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New at OEN: Polling, Internships, Message Blocking, and Good Technorati News

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I just sent this message out to OpEdNews members who have submitted articles or comments to the site. Here it is as a diary, too. Regarding the intern program, I hope you consider it for yourself or someone you know.

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OEN has some good news.

-Technorati.com good news
-Polling Fun news.
-Interns
-message blocking

First, thanks for all you do for OpEdNews.com (OEN) A lot of good things have been happening here. I wanted to share them with you and invite you to try them out.

I hate to ask as often as I do in the daily newsletter, but I don't send this email out to all our editors, article writers and frequent commenters. With the economy going south, it's getting tougher raising money to cover OEN's budget. We're seeing smaller donations. If you can make a contribution to support us, it would be much appreciated. We're a non-profit, 501-C3, so contributions of $50 or more are tax deductible. We depend upon member donations for our continuing operations. Any financial support you can offer will be greatly appreciated. Click here to donate today: www.opednews.com/donate

Warm regards,

rob kall


Technorati good news.
We've been approved, after over two years of trying, by technorati.com. Actually, they finally allowed me to "claim my blog." That will enable OEN to integrate our content with technorati better. We're already ranked in the Technorati top 500 (484) out of over 100 million blogs, but our traffic, according to alexa.com, outpulls some of the technorati top 50. We can now add a few extra ways to connect with technorati programmatically.

I think, if we get more members to favorite us, and if more of you link from YOUR blogs to OEN, that we'll see our technorati ranking go up quickly. That will mean more attention from the MSM, who use technorati as a primary means of evaluating blogs worthy of media attention and interviews. One thing you can do is click on the new technorati icon we've added to the diaries column, to favorite OEN on technorati. Or just click here:


(
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or here: http://tinyurl.com/6eyx7k And again. If you link from your blog or website to OEN, that will help us both. Also, if you know of major progressive sites, with blogrolls, that don't link to OEN, let them know they should, if that's what you think. (commondreams, rawstory, huffingtonpost, alternet, truthout... for example.)



Polls On OEN
The first phase of our development of polls on OEN is up and running, working nicely. Any member can create a poll. We encourage you to start creating polls. Like all articles, some polls will be promoted If you checked them out before last night, they've already been improved, so they how have bargraphs to go with the stats. You can add as many answers as you like, not just yes or no. And some readers have suggested that polls include "none of the above."

Next, we're adding the ability to include polls in your articles. And then, after that, we'll be adding something that no other websites we know of offer-- demographic analysis. YOu know how we ask those annoying demographic questions. Well, now we're going to put the information you've hopefully provided to good use. In addition to seeing the general poll result, you'll see the percentage of men and women who voted for each option-- if you've provided the demographic information yourself. If you have not provided the info, then you will not have access to the demographic results. We call this ISYMIYSMY-- I show you mine if you show me yours. So fill in your demographic information... and expect us to add more questions. We think this function will be very interesting and valuable, particularly for groups. We wil soon be enabling groups to get analysis for the poll results just for their group.

To create a poll, log in, then click on the POLLS AND VOTES tab.

Message Blocking
Are you getting messages, even one message from someone you don't want to receive messages from? There's a button on every message that allows you to block messages from anyone you don't want to receive messages from. We do get ocassional spammers or kooks sending out unwanted stuff-- fortunately, not many-- but we encourage you to block them. We have rules about abusing the messaging system and we need to know from you about abusers.

 


Interns at OpEdNews

OEN is moving forward, developing an interns program. We're starting with journalism students, but hope to also work with programmers and non-profit management students as well. We will also consider non-students who are interested in more intensive volunteering and working for experience.

If  you have any connections to journalism departments and can get the word about our internship program out to them it would be much appreciated. If you can get involved in our program, as a volunteer mentor, this would be very much appreciated. I think the interns will make a difference here and we offer them a genuinely unique opportunity to learn and gain significant experience.  

Here's the description of internship opportunities which we're putting out to university journalism departments:

INTERNS WANTED

OpEd News, one of the higher trafficked newspaper sites on the Internet, is looking for interns who have backgrounds in journalism or are currently majoring in journalism or related areas in colleges. Interns will be able to work in areas of their personal interest (e.g., politics, music, art, the environment, etc.) since the site deals with a diversity of topics.
Interns will have opportunities to engage in some of the following activities, with supervision and staff interaction. We seek candidates who are highly creative, resourceful, self-motivated and able to work with self direction. Responsibilities include:
● Researching articles, as well as research contact information, such as finding emails, phone numbers for legislators, celebrities, etc.
● Interviewing. Set up interviews for other staffers.
● Transcribing interviews, rewriting press releases as articles for publication, formatting and posting articles submitted by other writers.
● Writing articles. Analyzing news, doing research and putting it together with interviews, etc. into articles.
● Editing articles that have come in unsolicited.

