FrankRep
01-09-2010, 12:03 PM
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2009 JBS.org Year in Review (http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5815-2009-jbsorg-year-in-review)
Art Thompson, JBS CEO
05 January 2010
There’s good news and there’s bad news as we review our online progress during 2009. But the good news borders on “great,” so why not start there?
The great news is that it’s been a record setting year for The John Birch Society online. Traffic to this website and to our partner site, TheNewAmerican.com (http://www.thenewamerican.com/), is up substantially. On JBS.org (http://www.jbs.org/) we’ve seen a 60 percent increase in traffic over the last 12 months. At TheNewAmerican.com (http://www.thenewamerican.com/), traffic is up by a stunning 105 percent! In fact, so much has happened to make these numbers possible that it is hard to believe that it all took place in just twelve months.
The progress stems from what started out as a concerted effort to reach a new market among the younger generation that relies on online sources for news and analysis. In order to do this, we developed an incredible array of new features for the main site for The John Birch Society. After a December 2008 “beta” period, in January we launched a new version of JBS.org featuring a full complement of social networking features. These included a full fledged community with most of the functions of Facebook.
For those that use Facebook, you know that the service provides many ways to keep in touch with relatives and friends, to share photos and videos, and to talk about what is important to you. Facebook’s features include a “news feed,” a kind of microblog that allows you to update all your friends about what you are doing, and vice-versa. It also includes, as mentioned, photo sharing, video sharing, groups, and a friend invitation system. Features like these make a website more interactive, a necessity for first attracting and then getting young people involved.
Keep in mind that the development of Facebook required millions of dollars. But by using scarce resources very carefully, and making good strategic decisions, The John Birch Society was able to launch a service that compares favorably to Facebook on a shoestring budget. In fact, to say the budget was of shoestring size is quite dramatically overemphasizing the true size of the budget.
Yet what we have in place is very substantial. Almost feature for feature, JBS.org matches the functionality of Facebook. The major difference, of course, is found in the fact that the JBS community is dedicated to the U.S. Constitution and the preservation of freedom. Imagine that, a system as nearly as robust in features as Facebook, and dedicated to freedom, and its all available on JBS.org.
We’ve seen a huge increase in content. JBS.org now features over 3,500 published articles — all of which remain available on the site. And we are adding new articles each day. We’re also adding new writers all the time as well. In fact, in December we began feature columns by noted scholar and columnist Thomas Sowell.
The New American (http://www.thenewamerican.com/), our other major web publishing effort, also had a landmark year in 2009. In the fall of 2008, we relaunched the site as a major effort to establish a news portal website that could compete with the likes of Time or Newsweek, but that was dedicated to providing the news from a Constitutionalist standpoint. We think it is a unique effort, and one that is vital to the preservation of liberty.
The great news out of TheNewAmerican.com (http://www.thenewamerican.com/) is that this ambitious experiment is working. More than 50 articles are published each week now on that site, and traffic is responding accordingly. Advertising revenues on the site are up, and we are attracting new talent all the time. In December, noted columnist Walter Williams joined our growing lineup of columnists that already features great writers like Becky Akers (http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/opinion/becky-akers) and Dr. Samuel L. Blumenfeld (http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/opinion/sam-blumenfeld), to name just two.
And, The New American is committed to providing coverage and reporting from important events that shape our world, no matter where they occur. For instance, long-time Senior Editor William F. Jasper and journalist Alex Newman were in Copenhagen, Denmark where they were accredited journalists attending the 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) exclusively for TheNewAmerican.com and JBS.org. Meanwhile, Rev. James Heiser stayed stateside for JBS.org and contributed a steady stream of in-depth analysis of climate change issues throughout the run-up to the conference and during the conference itself.
As you can see, there is much to be excited about.
But then there is the bad news. Simply put, it is unclear how long we can continue to operate at this level. Running our sites is expensive. Sending journalists abroad to key events is expensive. Expanding our capabilities, as we hope to do, is expensive. But it is absolutely essential as no one else reporting from a constitutional viewpoint is doing this. In other words, if we can’t keep doing it, no one else will.
On the heels of the many encouraging successes of 2009, 2010 could be a break out year for The John Birch Society. We have big plans, and we intend to carry them out. But we need your help and support.
For those of you who can afford it, if you find value in what we are doing and you want to be a part of it as a supporter, please keep us in mind as you plan your charitable giving for the coming year. Your financial support keeps us “on the air” (http://www.jbs.org/support-us) at a time in our nation when the Constitutionalist educational efforts of The John Birch Society are needed most.
If, in this disrupted and downed economy you find yourself unable to contribute monetarily, there is still so much you can do. You could, for instance, join the JBS community (http://www.jbs.org/jbs-community) (if you haven’t already) and invite all your friends to do the same. You could register an account at Twitter.com and then use the “Tweet Me” buttons on articles at both JBS.org and TheNewAmerican.com to spread the word about stories published on our sites. You could begin watching the news very carefully each day, and then report on what you learn with posts on our forum (http://www.jbs.org/forum), and you can use our forum, and our community, to share your understanding of the Constitution and the battle to preserve it.
With your help, we can make 2010 an even better year than 2009.
