Yesterday morning, the New York Times published a pretty long story about Flagstock, the “rager” that was promised to frat boys at UNC-Chapel Hill for raising the American flag during a protest on the UNC campus last April 30. The piece, when first published, stated that organizers predicted between 2,500 and 3,000 attendees.
By Monday night, it was clear those numbers were ambitious — the editor-in-chief for The Daily Tar Heel estimated the crowd to be between 200-300, which later dropped to about 150. The New York Times revised attendance figures to “far fewer than 1,000 at any one time, though the official tally was unclear.”
Join 9,800 neighbors and receive updates from Triangle Blog Blog on education, housing, local and state politics, UNC, and stuff to do with your kids.
At one point during the evening, a musician said that both the stage and location were donated. (Rich later told media that the stage cost $100,000; we priced out a similar setup with a Raleigh-based stage and equipment rental company. They gave us an estimate of $12,500-15,000 for the stage.) The eight food trucks on site did not pay. Presumably there were permits involved, which aren’t super expensive. The musicians were not compensated, the event organizer told WRAL.
The GoFundMe raised over $515,000. We broke the news last May that it was tied to conservative political operatives, after which other news organizations followed suit.
The event later launched a website, with a donation button linked to an online funding platform raising money for right-wing extremists. Press releases were sent to local and national media organizations about t-shirts, which they reported on. The entity behind the event formed an organization in VA; their principal office (filed with the NC Secretary of State last week) is located at a firm that handles finances for Republican candidates, committees and organizations.
If you look at it one way – crowd size – the event was a total flop and everyone can laugh about it online. (People are! It’s quite funny!) But if you look at it another way – donations, data collected – the event was a complete and total success for its organizers.
Here are the Triangle Blog Blog winners and losers.
Losers
The frats
By early yesterday, the frats – including those that were slated to be feted – and sororities were warning members to stay away because the event wasn’t going to be good. (The Times reported on the complicated nature of these feelings.)
Chapel Hill
Though the event was held 10 miles away from campus, and most of the attendees did not resemble college students, the branding and national attention were once again focused on UNC and Chapel Hill.
Transparency
The GoFundMe cleverly gets around where the money is going by saying “our intent was to send any excess funds leftover from the party to worthy causes, entities that are consistent with the theme of the fundraiser.” They list some charities “proposed by the frats” but do not actually state that’s where the money is going. Last night, they gave a final update on the GoFundMe stating that the mission was accomplished. No donation details were included.
The media
The earliest media coverage of the event treated it like a joke and gave it lots of attention and helped it go viral. The blogblog – a group of volunteers – were the first entity to report who was behind it. Initial pieces were not investigative in the slightest – they simply reported that this thing existed. It is a good example of how our media is wired to help conservatives. Even later coverage from local news orgs. stated the lineup and website without any sort of digging. CBS17 published 8 pieces on the concert. Every new bit of information that trickled out – a lineup, a t-shirt – was treated as news to report.
Winners
John Noonan and Susan Ralston
The listed event organizers raised a ton of money and data – names, email addresses – to go along with that money very quickly.
They received national media attention with very little follow up. They threw an event that, on the surface, does not seem to have cost much money. And they still, presumably, have a lot of money left over.
The media
It doesn’t seem to matter if an event was successful or not for it to receive a long tail of uncritical positive media attention. Performers from last night are already appearing on Fox and Friends today.
Anedot
The online fundraising platform used by the campaign’s website gives a cut of donations to “Republican candidates and far-right organizations “
Republicans
The GoFundMe had almost 16,000 donors. The livestream had over 30,000 people tune in. That’s a lot of data, cookies, and email addresses to target for future political and ad campaigns.
Our questions:
- Where did the money go?
- How do you get national names for a free concert and somehow only get 250 people to attend? #theproducers
- How can the media ethically report on events like these without feeding into the frenzy? Is that possible?
- Why was the organization created in Virginia, not North Carolina?
- The GoFundMe says “Pints for Patriots [the organization behind the event] has a board of directors in place and a small team of volunteers to ensure every cent of donor dollars goes to throwing these fine young Americans the epic rager they earned.” Who is on that board? (And why aren’t they listed on the NC Secretary of State website filing for Pints for Patriots?)