This morning, I woke up around 3:15. I blame my drinking liberally crew. I had two beers and that always wakes me up early (I know… two beers a week is below the glass of alchohol a day they say is good for your heart. I’m working on it. <G>) Anyway, I get an email when someone unsubscribes and gives a reason. One reader unsubscribed and gave this reason.
I'm so depressed about John Edwards dropping out that I don't want to know any more what is happening. Political involvement seems utterly futile. Corporate media rules.
I decided to shock her and respond personally. Here's what I wrote:
No doubt it's a bad day (her name) but hang in there. We still have work to do.
She replied,
Thank you, Rob, for your reply. I didn't actually expect anyone to read the unsubscribe email, especially so quickly.
I might come out of this depression ready to fight again because I know you are right, there is work to do. For now, the work seems overwhelming.
Good for you, though, keeping up your admirable efforts.
I wish there was money to pay our volunteers, but at least, they know that we are doing an important job, giving hope, shining light, fighting the good fight. Harry Reid told the Progressive media leaders who were invited to the progressive media summit, "but for you, this country would be in much worse shape than it is today."
Every day, I get a growing number of emails thanking opednews for what it is doing. OpEdNews can do it because of our volunteers and writers. As I've said before, I can never thank you all enough. But at least, sometimes, I can share with you some of the fruits of your efforts and... the challenges we still face.
Today is the last day of the month. I”ve been saying, for much of the month, that last January was the worst month of 2007, in terms of fundraising. Please, if you appreciate what we do and can afford to, make a donation-- $50, $200, $12, $25, $1200.. whatever you can afford. If you can’t afford to, or you’ve given recently, just help us grow by letting more people know about us. Tell advertisers to run ads with us. Have you written a book. Dovetail supporting opednews with marketing and promoting your book.
Donate to OpEdNews today, because it will feel really good.
A lot of progressives were pretty upset yesterday, for good reason, with Edwards’ departure from the race. They are also very worried about the strength of McCain, to win the race. Some are talking about third party options.
What do you think about the response OpEdNews should have to third party candidates-- Ron Paul, Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich? My inclination is to keep the site open to articles for and against them. Let the readers decide. But I want your opinions too. My personal opinion is that we need to prevent another right wing presidency and that is first priority-- that there is a huge difference between even the most conservative democrat and McCain or Romney in terms of priorities, supreme court justice selection considerations, philosophy… And before a viable third party entry can be pursued, instant runoff voting MUST be included..
I'll be posting much of this email as a diary, so you can comment on it publicly, so others can see it, or you can reply to this email and only I'll see it.
Good News about Bernie Sanders and OpEdNews
Yesterday, one of Senator Bernie Sanders staffers posted an article by Bernie to OpEdNews. This is the first time a senator has had a staffer do this. I'd like to have all the senators and congresspeople doing it. Let's get Bernie off to a good start with a lot of comments on the article. Some of these folks will be accustomed to seeing hundreds of comments on articles on Dailykos or huffington post. Our readers just don't do that.
But I'd like to see at least ten or twenty. So... can you post something on his article? it could be about the article or a warm welcome.
I'm feeling very good about being the highest traffic progressive media site to participate in the Progressive Media Summit that the senate Democratic Outreach committee held. I think we should do what we can to consolidate and build upon the opportunity it presents. I encourage you to contact your senators offices. (It can't hurt to contact your democratic or independent congressman too.) Ask for the communications director, the publicity director, hell, ask for a list of all the staffers' names, titles and emails. I'd like to assemble a database of that for all members of congress. That would make a pretty good wiki. I'm studying wikis and how to integrate them into opednews. But meanwhile, at least get in touch with the communications or PR person for your senators.
If they’re progressive, tell them that OpEdNEws was the highest traffic progressive media site that participated in the invitation only Progressive Media Summit meeting organized by the democratic senate outreach committee. Tell your contact that you'd like your senator to start posting articles, with bylines by the senator or staffers, preferably op-eds, by the senator, but articles with staffer bylines, with bios are also okay. IF they are progressive, tell them that this is one way they can support and reach progressive constituents and support progressive media. Remind them that OpEdNews was invited to participate and we're reaching out as our way to help the progressive cause. If they’re not progressive, invite them anyway. Maybe they’ll check out the responses they get as comments.
Let the progressives know that we are very interested in helping them, as Harry Reid reached out and asked us, when he addressed the Progressive Media Summit, to pass bills that are close, like stem cell, SCHIP. We can help by publishing articles supplied by the legislators and by writing articles on the issues, if the staffers send us material to be used by our writers.
