Letter from the editor: what's new?
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Joel Wendland
Jun 11, 2009, 10:23:57 AM6/11/09
to pa-re...@googlegroups.com
Dear friend of PoliticalAffairs.net,
I am writing to you in this unique moment of change, hope and opportunity to ask you share your resources to help build our movement. Thank you for your ongoing support at this critical time.
Next December will mark the first year of PA publishing completely online. So, let me take a moment to talk about what we've been doing and what we've accomplished.
First, and perhaps most important, is that Political Affairs survives. Difficult financial straits and rising publishing costs could have put us out of business. We are still here, and we are still publishing the mix of Marxist ideas, political analysis and culture that makes us unique.
Second, our readership is at historic levels. When Political Affairs was first published in the mid-1940s, a few thousand subscribers took the magazine each month. Over the past decades that number has gradually shrunk. This last month, however, almost 80,000 different people have visited our website.
Third, we have begun to build a online-based community of shared ideas and values that differ sharply from the values – if they could be called that – pushed by the capitalist class and the various institutions it dominates. Here are some things we're doing:
• PA editors' blog is at the peak of its readership, with dozens of readers participating in regular discussions.
• Building groups of participants and followers at Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and various social networking sites.
• Building relationships with other working-class organizations and their allies.
• Producing regular podcasts that some 40,000 people have listened to over the past two years.
• Partnering with People's Weekly World to build content for both websites and increase online circulation.
• Working closely with the Communist Party to develop discussion guides on key theoretical questions such as working-class strategy and tactics, the need for socialism and much more.
• Providing PDF formats of some PA articles for readers to download, print and share.
• Planning online-based forums to bring national audiences together to discuss the key questions of the movement and the moment.
We welcome you as an active member of this community.
We are excited that another major goal will be achieved this year: the launch of our new website. It will go live this summer and will have a modern look and feel, will bring our various component parts under one roof, and will be far easier to use for readers than our current website.
For this, we need to raise $25,000. This is a good price for an extensive and painstaking four-stage project: design and construction, transferal of existing data to the new site, training for PA staff and volunteers, and a period for working out any bugs that may arise in the future.
I want to take a moment to ask you right now to donate $100. You can write a check payable to Political Affairs (235 W. 23rd St. NY, NY 10011) or donate by credit card online here.
Thank you for your support at this critical time. Together we can build on this unique moment for change.
In struggle,
Joel Wendland
Editor
Political Affairs Magazine
http://www.politicalaffairs.net
http://paeditorsblog.blogspot.com
646-437-5341
I am writing to you in this unique moment of change, hope and opportunity to ask you share your resources to help build our movement. Thank you for your ongoing support at this critical time.
Next December will mark the first year of PA publishing completely online. So, let me take a moment to talk about what we've been doing and what we've accomplished.
First, and perhaps most important, is that Political Affairs survives. Difficult financial straits and rising publishing costs could have put us out of business. We are still here, and we are still publishing the mix of Marxist ideas, political analysis and culture that makes us unique.
Second, our readership is at historic levels. When Political Affairs was first published in the mid-1940s, a few thousand subscribers took the magazine each month. Over the past decades that number has gradually shrunk. This last month, however, almost 80,000 different people have visited our website.
Third, we have begun to build a online-based community of shared ideas and values that differ sharply from the values – if they could be called that – pushed by the capitalist class and the various institutions it dominates. Here are some things we're doing:
• PA editors' blog is at the peak of its readership, with dozens of readers participating in regular discussions.
• Building groups of participants and followers at Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and various social networking sites.
• Building relationships with other working-class organizations and their allies.
• Producing regular podcasts that some 40,000 people have listened to over the past two years.
• Partnering with People's Weekly World to build content for both websites and increase online circulation.
• Working closely with the Communist Party to develop discussion guides on key theoretical questions such as working-class strategy and tactics, the need for socialism and much more.
• Providing PDF formats of some PA articles for readers to download, print and share.
• Planning online-based forums to bring national audiences together to discuss the key questions of the movement and the moment.
We welcome you as an active member of this community.
We are excited that another major goal will be achieved this year: the launch of our new website. It will go live this summer and will have a modern look and feel, will bring our various component parts under one roof, and will be far easier to use for readers than our current website.
For this, we need to raise $25,000. This is a good price for an extensive and painstaking four-stage project: design and construction, transferal of existing data to the new site, training for PA staff and volunteers, and a period for working out any bugs that may arise in the future.
I want to take a moment to ask you right now to donate $100. You can write a check payable to Political Affairs (235 W. 23rd St. NY, NY 10011) or donate by credit card online here.
Thank you for your support at this critical time. Together we can build on this unique moment for change.
In struggle,
Joel Wendland
Editor
Political Affairs Magazine
http://www.politicalaffairs.net
http://paeditorsblog.blogspot.com
646-437-5341
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