To make a donation by phone, please call 1-800-JBS-USA1. On the web, visit www.jbs.org/support-us
SOURCE:
http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5815-2009-jbsorg-year-in-review
2009 JBS.org Year in Review (http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5815-2009-jbsorg-year-in-review)
Art Thompson, JBS CEO
05 January 2010
There’s good news and there’s bad news as we review our online progress during 2009. But the good news borders on “great,” so why not start there?
The great news is that it’s been a record setting year for The John Birch Society online. Traffic to this website and to our partner site, TheNewAmerican.com (http://www.thenewamerican.com/), is up substantially. On JBS.org (http://www.jbs.org/) we’ve seen a 60 percent increase in traffic over the last 12 months. At TheNewAmerican.com (http://www.thenewamerican.com/), traffic is up by a stunning 105 percent! In fact, so much has happened to make these numbers possible that it is hard to believe that it all took place in just twelve months.
The progress stems from what started out as a concerted effort to reach a new market among the younger generation that relies on online sources for news and analysis. In order to do this, we developed an incredible array of new features for the main site for The John Birch Society. After a December 2008 “beta” period, in January we launched a new version of JBS.org featuring a full complement of social networking features. These included a full fledged community with most of the functions of Facebook.
For those that use Facebook, you know that the service provides many ways to keep in touch with relatives and friends, to share photos and videos, and to talk about what is important to you. Facebook’s features include a “news feed,” a kind of microblog that allows you to update all your friends about what you are doing, and vice-versa. It also includes, as mentioned, photo sharing, video sharing, groups, and a friend invitation system. Features like these make a website more interactive, a necessity for first attracting and then getting young people involved.
Keep in mind that the development of Facebook required millions of dollars. But by using scarce resources very carefully, and making good strategic decisions, The John Birch Society was able to launch a service that compares favorably to Facebook on a shoestring budget. In fact, to say the budget was of shoestring size is quite dramatically overemphasizing the true size of the budget.
Yet what we have in place is very substantial. Almost feature for feature, JBS.org matches the functionality of Facebook. The major difference, of course, is found in the fact that the JBS community is dedicated to the U.S. Constitution and the preservation of freedom. Imagine that, a system as nearly as robust in features as Facebook, and dedicated to freedom, and its all available on JBS.org.
We’ve seen a huge increase in content. JBS.org now features over 3,500 published articles — all of which remain available on the site. And we are adding new articles each day. We’re also adding new writers all the time as well. In fact, in December we began feature columns by noted scholar and columnist Thomas Sowell.
The New American (http://www.thenewamerican.com/), our other major web publishing effort, also had a landmark year in 2009. In the fall of 2008, we relaunched the site as a major effort to establish a news portal website that could compete with the likes of Time or Newsweek, but that was dedicated to providing the news from a Constitutionalist standpoint. We think it is a unique effort, and one that is vital to the preservation of liberty.
The great news out of TheNewAmerican.com (http://www.thenewamerican.com/) is that this ambitious experiment is working. More than 50 articles are published each week now on that site, and traffic is responding accordingly. Advertising revenues on the site are up, and we are attracting new talent all the time. In December, noted columnist Walter Williams joined our growing lineup of columnists that already features great writers like Becky Akers (http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/opinion/becky-akers) and Dr. Samuel L. Blumenfeld (http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/opinion/sam-blumenfeld), to name just two.
And, The New American is committed to providing coverage and reporting from important events that shape our world, no matter where they occur. For instance, long-time Senior Editor William F. Jasper and journalist Alex Newman were in Copenhagen, Denmark where they were accredited journalists attending the 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) exclusively for TheNewAmerican.com and JBS.org. Meanwhile, Rev. James Heiser stayed stateside for JBS.org and contributed a steady stream of in-depth analysis of climate change issues throughout the run-up to the conference and during the conference itself.
As you can see, there is much to be excited about.
But then there is the bad news. Simply put, it is unclear how long we can continue to operate at this level. Running our sites is expensive. Sending journalists abroad to key events is expensive. Expanding our capabilities, as we hope to do, is expensive. But it is absolutely essential as no one else reporting from a constitutional viewpoint is doing this. In other words, if we can’t keep doing it, no one else will.
On the heels of the many encouraging successes of 2009, 2010 could be a break out year for The John Birch Society. We have big plans, and we intend to carry them out. But we need your help and support.
For those of you who can afford it, if you find value in what we are doing and you want to be a part of it as a supporter, please keep us in mind as you plan your charitable giving for the coming year. Your financial support keeps us “on the air” (http://www.jbs.org/support-us) at a time in our nation when the Constitutionalist educational efforts of The John Birch Society are needed most.
If, in this disrupted and downed economy you find yourself unable to contribute monetarily, there is still so much you can do. You could, for instance, join the JBS community (http://www.jbs.org/jbs-community) (if you haven’t already) and invite all your friends to do the same. You could register an account at Twitter.com and then use the “Tweet Me” buttons on articles at both JBS.org and TheNewAmerican.com to spread the word about stories published on our sites. You could begin watching the news very carefully each day, and then report on what you learn with posts on our forum (http://www.jbs.org/forum), and you can use our forum, and our community, to share your understanding of the Constitution and the battle to preserve it.
With your help, we can make 2010 an even better year than 2009.
To make a donation by phone, please call 1-800-JBS-USA1. On the web, visit www.jbs.org/support-us
SOURCE:
http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5815-2009-jbsorg-year-in-review