PJ Media



PJ Media (formerly Pajamas Media, a.k.a. PJM, PJMedia, Open Source Media, or PJTV) is a right wing blog founded in 2005 by Roger L. Simon and Charles Johnson and largely financed by Canadian-born software coder Aubrey Chernick. Pajamas Media was described variously as an advertising network, an alt-right conservative blogging network, an Internet aggregator, a multimedia hate site and a sinkhole into which investment dollars vanished. In 2009, Simon officially dissolved Pajamas Media, replacing it with PJTV, a subscriber-supported video hosting site. After the failure of PJTV in 2016, PJ Media devolved into a blog collecting the gibberings of various wingnuts. In 2019, it was acquired by

Founding
PJM's precursor was Tulip Advertising, a project conceived by Simon, Johnson and two Ohio businessmen. The original intention was to provide an alternative to BlogAds for conservative and right-libertarian websites (and by right-libertarian, we mean that they're libertarian only in the sense they are for deregulation and tax cuts.). As the project developed, tensions developed between the businessmen and Simon, who was more interested in creating a full-on media empire. By 2005, Tulip Advertising had become Pajamas Media and Simon and Johnson had cut out their business partners entirely.

In November 2005, Simon began collecting venture capital. The first round yielded $3.5 million, with another $3.5 million following shortly thereafter. Exactly what was done with this money is unknown, since it certainly didn't go towards staff or tech support.

When PJM went public, it was known as "Open Source Media." While it was certainly a classier name than Pajamas Media, it was also already taken by a completely different organization called Radio Open Source. In what turned out to be the first of many embarrassing missteps, Simon was forced to acknowledge the infringement and change the name back.

Early humiliations
During its first month of operation, Pajamas Media made several attempts to make itself seem more important than it really was.

In November 2005, PJM issued a press release which claimed that the company had a fully-staffed regional office in New York City's Rockefeller Plaza:

Subsequent prying by ever-curious bloggers revealed that the "office" was a glorified call center and the listed phone number didn't work. Professionalism at its finest.

Around the same time, PJM unveiled its Compared to the short disclaimers found on most blogs, the PJM EULA was absurdly restrictive:

Taken literally, the EULA would completely override Fair Use, making it next to impossible to reference, satirize or even promote the site. Furthermore, it was nearly unenforceable. This user demonstrated the foolishness of the EULA by repeatedly, deliberately and publicly violating it before contacting PJM to inform them. In December, PJM relented to the mockery and changed their privacy page to something more reasonable.

The network


Pajamas Media launched with 70 bloggers, culled down from the 300 they originally offered. The initial list was a mix of high-profile bloggers - including Glenn Reynolds, Pamela Geller, Michelle Malkin, John Cole and Jeff Goldstein - and smaller blogs that PJM hoped to cultivate. Some of the initial selections were downright perplexing, and their prospects didn't exactly improve with their later additions.

Early PJM bloggers faced a variety of technical issues, most of them caused by PJM's lack of organization or support. Bloggers had problems getting the poorly-coded ads to work and had no real recourse save contacting higher-tier bloggers for help. By the end of the first month, only 30% of the bloggers were displaying a PJM logo, and just 12% had working ads.

Tech issues and problems with management persisted for most of PJM's run. By 2007, bloggers big and small were abandoning the network. That same year, Charles Johnson sold his stake in PJM, citing differences of opinion. He described the split in a 2009 interview:

Simon stabs the beast
In 2008, Simon launched PJTV, a video-hosting service featuring top-tier bloggers from the network and whatever marginal political figures he could wrangle. This proved to be the beginning of the end, as Simon rapidly lost interest in his bloggers. The coup de grâce came in January 2009, when Simon announced his intention to phase out PJM. Bloggers in the network received the following message:

Needless to say, the poor saps who get this e-mail were not pleased by it at all. Simon's response was typically respectful:

PJTV
After he was finished backstabbing his old employees, Simon (along with Glenn Reynolds, his new right-hand man) turned to his new project. In April 2009, Simon completely revamped the website to put most of the focus on PJTV, his video service. Blogs were (and still are, as of this writing) available on the site, but only the blogs of the PJTV contributors. The new site had a different business model, as well - rather than relying on advertisements, it would gather revenue through a subscription system.

