Article Writing

I say if you want to write just make a new thread for it and go from there.

Social media presence is important. Having a Twitter account that links to the articles would bring about some exposure to our site and any articles/podcasts we have.

I can do quite a bit of work at the moment but soon my schedule will change a lot and I don't know where I'll be when it comes to time management and finances. Writing articles is a *huge* commitment because you have to be online at all times to keep yourself fresh. You'd basically be a journalist working for free while others get paid as their full-time job.

For this reason I don't think that we should commit to a purely not-for-profit model if this site or any of its content ever generates revenue. The plan that cuse seems to have for this site seems to be offshoot of 2+2, then organically grow the user base with long-form content generated from the folks that post here. Great. But I think that if this site ever does generate significant revenue, then committing now to donating all that revenue to an agreed-upon charity is a bad idea. But I do think that some sort of co-op structure might work. You could give folks who generate a lot of clicks/content/listens say half of the revenue that their content generates, take a quarter to the upkeep of the site, and donate a quarter to agreed-upon charities. Gives everyone a stake and a motive to generate good content. 

Agreed on social media. I don't want to try to put out straight news content, though. We're not going to compete with CNN or the AP. Our angle would be commentary, opinion and analysis... Advocating for a position, or putting news into context. So it doesn't require being up to date at all times - just reading up on whatever you want to write about.

I'm in the same spot with regard to having some time now and being really busy in a month or so. But given that moving the forum is the first priority, it seems more likely that we won't get the "news" side of it going super quickly here... Which is fine, I think. It's more of a pet project and cool thing to do than big priority for the community.



Yeah we definitely want a social media presence. Agreed on that. And I love those types of content you mentioned. I also would love to see something like position papers by different posters. Like one could be on the merits for full single payer, someone else could argue the merits of doing Medicare for All where people have the option to buy in, etc... The site itself doesn't have to endorse specific policies, but individual writers can.

But I just think a lot of people might be interested in learning like, what do people say about the pros and cons of different competing policy ideas. We've got a lot of bright people that can make some of the best arguments for and against a policy.

I also think that writing strategy content or speech ideas, then coming up with a systematic method of pushing that content toward campaigns could be effective if we start to have a more powerful voice - it could be through direct contact or social media.



To be clear, the profits going to charity or candidates or whatever cause we want is more about the ad revenue from the forums themselves. It's not my place to take ownership of the forums, or any other one person's. We should cover costs, then figure out what to do with the profits. I would want to take ownership over a separate part of the site I was running - like the articles/columns/etc, assuming I was the one coordinating it, editing, writing, etc. At first it'll all have to be uncompensated because it won't generate much of anything. But if it works, I would want to have those profits be mine and then form a compensation plan for writers which would be some sort of % share. I would be comfortable promising to donate a certain chunk of that to one of our causes, given that the forum and the media operation would be in a symbiotic relationship, and it would have been fed into greatly by a forum that I do not have ownership of.

The same would be true of any other offshoot ideas that people follow through on that are set up on our site.

So I agree that the site overall should not have a purely non-profit model, I just don't think the forum itself is to be "owned" by anyone. What we need to do is make sure that the community has a sort of agreement/understanding of that and where the lines are and what is fair for those who are producing non-forum content that may or may not someday generate revenue.

Another element is that if the content side starts to be really productive, we may run into other issues as a community where posting, new content ideas/offshoots, etc could hurt the other "brands" living under our banner, so that may be something to talk about in advance, too.

I know my posts don’t hint at it in anyway but I have experience in article writing and with actual editing and management of myself, I believe I could contribute an occasional article on a top that speaks to me.

i don’t think I would fare well as a regular contributor but once in a while I get a burr strong enough for me to create something that I think would be beneficial.

Ive always wanted to write a long form article on the myth of the American work week and the comparisons to work/life conditions around the world. If you are looking for something like that I have a few avenues im looking to explore in that vein.

Have you guys ever heard of or read the Skimm? Basically it's a newsletter sent by email every morning with a quick rundown of the previous day's news, meant to be easily digestible. It's consumer base is primarily millennial women I think, but not exclusively.

It's pretty successful, but in my opinion the content is absolutely terrible. They both sides everything to the point where I don't think it's an accurate summation of the news. But that's neither here nor there.

Once we get enough of a user base, I think that's a good way to both get new users (sign up for the newsletter, stay for the forums) and to have members take on some writing that is not as intensive as a long form piece. Doing it daily might be too much work, at least to start, but I don't see why we can't do like a Wednesday newsletter and a weekend edition that comes out Saturday or Sunday.

+1 to all this. Ad money for the site if it ever comes can be figured out when/if it happens. I could see myself trying something myself that is somehow related to the site but could also be business for me, though I'm thinking more of like a module or plug-in to the forum software and maybe it would be more like consulting/service on something open-source. Or maybe publishing a manifesto.

Also micro-daughter would probably be interested in doing some political journalism.

Seconded. I graduated with a bachelors in radio/tv brosdcast communications, got my wife pregnant and realized "Whoops! There is no money in this business starting out." So got a masters in Accounting instead.

That being said, I love the business so im happy to help if she has any questions.