Well, folks, it’s been a slow media week at C4SS … and that’s my fault. I’m going to plead “learning curve,” explain what happened, and what I’m going to do to not let it happen again.

As those of you in the United States know, last week was a holiday weekend — Independence Day, the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

That holiday is prime anarchist media real estate, and we even had one piece in the commentary pipe that would have been a natural for July 4th publication (“Overthrowing the Government: As American as Apple Pie,” by Kevin Carson).

In most cases, a C4SS policy piece can be put out … well, not exactly “at our leisure,” but as events develop.

Holiday pieces are a horse of a different color. They need to reach print publications a few days before the holiday so that they can be evaluated, chosen for publication and put into the layout/production schedule for publication on the holiday.

Kevin’s piece hit the C4SS web site after the holiday was over — not through any fault of his own, but because hey, it was a holiday weekend and we weren’t thinking in terms of being ahead of the media calendar.

I’ve asked C4SS’s writers to make sure that I have holiday-related commentaries in my hot little hands at least three days before the holidays in question, so that I can get them out to print media recipients early. And, along with Brad, I’ll be keeping a close eye on drafts so that we can schedule them for time-appropriate web publication. That way, even if we’re grilling in the back yard or out watching fireworks or whatever, the stuff goes up when it should.

The bright spots this week:

– The St. Joseph, Missouri Telegraph ran our press release on Kevin Carson’s new research study.

– I interrupted my US media list building to put together a Costa Rica list for Darian Worden’s latest, Costa Rica and Drug War Escalation.” That piece went out to the six Costa Rican publications I found, as well as some other papers in Latin America, and to about 100 US newspapers (the “top 100 Op-Ed page” list). No word on publication yet, but I’ve seen mention of the article in at least one Costa Rica centered forum.

– My new, improved US media list is now at about 550 newspapers; all told, I’m at about 1,000 newspapers worldwide. I’m adding 50-100 newspapers per day, and expect to continue at that rate for another month or more. The email “bounce” rate is low, and I’ve received only a few requests to be removed.

– Google News returns about 15 indexed mentions of C4SS, most of them via the Alternet blog. We’ve got one result on the first page of search returns for “anarchism.” No luck on “anarchy” — the Emmy prospects of a TV show with that word in its name make up seven of the top ten results there at the moment — but we’ll continue to make our presence known more and more as time goes on.

– I’m making several pitches each week to talk radio programs … and the silence is deafening. I’ll keep plugging.

And now I’m going to get back to entering US newspapers into my contact database. Up next: Iowa!

Yours in liberty,
Tom Knapp
Media Coordinator
Center for a Stateless Society