonders not if C11 was an idea before its time (I certainly think the time is ripe for such publications), but whether paying people to run and work at such a site was before its time.  Culture 11 might have benefited from being an ambitious side project, and if it took off, then start paying people.  But to work that way as a start up with the economy tumbling and in a sphere that has an inherent bias against open-mindedness is tough, to say the least.  To do so with a movement that has had a tough time widening the tent to incorporate some of these views might be even harder.

Yet, one can hope to see it succeed, whether as a revitalized C11, or some other source.  I patiently await the day.

(H/T Andrew Sullivan)