Quote of the Day: Patented Blogging

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From Matt Yglesias:

What if Mickey Kaus held some kind of patent on policy blogging?

The mind reels. I suppose we’d all owe him royalties and be forced to write a certain minimum quota of anti-union posts every month.

More realistically, of course, blogging never would have taken off and the world would have to continue making do with the likes of Tom Friedman and George Will. All of which is an excellent argument for not allowing the patent office to issue patents for vague, moderately obvious evolutionary trends expressed via software. Congress should get on that, since they don’t really seem to have anything better to do at the moment.

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Owned by no one—except you.

We just keep seeing it happen: Newsrooms owned by billionaires and corporations are spinning their own narratives, overwriting the truth, following only stories that keep them in the pocket of those with even more power.

Not here. We’re not owned by anyone. We’re not part of any cult that demands our allegiance to a bottom line. We’ve spoken up and spoken out while other newsrooms changed their stories—or cut them altogether—to keep the C suite happy.

Our mission is to find the truth and amplify it. That’s why we’re independent, nonprofit, and, crucially, funded by readers. The investigations on our website will always be free to read, watch, and listen to, but our newsroom is powered by readers who pitch in what they can so we can keep asking the hard questions.

Can you chip in today?

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