[owlmanatt]

Yes, exactly. The other half of the article feels exactly the same: "PBS decided to kill the show, so LeVar is obviously wrong for wanting to continue anyway". It doesn't present an argument that teaching language is more important than creating a desire to consume books; it just appeals to PBS's authority.

But aside from the article's shortcomings, I do agree with their sentiment. You typically see Kickstarter pages explain what they need the money for in some level of detail -- who would want to give strangers money otherwise?

The idea of promoting literature to children is great, but that's just a mission statement. The entire pitch is frustratingly unspecific about what exactly they're making with their million dollars. I can take some pretty good guesses, but why should backers need to guess at that?

[cwyers]

I haven't really checked out the Kickstarter -- Reading Rainbow doesn't tickle my nostalgia fancy as much as some people, so while I'm glad they have a chance to contribute if they want, I'm not really interested in it myself.

But when the history of this day and age is written, we're going to look back at Kickstarter as a candle in the darkness -- right now it's one of the very few ways in which "new media" is grappling seriously with the idea of figuring out how to get consumers pay content producers for content they want, rather than requiring content producers to figure out how to turn their creative endeavor into a convenient medium for advertising. The way some people want to throw it under the bus just because people are actually using it to make money rather than keeping it "pure" for the starving artist annoys me. I want people to make money off Kickstarter. I want more and more content to be made because it's what consumers want, not because it's how advertisers can reach consumers.