Last updated January 11, 2010
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OpEdNews.com (OEN) is a tough progressive website, supporting values that are really dead center American, like fairness, democracy, justice, protection of our national resources and commons, and preferring to support humans before corporations and religions.
OEN is more than a media or blog site. OEN is an activism and advocacy empowerment site designed to be used, for free by individuals and non-profit groups and organizations.
65 volunteer assignment writers and more volunteers who focus on specific topic issues, graphics, transcription and more. (We always welcome more volunteers. Contact rob at opednews dot com to become a volunteer.)
Rob Kall founded OpEdNews Feb 28, 2003, and is the editor and publisher.
Our mission: Provide a content management, social networking website that supports progressive communications and tools for activism and organizations,
Our Purpose:
OpEdNews provides a content management system, accessible by anyone, that supports groups-- organizations, non-profits, clubs, etc.,enabling them to share articles, posting to pages focusing on specific subjects, every state and county in the US and all other countries and provinces (some pages added as needed or requested.)
The site enables users to post articles and links to articles so activists and advocates can share information.
The site supports hundreds of volunteer writers and thousands of bloggers who write articles and blog diaries covering news from a different perspective than that offered by the mainstream media.
The site WILL be providing the ability for groups to do polls of its members and of the general readership to use for planning and democratic processes.
The site offers some existing recruiting tools for groups and will be offering more tools.
The site will be providing tools for finding potential members and activists with shared advocacy interests, using demographic and poll responses.
Our Goals
Enable groups and individuals to communicate progressive ideas, plans, events, projects, campaigns to be easily posted to the internet and into the news cycle,.
Enable non-technological users of organizations to communicate and post to the web.
Enable local groups and orgs to build local progressive media using local inside pages Every state and every county in every
state is represented with an inside page on OpEdNEws.
Enable special interest groups to develop progressive "beats" on issues, using inside subject pages. S
Provide easy use of rss feeds for groups, locales, and special subjects
OpEdNews.com is:
1) A Hybrid publisher of original news and opinion articles, publishing over 1500 per month.
2) a community blog site with over 23,000 members and growing fast.
3) a news and opinion link aggregator--a drudge report for progressives, the site is designed to let members add links with comments, so we have a great mix of links
4) a newsletter that is emailed to subscribers daily,
5) an action enabler, like moveon.org, working for change and other sites that provide tools that make it easy to send emails to congressmen senators, and in our case, local newspapers on specific issues.
6) a collection of resources covering an amazing number of topics. See the Directory.
OpEdNews.com has some unique features no other progressive sites have. Our site is one of the 4500 approved by google news, so all articles are crawled by Google news. Our trusted authors can include action pages custom designed for their op-ed articles. This is a unique innovation that no other website on the planet has.
It gets even better, the articles also automatically include a link that lets you see the messages that readers are sending to their legislators and local papers.
Our tag cloud control panel is unique.
We do a great job integrating content, so you can go to an article, click on the writer's byline and go to his or her member page, where there are archives of articles, diaries, comments, and soon, events, quotations, polls and more. Or, you can click on the tags at the top of an article, or in the tag cloud next to the article to see other related recent articles.
We are always happy to hear from new article contributors-- both experienced and novice. We've developed a reputation as "the People's Media," because you don't have to be a celebrity or famous writer to write for us, even though even more than our share of top writers. And you don't have to be liberal to write for us either. But we do require, of all our writers and commenters that they be civil. OpEdNews is a community. Posting a comment here is like joining a conversation in a living room or social organization. You don't run in, say something, then walk out.
Our google rankings for Keywords liberal news, liberal Op-eds, progressive Opeds are in the top three. We offer a number of information resources, which you can find using our site map.
This page will first tell you about the overall vision and mission of the website, and then give an orientation to some of it's emerging features. We love feedback. Please tell us what you think if you have even whiff of a notion of how to make this site better... please send it in.
After reading this page, make sure you check out our Main News Page, and bookmark it for regular visits each day.
The goal is to create a useful, informative, entertaining, cutting edge source of News and opinion with a tough, left-of-center edge-- that talks the truth and cuts through the bull-- a combination of
a) left counterpart / alternative to the right wing Drudge Report and
b) Op-Ed opinion
c) a bit of the best newspapers, magazines, blogs--Dailykos, MYDD, Buzzflash, Rawstory, Huffpo, WIRED, OMNI, People, Newsweek, Guardian, Time, Utne Reader, Mother Jones, New Yorker, New Scientists, Science News, magazines and whatever else develops.
The site is non-partisan but left-leaning. It is left biased and readers should expect to read the site as a left wing site with a left wing perspective. That does not mean it supports only one party. All progressives are welcome.
Our experience is that most left of center websites tend to be all serious, all politics and activism oriented. But we know that liberals, progressives, people who don't like George Bush and his cronies also love the arts, entertainment, travel, that they have busy lives, families, hearts, minds and spirits that can benefit from information and inspiration too.
The goal is also to be holistic, to cover the arts (movies, books, music, theater, etc.,) sciences, health, media, business, technology, even sports, travel, self help, people news and strange and unusual stuff. To our knowledge, there is no left of center web publication that covers those bases, maybe not even a print publication, radio or TV .
Another plan for the website is to use the thousands of sources outside of the mainstream, neutered, impotent US media. Expect to find links to publications outside the US, where the truth still sees the light of day. .
Tough Liberalism: The goal is to be tough on right wing lies, corruption, corporatism, cronyism and stupid white man BS like neo-redneckism, racism, hate, fear-mongering and greed.
We have big goals and we need a lot of help.
Our Copyright policy is to only put articles on our website if we have permission. We do NOT copy editorial or news material from major news websites. We provide links to many other websites, and we have articles that we host on our site. One writer friend let us know how offensive it is to have your writing posted on a website without permission. Since most writers are not wealthy, we chose to respect their ownership of their words and ideas.
Our links policy is to include links to sites we like. We usually ask any site we link to for a reciprocal link. But we don't base our links on reciprocity. It is disappointing that many progressive websites, particularly print publishers, do not even have links pages. We need to stick together and support each other.
A confession. We do have one bias as we enter the news business. Founder editor Rob Kall has a 30 year background in biofeedback and self regulation and over 25 years in what he has called positivity and what the American Psychological Association calls Positive Psychology.
The self regulation and biofeedback background inclines Rob to believe that self reliance and self-responsibility are value character assets-- resources that are being threatened by managed health care and permissive attitudes. So you'll see more than the average coverage on positive ways to empower people to take greater self responsibility for their health, lives, relationships, etc.
The Positivity background has inclined Rob to try to see opportunities and ways to make people and things better rather than diagnosing problems and treating symptoms. The idea is to aim for optimal functioning-- mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, economically.
OpEdNews is a non-profit. Our fiscal sponsor is the Institute for Contemporary Journalism.
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