My message in a bottle

$20 million to maybe save the world.

H the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, railroad executives had finally had enough of Butch’s gang robbing their trains. So they organized a Super Posse with one mission: Stop these guys.

As it turns out, even the Super Posse didn’t get Butch and the Sundance Kid … but they did run them out of the country so the “Hole in the Wall Gang” didn’t rob any more trains and banks in America.

Basically, as outlined in Part I, my “solution” would organize a committed “super posse” of well-funded and committed journalists and researchers who would have just one mission: Get these guys who have been committing “crimes against humanity.”

I’m not saying this idea would definitely “work,” but I do believe it might work. I know it hasn’t been tried, at least in the scale I envision. I might be wrong, but I don’t think the Bad Guys would like having a super posse - that would never sleep or never give up - on their ass every single day.

As I pointed out in Part I, I’ve run a few back-of-the-envelope financial calculations and think that an initial commitment of $20 million would probably be enough to fund this operation for at least a year. 

That is, $20 million would produce hundreds of eye-opening and important articles, some of which might even “bust through” the false narratives and start to change the way millions of Americans have previously thought about their “trusted” public officials.

The question becomes is there a couple of people (in a planet of seven billion people) who could and would devote this amount of money (which is really chump change to many wealthy people) to make such a venture a reality?

Known Knowable 1: This ain’t happened yet.

Well, we know this: This hasn’t happened yet … and there must be a reason this hasn’t happened yet.

As it turns out, my little “idea” or “solution” was the easy part. The nub is finding a few people who would fund or green light the idea.

Today’s question: What might motivate a few people to say, “What the hell? Let’s do it.”

Another question: Could an investor(s) make money from this start-up business? After all, this is almost always the reason people fund business ideas. They’d like to make some money.

But making $ isn’t the No. 1 goal with this idea …

Actually, the ideal investors in this project would not even care if they made money or not. Their goal would be altruistic. They’d be trying to save the country - make sure that real justice prevails - or at least do something that needs to be done or try something that hasn’t been tried yet. 

What you would really be looking for is someone who says, “If nobody else will do this, I’ll do it myself.”

I’d argue this attitude helped make America a great nation. So if any Americans still exist who think like this, that’s our target investor.

Alas, I’m not sure such people still exist anymore, which is disconcerting but - as they say - “it is what it is.”  

Still, I think this idea could be pitched to prospective investors in a way that might show them how they could make some money.

So how would this idea make money?

We know it wouldn’t be from corporate advertising. 

It’s a given that every major advertiser - and all the big ad agencies that place advertising - would blackball this news organization. This in itself is a major “tell” and would be a subject the organization’s journalists would highlight. “Advertisers despise real investigative journalism organizations” is, in fact, a big story that needs to be told.

Which is not to say that companies like My Pillow, who buys up all the ad space he can on Tucker Carlson’s similarly-boycotted show, might run some ads at this website. 

The “gold bug” sites would probably be interested in reaching this market. Entrepreneurs who produce T-shirts or doo dads with a “Stick-it-to-the-Man” or “Live Free or Die” type message might like this site. So you might get a little advertising revenue. 

But most of your revenue would have to come from paid subscribers. 

However, since the founders of this news organization would want to reach as many readers as possible, they wouldn’t put their stories behind any kind of “pay wall.” It’s very important that all of the “content” these journalists produce be available to everyone.

The site would use the Substack revenue model …

However, the site could solicit paid subscriptions (which are really donations) and some percentage of regular readers would pay some amount for these “subscriptions.” 

We know that people are already doing this at Substack.

According to my Substack research, the most popular or successful Substack sites get from 4 to 10 percent “paid subscribers.”

In creating a business plan, it’s always smart to use the conservative or low-end estimates. 

My assumption is that if this site quickly proves it’s the “Real McCoy” - and is routinely producing important and original  investigative journalism - 4 percent of regular readers probably would subscribe.

A typical monthly subscription at Substack is just $5 month (which is $60/year). Surprisingly, many people go ahead and get an annual subscription for a discounted rate.

Let’s say on average, the website is producing $50 revenue per paid-subscriber. 

If the site attracts 20 million regular readers world-wide and 4 percent of these subscriptions are paid that’s 800,000 paid subscribers … at $50 per paid subscriber = $40 million annual subscription revenue.

In other words, our investors can gross $40 million on a $20 million investment if they can just produce enough great stories that 20 million people on the planet want to read - and if 4 percent of these regular readers are generous enough to say “thank you” by buying a year’s subscription. 

Are my assumptions realistic?

Of course we should always “check our assumptions.” Is 20 million regular or loyal readers realistic? I think it is given that this site is basically going to have a monopoly on all the explosive Covid scoops in the world.

The Project Veritas report on the talkative Pfizer executive reportedly got 20 million views. 

On a good night, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” draws four million viewers.  But that’s just his audience for one given night. Over the course of 30 nights, Tucker’s show probably attracts at least 10 million viewers.

Steve Kirsch became a “citizen journalist” two years ago and he’s already reaching one million people.

I don’t know how many regular visitors Citizen Free Press gets in a given month, or Zero Hedge, but it’s probably at least 20 million people.

Our market would be global …

A big plus for this news operation would be that it’s largely focussing on taboo Covid topics (basically, massive scandals that are not being adequately or fully investigated). 

As it turns out, interest in these topics is global. So our backers don’t need to get 20 million regular viewers just from America. We can can throw in sane-thinking people in the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Australia, Sweden, India … people in 180 nations who care about Covid issues.