I encourage you to speak to them on the phone and follow up with emails. Use some of what I'm writing here and get creative. Please copy me so I can share the best material with other editors and writers. If you get a response, please let me know and copy me with emails you get from them.
Any Editors Out There? More Help Needed.
The good news is OpEdNews.com is seeing more articles coming in than ever. The bad news is, we have limited volunteer resources. If you can contribute just 30 minutes twice a week, working on the website, your help will make a difference. Please drop me an email and tell me about yourself, and include your contact info.
Do you know anyone on the site who'd make a good editor? I don't think it would hurt to have a lot more editors. There are other things editors could be helping with. Matter of fact, if you have ideas for other ways editors could help, let me know. I had one volunteer offer to help orient new people and editors. I could use a few more. Another volunteer is helping with the layout and graphic look of the website.
Website development update.
We'll be entering a new phase of introducing improvements to the site. Some of them have long been in the works.
First, we'll be adding some new inside pages-- for each directory and subdirectory heading, where all the tags at that level and below will be combined-- a friendlier way to provide access to larger categories.
Next, we are adding events and calendars. Each tag, each inside page, each locale will have a calendar and any member or group can submit events for the calendar. The events will be tagged, so the events will show up in calendars on all the tag pages the event is tagged for. The event will also show up in the member page of the member who submitted the event, and any member or group can ADD the event to his, her or its member/group page.
I am hoping this will encourage groups to join, invite members and post their events to the calendar. Anyone can create a group for any subject or reason, so it will be possible to have a Wednesday evening phone chat on ecology in Oregon group with a wednesday evening event, for example.
New Look For the Website
New Logo
one of our volunteers, not an editor, who works with website design is helping create a new logo and a new layout. I'm pretty determined, but will listen to other opinions, that the logo will change dramatically to something that looks like this, with an image of the earth, as seen from outerspace, behind it.
OEN
Opednews.com
A lot of people already use the acronym, so I figure we'll do it as the logo. Thoughts? I'm using istock.com to find an image.
New Website Banner
The new look starts at the top, where we move from a flat blue background to a montage of photo images. The first draft included only images from protest scenes, but I'm hoping we can build a library of images-- from stock photos, and from our members, so the images at the top randomly rotate. I'm justing putting that idea out there and I'm not sure it's something our wizard programmer can do yet. If not, we'll have a background that consists of four or five images laid out side to side.
We'll be expanding the banner ad size, so, if we get advertisers who want it, we'll be able to offer it.
New Site Navigation and column layout
We're going to consolidate the two columns OpEdNews Op-Eds and Best of the Web Op-Eds into one column. That will free up a column for life/arts/science, which we'd like to see more content for-- both quicklinks and articles, poetry, short stories,self help, recipes, reviews of books, movies, games, even restaurants and products. W hile we're a progressive site, our readers also eat, have fun, etc.
New Navigation Layout
To make the site easier to navigate, we're adding a bar on the left side of the page that includes some easier to reach and find navigation elements. We've been studying sites like msnbc, NYTimes, WSJ.com (Wall Street journal) etc.
We're still in the planning stages, so if you have any ideas, let me know.
New Tag CLouds
Events and calendars will have tag clouds. Each page will have a tag cloud soon. They will show the tags that are most popular for the last two days' articles, diaries, etc. The tag control panel will enable you to view other date ranges, or just look at the tag clouds for articles, diaries, etc. I think we're way ahead on cloud tag technology compared to anyone I've seen. Let me know if you have ieas or have seen something cool on other sites.
I think, in the next two six weeks, we'll have all of this operational and live.
After that, besides the usual work on fine tuning and tweaking that goes on continually, we'll be adding quotation pages, a quotation database and also polling, which will be either standalone or part of articles and diaries. The longer term goal for polling is to use the demographic information we collect (retaining privacy) to show demographic patterns for the polls we run. Users will only be able to see the demographics if they are members AND if they've shared their demographics. I think adding the demographics to the polling will be another unique feature here at opednews.
Whew. That's enough for now. That still leaves close to 100 more upgrades that are written out and detailed on our to-do list. Now, if we had some serious funding, from foundations, or whatever, we could be getting to them much faster. Still, we're growing nicely and we do what can with what we have, making a difference, playing a role that is sorely needed.
Thanks again, ever so much,
rob
PS. If you are a writer or diarist for the site, have you noticed that you don't lose articles you are working on because of timeouts? We fixed that with some neat programming a few weeks ago.
