We have an amazing and dedicated team at OpEdNews. And this is a good moment for me to express my appreciation to some of the the people I work most regularly with, our volunteer managing editors.
Sheila Samples has been Managing Editor for four years, an editor since at least 2006 and started posting to the site in 2004. Two of her main contributions are posting Quicklinks and crossposting authors' articles. She has posted over 25,000 quicklinks which have had over four million views. Sheila's Oklahoma home was flooded in May, along with other residents of the area. Sadly she had to evacuate her house for several weeks, and lost most of her belongings. Thankfully her little dog survived. Sheila set up her computer at her grandson's house and kept posting links, hardly missing a beat. Talk about dedicated, Sheila has repeatedly refused to go on vacation so she could continue keeping the news flowing at OpEdNews
Managing Editor Meryl Ann Butler's contributions to opednews, including articles, Quicklinks and diaries, hit the one million mark last month with the views on her headlined article "While Men Deliberate, Brave Woman Scales SC Flagpole, Removes Confederate Flag." Meryl Ann is the author of two books, and as an artist and graphic designer, she is very active with working with our image usage and functions, as well as working on editing with a few writers who are lucky enough to get her help. She's been writing for and contributing to OEN since 2004, and has been a Managing Editor since January, 2013.
Scott Baker is our newest Managing Editor, and our Economics editor. He joined the managing editor team last is year after being a Senior Editor for several years and before that an editor. His new book, America is Not Broke!, which is an edited and expanded version of some of the articles he has contributed to OEN over the years, was published in March. Scott is also closing in on the one million mark for views of his articles, Quicklinks, diaries and polls.
In addition we have a valuable and much-appreciated group of Senior Editors and Editors, and I look forward to spotlighting all of them in future articles, soon.
All these hardworking volunteers are the movers and shakers whose dedication provide the energy, passion and love that help keep the OEN system flourishing! And I think that all of us can say that in return, we gain inspiration from the knowledge that the ripple effects of our activities makes a difference in the lives of our readers"and we, hope, the world.
And of course there are our members--you who support OEN in so many ways. We appreciate all of you, and your interest in our work to move our country and planet forward to a more equitable, sustainable and progressive future. And I especially thank those of you who are able to pitch in financially, (through donations or premium memberships) especially in situations like we've had recently (It's not over yet.)
We couldn't do it without all of you. Together we make up a creative progressive community that can impact the country and the world. Thanks for being willing to take this exciting ride with us.