I don’t know what story would “blow the lid” off some preposterous Covid narrative first, but that first major explosive story might get 500 million “reads” world-wide.

If this site attracted “only” 10 million readers in America this would be just four percent of the U.S. adult population. Surely 4 percent of the adult population would be interested in journalism that, say, proved that the vaccines are killing large numbers of people.

Another recent “gift” is that Twitter now seems more inclined to allow real journalism to reach its followers. So stories that would have been censored in the past will now have a much greater chance to “go viral.”

Question: Can the world (population 7 billion) produce at least 800,000 people who can afford $5/month? I think this is very do-able or realistic.

The world wouldn’t even have to produce 800,000 paying customers - 400,000 (just 2 percent paid subscribers) would get the site to “break even” ($20 million).

If I can do it …

I started my Substack site about 4 1/2 months ago. I’m at 3.58 percent “paid subscribers.” I’ve gone from zero subscribers to 2,620 in 130 days - and my stories won’t even touch the quality of journalism this staff would be producing on a daily basis.

Other revenue possibilities …

And voluntary “paid subscribers” (and our My Pillow and “gold bug” ads) aren’t the only revenue streams founders could tap into.

Think of the future best-selling books, which would be optioned for movies and mini-series. 

If I was in charge, from Day One, I’d hire an in-house documentary crew telling the back story of all the drama occurring in our newsroom. 

After all, people might be plotting to kill us and every journalist would probably be under surveillance. Some staffers would end up suffering nervous break-downs; some of our staffers would end up being spies; there would be great arguments on how to pursue X story or great backstories on identifying possible whistleblowers or Deep Throat type sources. 

The first year of this operation would make riveting story-telling. You might as well document all this for posterity (and future revenue).

Franchising opportunities …

If you really want to think big - and quickly learn that there is a vast audience for important investigative journalism, you might franchise the concept out to 50 states, none of which have any newspapers that are doing important investigative journalism involving their own corrupt officials. Every state and big city has hundreds of important stories that aren’t being told.

If your “brand” takes off, there’s nothing stopping you from hiring a couple dozen real journalists to cover all these uncovered local stories as well.

And once you have 50 state offices/bureaus, these reporters are going to stumble across some stories that your national or global site would want to “pick up” and run as well.

The Big Kahuna payout option would be that the “Powers that Be” buy you out to shut you up. (This is what I think happened to The Drudge Report).

Although this would be the easiest “solution” for the Bad Guys, I don’t think they’ll do it … because once somebody saw what a great market there was for real journalism, somebody else would just come along and do the same thing. 

That is, while Drudge is now “captured” and, for example, doesn’t run Covid vaccine death stories, Citizen Free Press is running 10 headlines a day about “sudden deaths” and has almost the same size audience as Drudge.

Carrot vs. Stick - Stick wins.

Which gets us to the real reason my business idea might be a long shot. Since the “carrot” (buying the owners off) probably wouldn’t be a real option, that leaves the Powers that Be only the “stick” option. 

Whoever tries such a crazy thing we’ll have the weight of the world come down on them so hard they are going to wish they never made $20 million they could invest as they see fit.

I think it’s a pretty safe bet that our friends in the Deep State would do everything they can to make the lives of our patriotic and maverick would-be saviors a living hell. 

Julian Assange might be the best example. There’s Mr. Assange, thinking he’s just publishing the truth and exposing nefarious actors and government agencies … and what does he get for his efforts?

At the end of the day, who rallied to Julian Assange’s defense? Pam Anderson of “Bay Watch” fame and Roger Waters of Pink Floyd fame.

I think Pam and Roger would also champion this news site, but I don’t know if this show of support would be enough to bolster the courage of any future Julian Assange.

It seems to me the lesson is that the threat of that stick coming down hard across your skull  is far more motivating than eating some juicy carrots … or even doubling your initial investment by getting 800,000 paid subscribers.

What’s the saying? Never fight City Hall. 

Well, in this case “City Hall” would be every powerful organization on the planet. Rambo himself  - or the Outlaw Josey Wales - probably wouldn’t take on such a ruthless nemesis.

Still, America does have 332 million people. With this idea, it doesn’t matter if 331.999 million take a pass on this “solution.” It would just take one person - or maybe a handful - to say, I’ll risk being thrown into a gulag next to Assange to save this country.

Who would the people ultimately support?

With the denouement of this epic novel, the public - the so-called “people” - would choose sides and have the final say on who “wins.”

True, manipulating public opinion has become a cakewalk - a gimme - for the Powers that Be. But that’s only because no big journalism organization has returned fire. There hasn’t been a super posse that’s been recruited and funded to go after them. 

Drama is a popular genre because people want to see what happens next.

What would happen if some bad-ass Super Posse took on BlackRock, Anthony Fauci’s minions, the Great and Powerful Bill Gates, George Soros, Big Pharma and The World Economic Forum?

I mean, who would “the people” really pull for here?

We don’t know. At least in recent decades, nobody has stood up to these guys. Clearly plenty of people would pull for the Bad Guys (thinking they were pulling for the Good Guys).

But the real fight would hinge on whether our team could make enough people in the public understand that their heroes - the people and organizations they they thought were infallible - were the real villains all along.

The Bad Guys would be heavy favorites, but I don’t think you could count out the underdogs, who would have “the truth” on their side. 

I just hope I live long enough to see such a battle. 

$20 million is all it would take. 

Call this my message in a bottle idea. I do think it has a chance to save the world. Now if the message just reaches the right person.