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A sad day for progressives: Cursor is suspending publication.
For those of you who don't know Cursor, it was a top-notch aggregate site out of Minneapolis that published daily, sharply written news wrap-ups. I've been relying on this site for relevant links since 2004 and often wondered how it was that its editors could read and gather such a voluminous amount of material, consolidate it all into about 10 paragraphs that succinctly described daily events with pith, accuracy, and insight - all before 12 p.m. each day. (OK, sometimes it wasn't updated until 1 p.m., but still, you get the idea). This was a progressive organization that, having recently lost its foundation support, relied totally on individual gifts in order to keep running. No ads, no allegiance to any corporations. In this climate, with fundraisers struggling everywhere, the good folks at Cursor found it finally untenable to continue production.
David Sirota has emphasized the point that the national obsession with presidential horse-race reporting, and the resultant weight placed on pouring money into these national races, ultimately harms progressive hopes of affecting real change. Quite simply, when you're giving to Obama, you're not giving to the Progressive Majority, or South Dakota's Women Run!, or Cursor - groups that help to build the constituency we will need to create so that we can move Obama left should he win. Cursor's work will be sorely missed.
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