GREED BECAME GOOD! On the front page of the Washington Post, we learn of a change in the culture:

TUESDAY, JUNE 21, 2011
In which we request your support (for two ongoing projects): Keith Olbermann is back on the air, doing Countdown over at Current. The caption to this kick-off photo is designed to make you feel like one of the gang. It’s intended to make you feel like you belong to the club.

Olbermann’s return produced an intriguing report in yesterday’s New York Times. Incredibly, Brian Stelter described a fight to sign journalistic “contributors” for competing liberal TV programs! Ten years ago, could anyone have imagined such a thing?

Just a guess: These liberal programs want contributors who will be highly “regular.” For that reason, a potential problem lurks in the highlighted facts:

STELTER (6/20/11): Already, Mr. Olbermann seems to have succeeded in one respect: in creating a robust marketplace for liberal television talent. Since he left in January, MSNBC has signed prominent contributors like Eugene Robinson, the Washington Post columnist, to new long-term contracts, in some cases staving off Current's attempts to poach them.

[…]

Few of Mr. Olbermann's producers or regular guests from MSNBC are joining him on the new show. His entreaties to MSNBC employees set off something of a bidding war, according to people involved in contract negotiations who insisted on anonymity to avoid distressing executives at MSNBC or Current.

''The threat of Keith's new show meant that MSNBC had to spend a little bit of extra money—and Phil was willing to do that,'' one of the people said, referring to Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC.

Guest bookings are important for cable news channels because viewers come to recognize and expect regular guests with opinions on the left and the right. The channels pay some guests—called contributors or analysts—for exclusive access to them, and also nurture new and influential voices in politics.

At Current and at MSNBC, “contributors” have scored some extra swag due to this “bidding war.” There’s nothing automatically wrong with that—but therein, a problem does lurk. Alas! The more money such “contributors” get paid, the less likely it is that they will ever stray off the political plantation. Let’s think about MSNBC alone, although what follows also applies to the “talent” at Fox.

As Stelter notes, viewers of MSNBC “come to recognize and expect regular guests with opinions on the left.” The more those regular guests get paid, the less likely it is that they will challenge any twaddle on their own channel. This tendency has been quite clear for the past decade, especially on Fox.

The more such regular guests get paid, the higher the likelihood that they will be very regular in the things they do and say on the air. For one example, watch the performances by David Corn and Alex Wagner supporting Chris Matthews on Hardball last night. If it’s pure pre-packaged piffle you like, you got it in this worthless segment. (Full disclosure: We have never misjudged anyone the way we misjudged Brother Corn.)

Indeed, compensation can be quite good at the upper ends of the “journalistic” world. Like many other people, “journalists” may be disinclined to put such pay days at risk. They tend to fall in line with the program—whether the program is set by a CEO like Jack Welch or by producers who are constructing an easy-to-follow, corporatized version of paint-by-the-numbers “liberalism.”

Today’s contributors and analysts can do quite well—if they get with the program. What the best way to lose that pay and exposure? Simple! Just challenge the work of the mainstream press; just challenge the established framework of your own cable channel. And that is why we approach you today, and all this week, asking you to consider making a contribution to this incomparable site.

Elsewhere, you may get a bought-and-paid-for brand of “liberalism.” You may get something else here.

We’ll be discussing the goals of our site each day this week. But for today, here are the basic goals for the coming year:

First, we plan to extend the history lessons in our on-line book, How he got there. The children of the “career liberal” world are telling this story very slowly, and with exceptional caution. (Poor Romney! And poor Pawlenty! Why won’t the press corps be fair?) We think the remarkable history detailed in How he got there should be part of the public record. It should be available for future generations to use.

(Current “liberals” will never tell you the truth about the era in question. They have made their decision abundantly clear over the past fifteen years, dating back to their refusal to discuss the books by Gene Lyons and by Lyons and Joe Conason. They flushed these stories away long ago. It’s obvious why they did so.)

Second, we plan to continue discussing the most intriguing topic in journalism today—the development of the “liberal” journalistic world. When we started this site in 1998, there was very little “liberal” journalism anywhere in the land. Today, two cable networks are competing to sign up “liberal” contributors! The sputtering development of MSNBC strikes us as the most interesting story in journalism today.

A simpering form of pseudo-liberalism is relentlessly churned at that channel (though some good work is also done). In part for the reasons explained in Stelter’s piece, career liberals will never serve as honest brokers in critiquing that burgeoning world.

Let’s review! We’re going to give you recent history involving the work of the mainstream press. Beyond that, we plan to pursue the fascinating story of the burgeoning “liberal” journalistic world. Trust us: No one has asked us to serve as a “regular” liberal contributor. On those burgeoning liberal outlets, they like their contributions to be more “regular” than anything we would provide.

If you want an analysis from the outside, we hope you’ll consider contributing here. We wouldn’t ask if there wasn’t a need. Indeed: In our thirteen years at this post, this is only our second annual fund drive! You can contribute through PayPal, or by check. To do such things, just click here.

Thanks to Olbermann’s return to the air, the “regulars” got some extra swag! If you want to see them sing for their supper, just watch that clip from last night’s Hardball. Or watch the same program tonight! Except when penis photos emerge, this repurposed cable program is now extremely “regular.”

Is that what you want? Does that sort of scripted packaging serve progressive interests?