We hope that by now you have had a chance to check out The NewStandard online. We have had a very exciting first month of operation. Since our launch in early January, The NewStandard has published more than 100 original news articles, cartoons and commentaries. We believe each item reached a standard of excellence rarely seen in the media, and we are well on our way to building a source that regularly provides news relevant to the public, rather than biased toward corporations and the government.
We are so grateful to those of you who donated funds to keep The NewStandard running and help it become a stable, viable news source. Your generosity made it possible for us to pay our January production costs, the majority of which went to compensating our amazing group of journalists for their hard work.
However, we have not yet raised enough money to move us to the next level - becoming subscriber-sustained and producing substantially more content than we published last month. But our fundraising efforts have just begun and you have given us a great start.
So we are regrouping to focus on fundraising in order to come back at full strength as soon as possible. For at least the next month (we expect) we will virtually stop publishing content. During this period we will be building time-saving and site-enhancing infrastructure while raising the $80,000 necessary for The NewStandard to have the boost it needs to begin publishing again.
We know raising that amount of money sounds quite ambitious, but so is the scope of our project. We are confident in the appeal of a viable challenge to the corporate news.
In order to raise enough money we are going to need help from people like you who want to see a viable alternative to corporate news. We believe our work over the last month has proven how dedicated we are to The NewStandard and how close we are to making it a sustainable reality. We hope that you all will join us in this project and help us bring it to fruition. With help, we can reach our funding goals and be back up and running soon.
Here's how you can help:
(1) Spread the Word
One of the best ways you can support The NewStandard is by spreading the word about our project and about our fundraising campaign. We expect our ability to raise enough money will be dependent on reaching enough people with our appeal. So if you know people who consistently complain about the corporate media, ask them to support The NewStandard as a real alternative. Follow this link and you will find fundraising letters and talking points that may help you appeal for donations.
Though our funding goal of $80,000 may seem high, we are confident that we'll be able to raise at least that much if our readers step up. We know there are thousands of people who are disillusioned with the corporate media and will be willing to help us build a real antidote. We need you to help us reach them. We have chosen not to fund The NewStandard with advertising, investors, or grants precisely because we want The NewStandard to be grassroots-funded, accountable only to its subscribing readership.
(2) Put Us In Touch With Potential Donors
If you know wealthy progressives who may be interested in donating to PeoplesNetWorks, please put us in touch with them. While we know the bulk of the donations we receive will be in the $5 - $200 range, we are looking for several people to donate at the level of $500 - $1000 and a few to donate at levels above $5000.
We will happily contact anyone you can put us in touch with by phone, postal mail or email. In addition, our business plan entitled “Our Plan for Success in Online Media” is available upon request. We need you to send us whatever information you can (name, email address, postal address and telephone number) to:
(3) Donate or Pledge
If you have not donated already or if you can afford to give more, we ask that you donate or pledge to donate to The NewStandard. We realize that many of you may be holding back from donating large amounts or from donating at all because you don't want to risk giving your money to a project before it fully starts up. That's why we have added a pledge option to our online donation form. When you check the checkbox next to “pledge” it means that we will not charge your credit card until we have enough donations or pledges to move forward with The NewStandard. That will help us tremendously -- knowing the money is coming is for us as good as having it in the bank.