Dear C4SS Supporters,
Over the last two weeks, I’ve submitted 14,426 Center Op-Eds to 2,762 publications worldwide, and so far have identified five “mainstream media” pickups of those op-eds:
- “The ‘Fiscal Cliff’: Jim and Buzz Redux,” by me, ran in the St. Joseph, Missouri Telegraph on November 29 [PDF] and in the Deming, New Mexico Headlight on December 2.
- Kevin Carson’s “Why Romney backers never saw it coming” appeared in the Great Falls, Montana Tribune on December 3.
- Kevin’s “Under Capitalism, Welfare State’s Main Function is Corporate Welfare” ran in Oklahoma’s Urban Tulsa Weekly on December 5 and in Los Angeles, California’s Eastside Sun on December 6.
We’re still not back to where we want to be on pickups, but the trend is encouraging — not just with respect to number of newspapers or their circulation, but on the “respectability” side. The Tribune is a Gannett newspaper, and the Sun is part of “the largest chain of Hispanic owned bilingual newspapers in the US.”
That’s not intended to in any way disparage the wonderful “small community weeklies” and blogs/web sites who have been the bread and butter of our media penetration project. In fact, I suspect that both of those groups generate a far more engaged readership for us than the “big box chain” newspapers. We wouldn’t be anywhere close to where we are without them. But it’s a two-way street: When we get picked up by the “bigger dogs,” more of those smaller weeklies and Internet-based publications are likely to see our content, take it seriously … and notice that THEY can have it too!
No, I am not happy that we remain down from our previous plateau of “one pickup every weekday.” I want to get back there, and then “to infinity and beyond!” and all that.
We will get there, and we’re doing things to get there. In particular, I expect the efforts of our volunteer translators (especially Carlos Clemente’s work on getting most of our material into Spanish language versions) to pay off in a big way over time.
YOUR efforts are also key to our success as the market anarchist media center. Not just your financial support (but please, keep that coming!), but the simple act of clicking on those “like” and “tweet” buttons on our articles. That actually produces two sorts of payoff.
The immediate “told some friends and got them involved” payoff is obvious. Less immediately obvious is that traditional media notice when would-be content providers are generating their own buzz, and want to steal some of that there thunder. When I submit an op-ed to a newspaper, I include the C4SS web link for that op-ed. When an editor sees that 50 or 100 people already liked it so much that they told their friends about it, he’s much more likely to want some of that action for his own publication. So please, wear those buttons out … and have a great weekend!
Yours in liberty,
Tom Knapp
Media Coordinator
Center for a Stateless Society
