Jump to content

Daily Kos

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Storchy (talk | contribs) at 15:32, 1 November 2022 (Political activity). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Daily Kos
Type of site
Political blog
Available inEnglish
OwnerKos Media, LLC
Created byMarkos Moulitsas
URLwww.dailykos.com
CommercialYes
LaunchedMay 26, 2002; 22 years ago (2002-05-26)
Current statusActive

Daily Kos (/ks/ KOHSS)[1] is a group blog and internet forum focused on the U.S. Democratic Party[2][3] and liberal American politics.[4][5][6] The site includes glossaries and other content. It is sometimes considered an example of "netroots" activism.

Daily Kos was founded in 2002 by Markos Moulitsas and takes the name Kos from the last syllable of his first name, his nickname while in the military.[7]

Organization overview

Funding

According to Daily Kos, its finances are sustained through lead generation, sponsored content, fundraising, and donations from readers and supporters who have signed up to receive joint petition emails from Daily Kos.[8]

During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the Kos Media received between $1 million and $2 million in federally-backed small business loans from Newtek Small Business Finance as part of the Paycheck Protection Program. The organization said it would help them retain 86 employees.[9][10]

Viewership and reception

As of September 2014, Daily Kos has had an average weekday traffic of hundreds of thousands.[11]

In 2008, Time magazine readers named Daily Kos the second best blog.[12] In 2009, Time listed Daily Kos in its "Most Overrated Blogs" section due to the loss of its mission, fighting the "oppressive and war-crazed" Republican administration, during Democrat Barack Obama's presidency.[13] The website ran on the Scoop content management system until 2011 when it moved to its own custom content management system referred to as "DK 4.0". In 2016 and 2017, the Trump presidency brought out huge support for the blog, with more than half a million in direct donations being received from their email campaigns.[14]

In an October 2018 Simmons Research survey of 38 news organizations, the Daily Kos was ranked the fifth least trusted news organization by Americans in a tie with Breitbart News, with the Palmer Report, Occupy Democrats, InfoWars and The Daily Caller being lower-ranked.[15]

Daily Kos has been classified as left-leaning[16][17] and far-left.[18]

Polling

Daily Kos had previously partnered with Research 2000 to produce polling for presidential, congressional and gubernatorial races across the country. In June 2010, Daily Kos terminated the relationship after finding that the data showed statistical anomalies consistent with deliberate falsification[19] and announced its intention to sue the polling firm.[20]

On November 30, 2010, an agreement to a settlement began as lawyers for the Plaintiff filed a status report indicating that both parties were "in agreement as to the contours of a proper settlement but are still in the process of determining whether the execution of the proposed terms is feasible".[21] In May 2011, The Huffington Post reported that Research 2000 pollster Del Ali agreed to settle the lawsuit and make payments to Daily Kos.[22]

YearlyKos convention

In June 2006, members of Daily Kos organized the first ever Daily Kos political blogger convention, called YearlyKos, in Las Vegas, Nevada. The event was attended by approximately 1000[23] bloggers, and featured appearances by prominent Democrats such as Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, California Senator Barbara Boxer, General Wesley Clark, Governors Mark Warner, Bill Richardson, Tom Vilsack and DNC Chair Howard Dean. The event was widely covered in the traditional media, including Capitol Hill Blue,[24] The Boston Globe[25] and MSNBC.[26] C-SPAN also carried portions of the convention.[27]

Political activity

In addition to being a blogging, news, and digital media platform, Daily Kos is a political organization. For instance, The New York Times reported that James Thompson, the April 2017 Democratic candidate for the vacant Kansas's 4th congressional district (House) seat in Kansas, "was helped by nearly $150,000 from Daily Kos, ... and some more modest contributions from a group aligned with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont".[28] OpenSecrets reported that "the liberal Daily Kos endorsed Thompson and sent out a fundraising plea, which has so far garnered $178,000 in donations, according to its fundraising page."[29]

Daily Kos has endorsed notable Democratic candidates in state and national races, including Hillary Clinton in the run-up for the 2016 U.S. presidential election,[30] and candidate Jon Ossoff, who ran for Georgia's 6th congressional district in its 2017 special election. Ossoff received more than $1 million raised on Daily Kos.[31]

