Second, I watched Colin Powell tell the UN that there were WMDs in Iraq and I knew it was not true. I was disgusted with the stenographic MSM and felt that there was a need for a site that spoke truth to power. I settled on the name OpEdNews.com, to include Opinion, Editorials, and News.
MAB: That's one of the things I appreciate about OpEdNews, we do have much more transparency regarding submissions. And as an editor, I know that a lot of hard work goes into receiving, editing and publishing them. On the few occasions that I have personally felt I needed to reject an article, I have entered into a dialog with the submitter about what would be useful to edit in order to publish.
Can you share some of the stats for the site? For instance, how many people OEN has reached, in how many countries? And anything else?
RK: OEN has reached over 24 million people, averaging about 200,000 unique visitors a month, with our highest month reaching 830,000 visitors. We reach people in over 200 nations, colonies and principalities. We've published over 100,000 articles and have about 100,000 members.
MAB: How do you observe OpEdNews making a difference? And how does OEN enhance the progressive movement?
RK: Joan Brunwasser and I were co-recipients with OpEdNews of the the Pillar Award from the whistleblower community for our work supporting whistleblowers. Also, we've had a good number of our writers go on to great success-- Jesse Lee became the social media director for Nancy Pelosi and then the blogger for the Obama White House, Kevin Gosztola used his experience to become an intern for the Nation, then a writer for FiredogLake and now runs ShadowProof. And others have been invited by publishers to become authors.
We've had some great endorsements over the years from leading progressives, including Dennis Kucinich, Bernie Sanders and Naomi Klein, and Greg Palast:
I think you guys do a great job. One of the issues... which is becoming worse... is corporate control over the media fewer and fewer large conglomerates controlling what we see, hear or read. So, if ordinary people are going to get a different point of view, a point of view which reflects the needs of the middle class and working families, to an increasing degree that we are going to have to go the progressive media. You guys do a great job, and I appreciate what you do.
- Bernie Sanders
I think you guys are fantastic and yeah, I read you all the time. And I appreciate the non-partisan nature of it. It's going to be more and more important to have real, critical alternative voices that aren't lined up behind a candidate.
- Naomi Klein
I'm always, I'm always grateful, Rob, for the work that you do because it's so important to give people information about what's happening so that they can make decisions about their own world based on the best information.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
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