Here’s the thing, Roger: you never once told us that the blog network you kept insisting was the next great thing “has been losing money from the beginning” — at least, not to our faces, and certainly not in any way that would suggest that you were carrying us like welfare recipients.

And really, if that was truly the case, why not let us know and offer us a chance out of contracts rather than blow sunshine up our asses? And don’t tell me you were keeping us on out of the goodness of your heart, either. Because there’s simply no way a big businessman like you would feel the tug of conscience. It’s all about the bottom line, after all.

The fact is, Roger, not everyone was given millions of dollars of venture capital to blow through. So before you go comparing people YOU SOLICITED TO JOIN YOUR ORGANIZATION to people taking welfare (you ever try paying a hooker with food stamps?), you might want to think about where it is “your” money is coming from.

We free marketers aren’t complaining that the business model failed. We’re upset (well, I am, at least) that the outfit was run into the ground by those who, to this day, can’t even articulate what it is they hope PJM to become, and who wasted the talents of a lot of popular average Joes in order to pay marquee names to post choppy versions of already syndicated columns — all in a complete 180 from what we were told PJM was about when we signed on.

I suppose that’s kind of what I find interesting about the whole thing. It’s sort of an example of conservatives trying to harness new media just by throwing money at it. So you get a guy like Roger Simon suddenly flush with millions of dollars to start a media empire with, and no real clue how to do it.

A similar affliction is going on with the Huffington Post, but at least they seem to be making out alright, at least in terms of readership and authority (if not in revenue and happy writers).

So going back to why this doesn’t add up…either Simon paid bloggers more than they actually made, which is INCREDIBLY dumb, or he’s lying and just wants to focus on PJTV, which I think is probably a lot more likely.

It’s not dumb to run at a loss to build something that will supposedly eventually run at a profit. Also, given the restrictions placed on bloggers (exclusivity) it might be he’d fear that if payouts fell, bloggers would drop out in favour of adding ads from a variety of sources. Whether it was a sensible model is another question, but it seems to me that the exclusivity imposed an additional opportunity cost on the bloggers and therefore a larger onus on PJM to deliver recompense.