In 2004, the site launched the dKosopedia. It was a wiki, using the MediaWiki software, and described as "a political encyclopedia ... written from a left/progressive/liberal/Democratic point of view while also attempting to fairly acknowledge the other side's take".[32] It grew to more than 14,000 articles but has since been discontinued.[33]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Frequently asked questions". Daily Kos. Archived from the original on March 1, 2017. Retrieved May 6, 2017.
  2. ^ "Interviews - Markos Moulitsas". Frontline. PBS. Archived from the original on September 9, 2018. Retrieved September 9, 2018. Now, there are guidelines. Obviously you have the usual sexist, racist type of things, but it's also a Democratic site. So if Republicans want to come in and create trouble, they're not going to last very long.
  3. ^ "How the Daily Kos candidate endorsement program works". Daily Kos. Archived from the original on September 9, 2018. Retrieved September 9, 2018. Daily Kos has always been, and will always be, a Democratic site.
  4. ^ "Daily Kos's file" Archived January 17, 2014, at the Wayback Machine, PolitiFact.
  5. ^ Jonathan Martin (December 5, 2013), "Coalition of Liberals Strikes Back at Criticism From Centrist Democrats", The New York Times. Archived December 14, 2016, at the Wayback Machine.
  6. ^ Smith, Ben (March 13, 2018). "The Founder Of Daily Kos Just Launched A Massive New Polling Project". BuzzFeed News. Archived from the original on November 12, 2020. Retrieved November 25, 2020.
  7. ^ "Company Overview of Kos Media, LLC". Bloomberg L.P. Archived from the original on November 13, 2017. Retrieved May 2, 2017.
  8. ^ ""Promoted By" Content on Daily Kos". Daily Kos Support. Archived from the original on March 28, 2019. Retrieved March 28, 2019.
  9. ^ Syed, Moiz; Willis, Derek. "Kos Media, LLC - Coronavirus Bailouts - ProPublica". ProPublica. Archived from the original on July 11, 2020. Retrieved July 10, 2020.
  10. ^ James Bikales (July 6, 2020). "Here are the major media companies that received coronavirus relief loans". TheHill. Archived from the original on July 10, 2020. Retrieved July 10, 2020.
  11. ^ "Dailykos.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics by Quantcast". Quantcast. Archived from the original on January 26, 2014. Retrieved December 29, 2013.
  12. ^ "Time.com's First Annual Blog Index". Time. April 6, 2008. Archived from the original on August 4, 2010. Retrieved August 14, 2010.
  13. ^ "25 Best Blogs 2009". Time. February 13, 2009. Archived from the original on April 19, 2010. Retrieved April 30, 2010.
  14. ^ Grim, Ryan (April 13, 2017). "Daily Kos Is Back". Huffington Post. Archived from the original on September 6, 2017. Retrieved September 4, 2017.
  15. ^ Benton, Joshua (October 5, 2018). "Here's how much Americans trust 38 major news organizations (hint: not all that much!)". Nieman Lab. Archived from the original on December 8, 2020. Retrieved July 1, 2021.
  16. ^ Solomon, Deborah (March 19, 2006). "Kos Célèbre". The New York Times. Retrieved April 13, 2022. As the founder of the left-leaning Daily Kos, the largest political blog in the country, did you find it hard to write 'Crashing the Gate,' an actual book, as opposed to your usual raw and episodic three-sentence musings?
  17. ^ Benkler, Yochai (October 6, 2020). "A Political Economy of the Origins of Asymmetric Propaganda in American Media". The Disinformation Age Politics, Technology, and Disruptive Communication in the United States. Cambridge University Press. p. 43-66. doi:10.1017/9781108914628. ISBN 9781108914628. newer left-activist sites like the Daily Kos ... while sites on the left, like the Daily Kos, emphasized ...
  18. ^ "Google rewards reputable reporting, not left-wing politics". The Economist. June 8, 2019. Retrieved June 26, 2022. Because most far-right outlets had bad trust scores, they got few search results. But so did Daily Kos, a far-left site.
  19. ^ Moulitsas, Markos. "Research 2000: Problems in plain sight". Daily Kos. Archived from the original on March 29, 2019. Retrieved March 29, 2019.
  20. ^ Sargent, Greg (June 29, 2010). "It's war! Lawyer for DailyKos details lawsuit against Research 2000". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on March 28, 2019. Retrieved March 29, 2019.
  21. ^ "Kos Media LLC et al v. Research 2000 et al". Justia. Archived from the original on March 28, 2019. Retrieved March 29, 2019.
  22. ^ Blumenthal, Mark (May 27, 2011). "Daily Kos vs. Research 2000 Lawsuit Settled". HuffPost. Archived from the original on May 7, 2021. Retrieved March 29, 2019.
  23. ^ Bernstein, David S. (June 21, 2006). "How to neuter the Republicans". The Phoenix. Archived from the original on October 27, 2006. Retrieved July 19, 2006.
  24. ^ Thompson, Doug (July 16, 2006). "On second thought…". Archived from the original on August 29, 2006. Retrieved August 14, 2010.
  25. ^ Grynbaum, Michael M. (July 6, 2006). "Bloggers battle old-school media for political clout". The Boston Globe. Archived from the original on July 18, 2006. Retrieved July 19, 2006.
  26. ^ Curry, Tom (June 16, 2006). "Warner looks left, looks right, looks toward '08". NBC News. Archived from the original on January 8, 2016. Retrieved July 19, 2006.
  27. ^ "C-SPAN". Archived from the original on June 19, 2006. Retrieved July 19, 2006.
  28. ^ Eligon, John; Martin, Jonathan (April 11, 2017). "Ron Estes, a Republican, Survives Tight House Race to Win Kansas Seat". Archived from the original on April 12, 2017. Retrieved April 12, 2017.
  29. ^ Balcerzak, Ashley (April 10, 2017). "Flurry of Spending in Kansas 4th". OpenSecrets. Archived from the original on April 13, 2017.
  30. ^ Nir, D. Daily Kos Archived November 8, 2016, at the Wayback Machine July 28, 2016.
  31. ^ Bluestein, Greg (April 5, 2017). "Nearly 200K Donors Help Jon Ossoff Net Record Fundraising Haul". The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Archived from the original on January 14, 2018. Retrieved January 13, 2018.
  32. ^ "Main Page from dKosopedia". Daily Kos. Archived from the original on February 11, 2021. Retrieved May 11, 2021.
  33. ^ "dkosopedia.com". Retrieved May 11, 2021.