Does anybody know how much it costs to start a videoblog? Because I keep pondering that Valleywag story about Rielle Hunter’s best friend Fred Baron loaning his son Andrew $800,000 to start Rocketboom (and then suing to get it back). Where did all that money go? Let’s tally up Rocketboom’s expenses:
- 1 pretty girl (preferably with large talents)
- 1 video camera
- 1 microphone
- 1 small set (consisting of 1 desk, 1 chair, 1 world map, and 1 laptop)
- 1 piece of paper for the girl to hold in front of her like a real live newscaster
- 1 web server
What else? I guess they have to pay for the graphics and that type of stuff, and travel expenses for field pieces. According to Andrew, they have one writer, and according to Wikipedia, the entire staff consists of six people. Even Andrew himself has said: “The beauty of this all of course is that it can be done for so cheap.” And when you watch their videos, sorry, but they do not look like four-fifths of a million bucks.
So… where did all that money go?
Update: “What about bandwidth?” Andrew again:
“Aside from the minimal consumer equipment (laptop and camera) the only substantial cost besides salary (or lack thereof) is bandwidth. Yet bandwidth is so cheap and getting cheaper.”
And that was in 2005.
Coincidentally enough, Andrew filmed this 12/27/06 video for the John Edwards campaign, according to NewTeeVee:
Click here to view the embedded video.
Also via NewTeeVee, here’s Andrew’s description of that video (in a post that’s now missing from his Dembot blog):
Today Joanne, Chuck and I are out in New Orleans for a Rocketboom exclusive. We just filmed John Edwards’ first announcement that he is running for president. It’s actually an announcement of an announcement, so to speak. I then uploaded the video to YouTube and there ya have it folks, the rest is history.
It certainly is. And when it comes to this story, history has a tendency to disappear from the Web. Will this video be next?
Getting back to Andrew’s dad Fred, ABC News is getting all up in his face at the DNC. (Unfortunately I can’t link to ABC because they’re a bunch of lowdown research-rustlers, but do a Google News search if you’re so inclined.) They spotted him at “a private luncheon for top party donors and key senators,” and here’s the nut graf:
Baron, a longtime major contributor to Democratic candidates, would not answer questions from ABC News and walked away when he saw cameras.
Why would you go the DNC, which has the highest concentration of reporters per square inch in America this week, and then dodge those reporters? (The Dallas Morning News has more on this selfless humanitarian.)
In other J&R news:
- Some Democrats are blaming Elizabeth Edwards for standing by her man:
“I think she’s complicit,” said Brad Crone, a Raleigh-based Democratic consultant. “Obviously, she knew. While she’s the victim, she clearly didn’t stand in the way of the cover-up.”
And over at the Daily Kos, they’re even less polite. (Imagine that.) It may be cruel, considering Elizabeth is dying of cancer, but they have a point. Her public confirmation of John’s timeline — in which he told her about the affair in 2006 and the whole thing ended there — doesn’t square up with that picture of Rielle and Elizabeth working the same Edwards campaign event just before New Year’s Eve ‘06. And Rielle was quoted about her campaign videos in the Dec. 25, 2006 edition of Newsweek. If Elizabeth knew about the affair in 2006, why did she let Rielle keep hanging around?
- According to the Santa Barbara News-Press, an internal memo at Cottage Hospital, where Frances Quinn Hunter was born on Feb. 27, instructed employees not to speak to the media about “John Edwards’ child.” Whoops!
- A bit of mordant wit from Extra, of all places: When it comes to John Edwards, DNC stands for “Do Not Call.”
- The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette gauges the chances of an Edwards comeback someday, and does not find it likely. Then again, Bill Clinton is speaking at the DNC tonight. You never know.
- Biden’s new press guy used to be Edwards’ press guy. Weird, huh? Well, he probably knows even less about this whole thing than Fred Baron.
- The John & Rielle story is helping out the National Enquirer’s bottom line, and even if it wasn’t, they don’t plan to let up on it. Holla!
- According to the Broward-Palm Beach New Times, Rielle’s horse-killing dad was an even bigger rascal than we knew:
James Druck was himself no stranger to controversy. He was, after all, literally run out of town [Ft. Lauderdale] in the late 1970s by his law partners, including heavyweight attorney William Scherer, after they discovered he’d cheated a wealthy client out of a substantial sum of money.
“We discovered he’d done something improper with a client and a client’s money, and we asked him to leave,” Scherer recalled last week. “He never admitted he did anything wrong, but he left town for Ocala.”
The incident, a secret in the legal community until now, seems to have helped set the stage for his daughter’s rootlessness.
- According to Hot Air, an ABC News producer was arrested today outside a downtown Denver hotel where top donors were meeting with Democratic senators. The producer was trying to interview people leaving the hotel and got treated a bit roughly by the cops. Hot Air has the same question I have: Was this the same meeting Fred Baron fled?
- Come to think of it, if he keeps running away from reporters like that, should we start calling him Fled Baron?