We have enough, after paying for July, to last about 9 days. We need to see a serious influx of donations come in or we won't be able to operate. It's that simple. We have 400-600,000 unique visitors a month. If just one out of a thousand contribute $13.50 average, we meet our minimum overhead. We're seeing a higher average contribution, but not enough contributors. 20-30% of our readers are outside the US and we see just a few international contributions a month. If you live outside the US, you can't vote, but you can help OEN fight to make a difference with your contributions.
If you live in the US then you know this country needs all the help it can get to move politics to the left. If Obama is elected, we'll be right there holding his feet to the fire. And we're doing all we can to get as progressive a scene as we can going in washington DC. We need your help and we need it now. If you've been holding back, assuming other people will kick in and you won't have to, well, you have a lot of company-- too much. Please make a donation to OpEdnEws, if you believe we're worthy of support, today.
Click here to contribute to keep us going. Or advertise on the site. Our rates are great and we'll help you create an ad at a ridiculously low cost-- $50 for ad programs of $250 or more. Promote your book, your services, your organization, your web site, or just give a few hundred bucks or a thousand and tell a story or send a message. In a month you'll get at least 600,000 page views, probably closer to a million.
If you are on a fixed income, out of work, have really limited funds, don't send money, but maybe you can volunteer and post links to articles. We can use more volunteer editors too.
We don't want to disappear but we need your support. This month we are greater risk than ever before. I sent this message out as part of the E-newsletter on Saturday, and some readers responded, but we are from there yet for this month, let alone recovering from last month.
Another thing you can do is to tell other businesses or organizations to advertise with us or tell foundations to fund us. If you know of a foundation that gives out grants, tell them to support us.
Another thing you can do is tell us how OpEdNews has made a difference, what we're doing right, why it is important fund us. This means a lot, especially if you can be specific or very articulate in explaining why OEN deserves, that must be funded.
I sent this to editors and people who have written articles for OEN. But perhaps, if you haven't yet written an article for OEN, this list will inspire you.
Here are some areas we need article coverage on. You can make an article remarkably better by making one or two phone calls so you get exclusive interviews. You can even talk to congressional staffers or NGO/org spokespeople for these.
We want to thoroughly cover the conflict developing between Georgia and Russia-- including op-eds discussing and analyzing implications, repercussions.
The Olympics are hot. What are the political ramifications, spinoffs. Last night, Taiwan had to carry a special, made for the olympics flag. Hong Kong, recently brought back into CHina, is hosting the equestrian portion of the games, though it is a long flight from the capital. Why? To show that Hong Kong is now a part of China? We can cover protests or blocking of protests and protests in other nations. Still, the technology China demonstrated was awesome. They are, very soon, going to threaten and surpass the US as a source of technological innovation.
Non-political articles. We welcome articles on just about any topic, even fiction and poetry. We'd love to see more articles on travel, book, music, tech, game, software, television reviews, including novels, cooking, hobbies, design, fashion, business. Believe it or not, progressives and liberals eat, travel, knit, garden, party, go out... and if you are taking the world too seriously, lighten up. The theory is, OEN's mission is the modest one of saving the planet and humanity, but one way we do it is by carrying articles that are non-political, which bring people to the site, where they'll see political articles that wake them up.
Oil prices are coming down. They do that in the months before a major election. We need discussion on what is and is not happening as they drop.
The bush admin blocked requests to take the pressure off ethanol, so food crops are not threatened.
US auto companies are big trouble, ending leasing, whining about tepid MPG goals being too tough to achieve without layoffs, all while they are laying off tens of thousands for their past failures to anticipate the market.
People are losing jobs at historic high levels
Does anyone trust Bush admin numbers from ANY agency? Why aren't dems in congress investigating, finding out what the real numbers are?
The mortgage/housing crisis is going to get worse. We need to discuss how, what to do. Current interventions are weak and ineffectual, including the vaunted housing bill that might help 400,000 forclosed homeowners. But most of the big money is going top-down to big corporations. That should stop, period. All money to corporations should go through the hands of people who borrow money at reduced, subsidized rates. The banks get the business, people get help. Why should banks get free billions without giving up, say, 20% on loans that would otherwise go bad?
Elections are coming and we have dangerous to democracy electronic voting machines and right wingers disenfranchising voters in many states. We need to be on top of this. The dems should be ashamed of their selves for not passing paper ballot legislation. We can't cover this issue enough.
Diversity-- biological, cultural, is greatly threatened. We need to talk about it more.
Africa is a disaster zone-- massacres, slaves, tyranny-- we need more coverage.
Bottom-up approaches: I'm writing a book on bottom up and am very interested in all things bottom up, as opposed to top-down, in politics, business, activism, science, religion, relationships, psychology, etc.
Black Budgets. We have a new editor, Dick Overfield, who will be focusing on these un-supervised budgets in the trillions of dollars, mostly intelligence and military.
Progressive leaders and heroes. We need to honor and promote the progressive leaders among us-- reward them. Do interviews and profiles of the greats and the up and coming.
Media. We want to cover the best and worst-- successes, abuses and failures.
Political and ideological technologies. How are the web, mobile phones, and all the other new media changing how activism is carried out?
Get local. How are people doing things to make a difference in your back yard. We want to read detailed, intimate reports.
A few words on who we are and how we approach partisan and ideological issues:
The way I see it, OEN is a Non-partisan site that is ideologically progressive. We probably Criticize dems as much as we support them. And we also are open to perspectives from greens, libertarians (well, we may agree with their social stuff, not on govt or taxes, generally), naderites, socialists, communists, etc. We accept some right wing submissions that do not merely promote standard right wing echo chamber talking points. We generally reject articles that are simply repackaging of right wing talking points
Here's a chart I just generated of demographic info on OEN members:
| Political Party | Dem | Rep | Indep | Green | Libertar | Other | Total |
| Political Party | (2065)-36% | (530)-9% | (1643)-29% | (285)-5% | (281)-5% | (894)-16% | 5698 |
| Total: 100% from 5698 members | |||||||
Management of OpEdNEws. OEN, being a non-profit site, has Rob Kall as executive director, and editor-publisher. We have a team of senior editors who are routinely involved in major site decisions. They are listed on the masthead. If you can't reach me for questions, contact any of them. I encourage you to develop relationships with them too.
Rob Kall Radio Show for the next few weeks.
I have Robert Wolff, one of my favorite writers, booked to be on my radio show next week, along with Robert McElvaine, an OEN and Huffington Post writer and Author of and the following week, August 20, I have Howard Zinn and Dorothy Fadiman, with Joan Brunwasser. If you want to hear this weeks show, you can download it here:
We're looking for advertisers. Drop me an email for details.
OpEdNews Technology Update
Ratings and comments. we've recently added a rating system for content on OEN. The interface lets you rate AND comment from the same user interface. We had a day or two of comment glitches that seem to have been worked out. We'll be using the ratings to evaluate articles, diaries, polls, etc. in addition to using the number of email sends, comments and views for articles, diaries and polls. Yes. We will soon be showing the 100 most viewed articles, diaries, quicklinks and polls by the following time periods: 6, 12, 24, 48, 72 hours, week, month, year. Of course we'll be gradually acquiring the longer length data. So start rating content. It will help your favorite writers rankings.
Bottom Up Search soon, you'll be able to pick a batch of keywords and submit them all at once to find the directories that best match your interests.
Polling Demographic Crosstab Analysis. To the best of my knowledge, there is no other site on the web where you can create your own poll and as it is being responded to, see the cross-tab demographic analysis of the results. These work best when YOU vote in them and have all your demographic info filled in.
