Last night, our Inside LOCAL pages went live. They are similar to our subject pages. You can also access them by click on the table of contents link at the top of each page.
But the Inside LOCAL pages are also different from the subject pages in their intent.
The local pages project's vision is to empower progressives all over the US and the world by enabling them to tap the content management power and reader reach of OpEdNews.
Our content management system makes it easy for people to submit articles and add links. I find, in my community, we have wonderful writers and not many have websites or blogs, and they don't want to, but they do write articles, op-eds, letters to the editor that rarely get published. OpEdNews' inside local pages offer a medium for progressive voices that are usually ignored.
The goal is to build a community that shares resources, building locally, which will build strength for the whole. The local pages will also have the news syndication box you see to the left of every article (java script for the box has also been downloaded by over 500 other websites, though I don't think they are all active.)
The list of locations is small now, and incomplete. I expect to add a lot in the coming weeks. We can add counties, cities, more countries...
I'd love to see people come forward as editors for specific locales, developing content, writers, bringing in new readers. You may know someone to recommend or want to take on an area yourself. Of course I am also looking for editors for subject areas or groups.
Where we are heading with this. Eventually, readers will be able to customize their newsletters and front page to include the local content and subjects that they chose. Advertisers will be able to select specific pages based on local or subject categorization.
We'll be able to sort for articles on evoting or women's issues, corruption or fundamentalism by location.
Some of these features will take some time to flesh out, but they are on our list of goals for the site.
The goal is to make OpEdNews the most advanced media site on the planet and already, we have some unique features which, at the least, put us on par with sites like the NY Times, and in some ways, already surpassing them. We have a long way to go, with a list of goals including massively enhancing and replacing the blogging and comment system we have, adding real-time chat boards, and even enabling readers to pay writers.
I'm also scanning other news sites and blogs looking for new ideas. If there's something you'd like the site to do, please let me know. If it's something another site does, send me a link to the site. If it's an off-the-top-of-your-head idea, just send it to me and we'll take a look at it and add it to our lonnnngggg priority list.
The offer above is no-fee. We want to enable activists.
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, debillionairizing the planet (more...)
