Re: Taibbi

On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 2:39 PM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks, Coates; I'll e-mail him now.

Next week should be good. I'll prepare all of the details that we've decided upon thus far (although nothing is set in stone yet, and I'd like to get your input before I write the announcement piece anyway); we're still making some decisions about how certain things will be implemented both in terms of the software and the blogger network, and I'm still seeking out input from some of the bigger bloggers regarding what features they'd like to see, etc., but we have more than enough info pseudo-decided upon that we can give you a pretty comprehensive view of the project. I'm meeting with Andrew Stein again on Sunday to hammer out a few more things and will be speaking again this weekend to Allison Kilkenny, Charles Johnson, Juan Cole, and some other folks who have signed on already in order to get their thoughts on what they'd like to see. Let me know what day and time would work best for you and if you'd like to talk via phone or have me come in to the office; I'll be available any time after Tuesday.

Thanks,

Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302

On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 2:18 PM, Coates Bateman <cfbateman@publicpostinc.com> wrote:

barrett hey -

here's matt's email

"Matt Taibbi" <Matt.Taibbi@rollingstone.com>,

put my name in the subject line -- he gets a ton.

and, yeah, let's set up a time to talk further about the project.

next week?

On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 2:14 PM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi, Coates-

I'm trying to get in touch with Matt Taibbi - he gave me a nice dust jacket blurb for my first book back in 2007 and I've never gotten around to thanking him, and more importantly I'd like to talk to him about getting involved in the project I mentioned to you, the one announced in my last Vanity Fair piece on Charles Johnson; as the proximate purpose of this is to take on people such as Thomas Friedman, whom Taibbi famously attacked a couple years back, I think he'd be interested in getting involved and perhaps joining the executive committee that I'm assembling to oversee this until such time as we can decide on a more permanent operational structure. My publisher just gave me M_taibbi@yahoo.com, but that was from a few years back; could you give me whatever e-mail address you have for him, or perhaps just give him mine if that's against policy?

As for the project itself, my partner Andrew Stein, whom I mentioned briefly in the VF piece, is preparing a presentation and outline that will explain what the software portion will provide in terms of features, so if you'd still be interested in discussing potential involvement from your end, we'll be ready to give you a much more comprehensive explanation of what the application will be able to do and how it might be useful to T/S. Meanwhile, I'm preparing a formal announcement that I'll run next week on T/S, HuffPo, Daily Kos, and other outlets, to be followed by several accompanying articles intended to convince more bloggers to join the decentralized network that I've established; even at this early point, we would have collectively several hundred thousand readers between those who have already agreed to work with me on this, and based on what I've seen and heard so far, I expect to have dozens more bloggers of varying readership sizes joining up as well just in the immediate future.

Anyway, let me know if you can put me in touch with Matt and if T/S would like to talk further with us about the project. Also, I'm finally done revising the book manuscript and moving apartments, so I'll be writing a great deal more for T/S now.

Thanks,

Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302

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