Patheos was purchased by the Mormon Church

[Gadianton]

I have a feeling this will make the top 10 list this year.

Why buy Patheos? Was it suggested to church leadership by one of the Patheos bloggers?

[Doctor Scratch]

I have a feeling this will make the top 10 list this year.

Why buy Patheos? Was it suggested to church leadership by one of the Patheos bloggers?

I wouldn’t be surprised.

Here’s another question: why didn’t the proprietor of SeN disclose this information? Am I alone in thinking that the whole setup feels somewhat deceptive?

[Dr Moore]

I wonder if this was a “cheap” way to collect IP addresses, and correlate sock puppets, of outspoken critics. And, to pass the relevant information to the SCMC. I am highly doubtful that Patheos represents a compelling enough business proposition to offset the publicity nightmare equivalent of buying stock in Anheuser-Busch.

Or maybe it’s as simple as the church believes it can be a better steward of free speech regarding opposing theological and, at times, antagonistic, points of view than a neutral third party. Huh huh, huh huh.

[Res Ipsa]

This gets interesting. A holding company called BN Media Associates, LLC was formed in Virginia in 2010. I suspect the BN was for BeliefNet. It acquired Beliefnet (which it purchased from either Newscorp or Fox Entertainment) and Affinity 4. The latter was a for profit company that donated heavily to charities. It has been around under a different name since 1992. It has one of Trump’s attorneys on the board.

BN Media Associates LLC bought Patheos in 2016. In 2019, it went inactive and BN Media, LLC was formed in Delaware by the CFO of Deseret Digital Media and at least one of the former members of BN Media Associates, LLC. According to the linked article, some divisions of BN Media Associates were sold to Utah media company, who tried to move those divisions to Utah. The locals in Virginia Beach persuaded them to stay. https://covabizmag.com/small-businesses ... authority/

So, I’m guessing that the Utah company was DDM. Often, the only way to spot these transactions is to get lucky and Did up a press release.

How does this timeline fit with the whole World Table venture?

[Everybody Wang Chung]

[Res Ipsa]

Oooo. I love it when I guess right. Patheos and The World Table were founded by the same guy: https://www.theworldtable.co/meet-our-team

[Moksha]

Radiant can be traced back to Salt Lake City.

[Philo Sofee]

Radiant can be traced back to Salt Lake City.

Yes, they are letting their light shine...

[drumdude]

So Danny boy was writing for a Trump organization. No wonder he couldn't contain his disappointment, when told to muzzle his political opinions.

Of course Danny complied, he puts loyalty to organizations over the truth for a living. God forbid he take a stand and make a sacrifice to leave his little blog echo chamber he's so carefully created.

[Res Ipsa]

So Danny boy was writing for a Trump organization. No wonder he couldn't contain his disappointment, when told to muzzle his political opinions.

Of course Danny complied, he puts loyalty to organizations over the truth for a living. God forbid he take a stand and make a sacrifice to leave his little blog echo chamber he's so carefully created.

I don’t think that’s borne out by the organization and timelines. Peterson started blogging at SeN in 2012. At that time, it was owned by the founders — Leo and Cathie Brunner. I’ve seen no indication that they were Trumpers. The bloggers across the spectrum were pretty happy with them.

The Brunners sold Patheos to BN Media Associates LLC in 2016, which was a holding company that owned other companies, including beliefnet and affinity 4. The latter two had separate, independent boards. It was affinity 4 that had (still has) Trumps former lawyer on the board.

I haven’t seen evidence that the affinity 4 board ran Patheos. Most of the press releases at the time say that beliefnet acquired Patheos. I haven’t been able to confirm how honest of Patheos was actually structured.

The changes that Patheos bloggers started to notice came around 2017, when there was pressure to stop being critical of religion. One of the prominent bloggers about child abused in churches was kicked off the site.

The transactions that led to DDM owning Patheos happened in 2019. I haven’t read everything posted by the Patheos bloggers who left, but it sounds like that was when the site owner started trying to exercise more control over content and eventually sent out contracts that gave the owner full control, including the right to delete content without warning. I’d have to make a chronology to confirm the timing.

So, I’m not seeing the evidence of control of Patheos by Trumpers.

I also haven’t figured out how Radiant is put together. It may be a holding company that owns a bunch of spirituality focused websites. Or it might be an umbrella brand for the organizations owned by DDM.

What I find most striking is the lack of transparency in what happened in 2019. The sale to beliefnet was known to the bloggers and the public. The 2019 transaction was not known to the bloggers, let alone the public.

There may be more information out there. It’s a big internet.