Radio and television personality Glenn Beck finds the mainstream media lacking – he says that to many important stories are overlooked, and worse still, too many stories are distorted to fit into a media outlet’s own agenda. He has started news website The Blaze to provide a home for overlooked and truthful stories.
“Too many important stories are overlooked,” wrote Beck on the site in an introductory post. “And too many times we see mainstream media outlets distorting facts to fit rigid agendas. Not that you’ve ever heard me complain about the media before. Okay, maybe once or twice. But there comes a time when you have to stop complaining and do something. And so we decided to hire some actual journalists to launch a new website — The Blaze. And we moved fast. We built the team and the site in just two months. We want this to be a place where you can find breaking news, original reporting, insightful opinions and engaging videos about the stories that matter most.”
Two apparent advertisers were on the website at 1PM eastern 8/31/10 – two ads were for Goldline and one was touting Dick Armey’s “Give Me Liberty – A Tea Party Manifesto.”
As for the early news focus, a lot of it was by or about Glenn Beck. By our count in the first and second columns of the three-column site, there were 11 general news stories, seven related in some way to Beck or his 8/28/10 Lincoln Memorial rally (including his post quoted above), and three devoted to Al Sharpton’s 8/28/10 counter-rally.
RBR-TVBR observation: Beck is on radio, he’s on television, he’s in book stores, he’s out and about at public events – of course he should be on the web too. Now that he’s channeled Arianna Huffington on the web, we wonder if he’ll channel Oprah and Rachel Ray and get a magazine going.