Getting people to part with money is certainly a lot more difficult than offering free content with ads. One needs high-quality content to make a subscription model work. So what is PJTV offering? Their headliners have included the following:


 * Glenn and Helen Reynolds
 * Roger L. Simon
 * Culture critic Andrew Klavan, best known as the first person to claim that The Dark Knight was 2.5 hour defense of the Bush Administration.
 * Uber-nerd Bill Whittle, who tried to create a perfect city-state called Erectia "Ejectia"
 * "Humorists" Steven Crowder and Alfonzo Rachel. Rachel hosts the ZoNation show on PJTV and describes himself as a "Christian conservative social / political humorist." He has also been a panelist on the BET show Don't Sleep! alongside professor Marc Lamont Hill and comedian Tony Rock.
 * Samuel Wurzelbacher briefly served as a PJTV correspondent. Someone at Pajamas Media thought it would be a good idea to send him to Israel for 10 days as a war correspondent. This proved to be his only assignment. Proving that he has at least some standards, Roger L. Simon ended Wurzelbacher's contract immediately after, citing derogatory comments he had made about gays.

It's anyone's guess as to why PJTV didn't surpass YouTube.

PJTV died unceremoniously in 2016 after failing to figure out how to make money by dedicating itself to right wing bullshit.

Notable failures
While Pajamas Media was a debacle from start to finish, there were some incidents that were more pathetic than most.

China syndrome
In January 2006, Simon started a campaign to strike against what he called "the new Axis of Evil":

Simon's campaign was important enough to have its own section on the site, dubbed "China Syndrome." However, by February all references to the divestment campaign were gone. Whether this was due to a lack of interest or general embarrassment (The stock of all three companies rose steadily through January) is left to the reader to decide; however, the fact that the site was completely scrubbed of all references to "China Syndrome" strongly suggests the latter.

The Ayatollah is dead (again)
The most high-profile snafu in PJM's checkered history was their reporting on the health of the Ayatollah Khamenei. On January 4th 2007, Michael Ledeen reported that the Ayatollah had died from cancer. At the time, this was considered a make-or-break moment for PJM - if they could scoop the major media outlets on such an important story, it would cement their position as a proper alternative to those outlets. Of course, as a quick trip to Wikipedia will confirm, the Ayatollah was still quite alive in 2007. Ledeen hedged his bets for a few days with unconfirmed allegations, but was ultimately forced to drop the story.

However, Ledeen wasn't quite finished humiliating his benefactors. In October 2009, he claimed again that the Ayatollah was direly ill or dead. Once again, he was wrong. Of course, given Khamenei's age and health, Ledeen is bound to get it right one of these days.

The vanishing Ron Paul
In 2007, PJM ran a straw poll for the Presidential election in the following year. Initially, the poll heavily favored Ron Paul, who led his nearest competition by a 2-to-1 margin. An analysis of the voting revealed that some individuals had been using bots to artificially ramp up the vote totals, and that most of these votes were for Paul. However, Paul continued to lead the poll even after the bad votes were removed.

In February, Ron Paul's name disappeared abruptly from the poll. Officially, this was due to a new policy which excluded candidates who failed to garner at least 1% in the most recent Gallup poll, which didn't even include Paul. Depending on your perspective, this was either an attempt to create a more realistic poll or a cheap tactic to remove a candidate who was not favored by PJM.

Further stupidity
They stupidly cited Conservapedia to demonstrate the liberal bias of Wikipedia.

It's a wingnut blog, so of course they promote global warming denialism and conspiracy theories (including the occasional guest post by the esteemed Christopher Monckton).