Editing 2: What is The Portal (section)

=== Making The Portal Self-Supporting ===

''00:14:10''<br>
So it might well be asked, how are we going to try to do something different on The Portal that might actually have a significant impact on our society? And I'm going to begin in a kind of unexpected place. How are we going to get The Portal to be self-supporting?

''00:14:30''<br>
Well, oddly, when we proposed this podcast, a friend of the program decided that he was in a position through business success to fund The Portal, and to in fact remove the need for advertising from our desire to broadcast. And I thought about this long and hard–of course, it's very appealing to imagine that somebody cares so much about what's happening on the program that they're willing to bankroll it. However, I think we've decided against it, at least initially, and I wanted to share some of my reasoning. 

''00:15:01''<br>
The reasoning is that very few programs could possibly afford to do that, and as important as this program is, it's really not about me, it's about what can we do with sense-making done individualistically and outside of any kind of institutional control. My belief is that the more people are able to podcast, the more people are able to use these new channels for outreach, the greater the likelihood that we can create an ecosystem of interesting, disruptive ideas to change everything.

''00:15:35''<br>
So in fact, it's much more important that we figure out some way of fixing the business model, where all of these podcasts are somehow delivering value that people are at least initially unwilling to pay for, because we've all been taught to expect that these things that we consume electronically are free.

''00:15:53''<br>
Well, we want to have the same problem, at least initially, as everyone else so that we can work on it. Can we teach advertisers and capitalists to stay the course when somebody says something controversial but responsible, to weather a storm of a boycott? Can we create what I've called riskvertisers, who actually pledge some loyalty to the people that you most want to see talking about the issues you most want to hear discussed if they can do so responsibly? These riskvertisers are people that we're going to go in search of. 

''00:16:25''<br>
So if you have a product that you think is terrific, and you want to reach people with tremendous brand loyalty, I hope you'll consider being a riskvertiser for The Portal Podcast. And that means, effectively, getting to know us, our audience, and not immediately buckling at the first sign that there's some sort of social media storm coming your way.