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Andrew Breitbart offers $100,000 for the full Journolist archive ? with a promise to keep the source secret.

Surely, somewhere among the 400 members of that former discussion group, there is someone who feels motivated to fulfill the desire of the information to be free. I've listed reasons why I think it would be doing a good thing to make the archive public, and now there is an additional motivation ? $100,000. Now, virtue is mixed with venality. But virtue is mixed with venality when it comes to keeping the archive private. The motivations for not disclosing are not pure. People are protecting their careers, hoping for favors from powerful and well-placed co-Journolisters. Breitbart has added economic incentive to the other side of the balance, and he fortifies his offer of payment with an ethical argument:

Ezra Klein?s ?JournoList 400? is the epitome of progressive and liberal collusion that conservatives, Tea Partiers, moderates and many independents have long suspected and feared exists at the heart of contemporary American political journalism. Now that collusion has been exposed when one of the weakest links in that cabal, Dave Weigel, was outed. Weigel was, in all likelihood, exposed because ? to whoever the rat was who leaked his emails ? he wasn?t liberal enough....

ADDED: Mediaite thinks it's "unlikely" that any Journolister will spring for the $100,000. I don't really understand her argument. It only takes one person to decide to disclose.  I think it's obvious someone with a mix of motives, including a desire for $100,000, is likely to do it. There's a great argument for transparency and freeing information ? for the public good. I, personally, believe that argument. And it's impossible for me to believe that in a group that size, with that many people, people who are in competition with each other, that there isn't one person who feels on the outs and isn't interested in protecting anybody. Indeed, human nature being what it is, there are probably a few people who would love to see some of the prominent Journolisters exposed as... whatever the exposure would expose them as.

AND: Then there's the nothing-to-see-here-move-along gambit: Jonathan Chait insists that the conversations were "mundane..... requests for references... instantaneous reactions to events, joshing around, conversations about sports, and the like...." Matthew Yglesias portrays it as talk about sports,  links to published articles, and "failed efforts to get an interesting discussion going."

Full post as published by Althouse on June 29, 2010 (boomark / email).