●Interns can use their journalism skills in an editing capacity under the tutelage of experienced editors.

Interns will be able to publish their own articles on the site. They will be also have the opportunity to be headlined. OpEdNews is one of only 4,500 media sites crawled by GOOGLE NEWS

Interns will Learn how to work with a sophisticated media content management system at various responsibility levels. . . . develop subject areas that are underdeveloped (women's rights, ecology, GLBT, prison, media criticism, energy, science, sports, religion, technology, trade, business, games, entertainment) . . . Search for articles to be reprinted . . . Search for and recruit writers to start submitting to our site. . . . Develop relationships with organizations in the community and recruit them to develop a relationship with you and OpEdNEws so they report news to you and post announcements and news to the site. . . . Work on team projects-- bigger articles that involve research, interviews, digging, on site observation, photography, video. . . . Capture video for embeds . . . Help expand site multi-media social networking vision, functions. . . . Participate in planning and testing of new site feature-set functions, user interface, underlying algorithms, back panel controls, etc. . . .
Build relationships between members of congress and state legislators and federal agencies. . . . Cover live events-- debates, conferences, etc.


Interns will be provided press passes to cover events for OpEd News and expected to report accurately on the events they attend within a specified period of time.

Interns, depending upon their interest, may be assigned to promotion/public relations and will:


● Promote the site: blogger outreach, media, PR, etc.

● Promote articles for pickup by other media, other sites.

● Work with other sites that use RSS feeds.

● Work with other sites to pick up our syndication system.

We expect 10-20 hours a week from interns and expect them to have regular access to the internet and cell phones for calling around the country.

There will be twice weekly conference calls with all interns to discuss (as community) news items, slants, leads, etc. -- as well as individual counseling with experienced reporters and editors.


ABOUT OPED NEWS: OpEdNews.com, one of the web’s best social issue and political newspapers with one of the higher traffic rates, is a non-profit, 501 (C3) non-profit organization, founded in 2003. We reach 500,000-600,000+ unique visitors a month, serving 1.8-2.2 million page views and 40 million+ hits. We are read in 200 countries. Our average readers are 40-80 years old with post graduate education. About 53% of readers are male.
The site is a hybrid media/community blog/link aggregation site that publishes over 1,500 articles a month. We have 13,000 registered members, 30+ volunteer editors and over 60 volunteer assignment writers. To get an idea of the caliber of our editors, check out masthead.
None of the writers or editors are paid, outside of the gratification of working on a site with a progressive message.
We use a custom designed and built content management system that includes features common to most CMSs and unique features not seen on any other site. Many of the special functions have been designed and built so OpEdNEws.com can be used not only as a media site but also as a tool for activism, advocacy and community building.
Some of the unique features include:
● inside pages for every state, county and major metro area in the USA, with ability to add pages for any community, down to the development or high rise, plus pages for every nation, and every province in Canada and Australia.
●a tagging system and directory with auto sensing and suggestions for content, with any member able to add tags to the directory.
●Tag Cloud control panels, to analyze and display content for different date ranges and content categories.
● RSS feeds for all tag categories, members, directory levels and locales
●User created polls. Any member can create a poll, either freestanding or as part of an article. Poll results are matched to respondent demographic info, so the poll's crosstabs are also displayed.
● Custom action pages: If a writer wants to move a reader to action, our action pages enable the reader to take action. ! The writer easily creates an action page so the reader can easily contact and send a message to legislators and local daily papers. Then, the writer can see the last 25 responses the readers generated.
●Group support: Advocacy, non-profit and special interest groups can be created, so members can share information, use polls, post events, share a calendar for the group.
● Member pages. Like many social networking sites, each member gets his or her own member page, where articles, diaries, polls, comments posted are all archived.

TO APPLY:
Contact Rob Kall, editor, at: rob@opednews.com or 215 504 1700



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Rob Kall Social Media Pages: Facebook Page       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect, connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune 500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful people on his Bottom Up Radio Show, and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, (more...)
 

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