Several weeks ago, influential Dutch conservative blog De Dagelijkse Standaard broke the news that another wannabe rightist blog (PlustPost.nl – I won’t link to it, see below) owned by Grimbert Rost van Tonningen – who happens to be a millionaire – was doing so badly, that the owner asked the Dutch government for a bailout (in the form of a loan). That’s not a joke. The Dutch government has a budget to bailout struggling media organizations that ‘make a difference.’

PlusPost was founded by Rost van Tonningen, who hoped it would quickly become one of the most prominent rightist blogs in the Netherlands. He and his business friends invested heavily in it but, after many months, still fail to top 1500 unique visits on good days, mostly because the website is extremely boring. In fact, June was the blog’s best month thus far, with an average of just about 30.000 visitors in total. That is 1.000 a day on average.| MORE ›