A little bitchy, but what's not to love about that? John makes the important point clearly:

There's been a marked recent increase in the number of people asking me to write about their organization, campaign, or client. Whether it's a non-profit with some new-fangled incredibly-esoteric project, a politician promoting their latest highly-interesting-to-them but-kind-of-boring-to-you policy proposal, or a public relations firm being paid big bucks to push the lame ideas of yet another client, the volume of "give me free publicity" requests has skyrocketed of late.

Interestingly, at the same time, the number of ads these same groups are running on blogs has plummeted.

...

My point isn't that the blogs should be bought, or can be bought. My point is that the blogs should be supported by the larger progressive community, and they're not. Liberal non-profits, political operations, and companies interested in reaching either a progressive audience or an inside-the-beltway crowd wouldn't think twice about spending $60,000 on a Washington Post ad, spending a good chunk of change on an ad in The Hill or Roll Call, or paying a PR firm a $20,000+ a month retainer to get their news on the blogs, among other venues (NOTE: the very best way to get me NOT to cover a story is to have a PR firm contact me). But the notion of spending $800 (or hopefully, several thousand dollars) on a blog ad gives them serious pause. Then they turn around and expect favors.

This is true, with the additional point being that "little blogs" are more or less completely ignored. Which is fine, but they can't turn around and then expect us to be Civil and Reasonable. So it's two aspects of the same problem, which itself is the other side of the larger problem.

One solution is for Little People like us to write to our traditional progressive organizations and ask them to spend less on heavy, expensive mailers and fancy dinners in the Beltway, and more on the people who consistently give them a fair shake, if not a completely supportive tone. And audience, with some money.

I get paid nothing for Corrente, and that's fine with me. Still, it seems stupid and shortsighted not to take advantage of the blogosphere in a number of ways. Look at the price differential, and tell me, for the results we've seen these last seven years, do they make sense to you? I don't know what most progressive organizations have to show for what and where they've spent their budgets. Other than party invites and job opportunties. Ahem, that's your money they're spending, Generous Reader.