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The Case for AlterNet
I. Who We Are
AlterNet is an award-winning news magazine and online community that creates original journalism and amplifies the best of dozens of other independent media sources. AlterNet's aim is to inspire citizen action and advocacy on the environment, human rights and civil liberties, social justice, media, and health care issues. Our editorial mix underscores a commitment to fairness, equity and global stewardship, and making connections across generational, ethnic and issue lines. AlterNet serves as a reliable filter, keeping hundreds of thousands of people well-informed and engaged, helping them cope with a culture of information overload and resist the constant commercial media onslaught. Our aim is to stimulate, motivate, and engage. Invest in AlterNet now.
II. The Challenge We Address
The right-wing media machine: Virtually everyone who has a stake in our political future agrees that when compared to the radical conservatives and the religious fundamentalists, the progressive sector lacks media capacity. The scope of conservative media is vast, including Fox News, Sinclair, major right-wing talk radio market penetration, many newspapers, a fast-growing religious broadcasting system, and sophisticated use of the Internet and new technologies. The ability of the right-wing media apparatus to dominate public discourse is at the expense of liberal and progressive values and represents a fundamental transformation in American politics. This is what we are fighting against.
The negative impact of right-wing media: Over the past two decades conservative media has had a huge impact, and the results are disconcerting. First, most conservative media uses an ideological propaganda model that results in a more ignorant audience. One recent study showed that 80% of Fox viewers got the facts all wrong about the war in Iraq. Not only did they believe that Saddam Hussein had a chemical arsenal, they thought U.S. troops had actually discovered it and they believed the 9/11 Commission had beyond a doubt linked Hussein with al-Qaeda. Only 23% of the NPR/PBS audience held these misconceptions, and the percentage was even lower among those who get their news from the Internet.
Building the progressive echo chamber: The top-down delivery model of right-wing rhetoric (e.g. "death tax," "culture of life") traces a path directly from the White House and conservative think tanks, to Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and a whole host of conservative talk shows. These messages are repeated and further reinforced on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers, creating a right wing echo chamber. AlterNet is working hard with many partners to build the progressive echo chamber that will fight back.
III. How AlterNet is helping to solve the problem
Using new technologies: Despite the radical right's media power, progressives now have an opportunity to compete. The ubiquity of broadband access; the reduced cost of making and broadcasting video on the web; the explosion of the blog revolution; and the millions of people who engage in making their thoughts and opinions public are all part of the new progressive media vision. AlterNet is at the forefront of leveraging new technologies to gain more media space for diverse beliefs and opinions in the marketplace of ideas. In addition to high-quality print content, AlterNet makes effective use of a wide range of web tools as part of our philosophy of adapting new technologies to compete with right-wing and corporate media. We provide multimedia content, engage our readers in two-way communications, gather reader-generated content, and respond to breaking news with our various blogs.
Reaching out to a growing progressive audience: We know there is a large and growing audience for progressive ideas and media. In just the past two years, we've seen some significant successes, such as Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 attracting huge audiences and earning more than $100 million, Air America Radio, which now broadcasts on more than 70 stations nationwide, the success of Robert Greenwald's documentaries, and the blog revolution that has created a whole new form of media that continues to beat the mainstream press to important stories.
Engaging our readers: AlterNet's aim is to inspire citizen discussion, advocacy, and activism. We relish challenging our large community to rethink stale assumptions, while helping to provide a vision, clear values and workable ideas and strategies, all essential ingredients for engagement and the social change necessary for a healthy democracy. More than 15,000 of our readers are registered to make comments on stories, sparking sharp debates. Tens of thousands of stories are emailed by visitors to friends and colleagues every day (our record on a single article was 5,781). On more than a dozen occasions, reader-generated content has been so prolific and thoughtful that we have compiled user comments and turned them into articles in order to condense the arguments and allow further discussion on the issue.
IV. AlterNet's achievements
Millions of visitors every month: Since its inception in 1998, AlterNet has grown steadily in response to increased public demand for independent news. One of the most trafficked political magazine sites on the web, AlterNet currently welcomes an average of over 1.7 million visitors each month and communicates daily with more than 90,000 individuals via our email newsletter. More than 80,000 readers per week visit AlterNet's blogs, which feature over a dozen writers responding to the news of the day.
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| AlterNet has won two Webby Awards for Best Web Magazine as well as numerous other awards. |
Web awards: As evidence of its substantial reach and success, AlterNet has won two Webby Awards for Best Web Magazine and several Independent Press Awards for online political coverage. AlterNet was also named one of NPR's five "Winners on the Internet."
The "go to" place: With Hurricane Katrina as with the attacks of 9/11, the invasion of Iraq, and the 2004 presidential campaign, AlterNet became the "go to" place for hundreds of thousands of citizens. During these periods, traffic increased an average of 40 percent, and most of those visitors decided to stick around. Our coverage enabled readers to stay abreast of fast-breaking events, to clearly grasp the response of the NGO and progressive community, and to learn how to most effectively make their own contributions.
V. AlterNet's Vision and Priorities
Creating compelling content: AlterNet's fundamental goal is to maximize the impact of our content creation and distribution system. Our editorial mix is prolific and diverse, meshing politics and culture. Our front page features important speeches as well as breaking reports and analysis of the compelling issues of the day: war, corporate crime, reproductive rights, the economy, the drug war, and political corruption. These topics often fall into AlterNet's overarching Special Coverage Areas: Rights and Liberties, Iraq, Environment and Health, Workplace, Media, Film, and WireTap, our highly respected site for youth.
Echoing progressive ideas and strategies: AlterNet is dedicated to serving as a forum in which key progressive ideas and strategies are echoed. The echo chamber provides consistent analyses of the language employed in framing ongoing political debates and campaigns.
Helping to distribute progressive political books: We have a special commitment to progressive political books as a delivery system for new ideas, as well as an important leverage point for media coverage. In 2005, AlterNet ran 81 articles about new books, 45 author Q&As and 36 excerpt/interview packages.
Invest in AlterNet
In the coming year, AlterNet will reach more than 10 million people who are seeking alternative perspectives and information. We believe that the most effective media reform comes from investment in independent media infrastructure and quality content. By investing in AlterNet, you are joining us in providing the information and ideas that will motivate these millions to participate in social change efforts. Please help us make progressive values a louder piece of the broad media discourse, and build a strong progressive media that will amplify these efforts in years to come. Invest now.
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