Regular readers know that almost never do we interrupt you with site-specific news, information, or requests, but we’re going to do just that very quickly right now.
LGBT blogger Pam Spaulding last night on Twitter told an avid reader and supporter — whom I know and am very grateful to for her advocacy — “Blogging doesn’t pay the bills and I cannot clone myself.” To be frank, it really struck a chord, and I thought I’d use it as a jumping off point to share a few thoughts.
As you probably assume, the only income The New Civil Rights Movement receives is from advertising, and quite frankly, it’s so small it doesn’t even pay the rent. Not even half the rent.
I mention this only because for us to continue to deliver high-quality news and opinion, that you often will find either here first or no where else, we need advertisers to continue to want to support us with their business.
(By the way, if you’re new here, or just want to know a little more about the site, please visit our media page.)
And despite the small amount of space we have available for ads, we want to stay true to our mission: to be of service to our community.
Recently, we’ve run several ads free of charge, because we believe in the causes the ads represent. And it’s not the first time we’ve done that.
Gay Marriage USA is a Facebook page that was created by the same person who created Gay Marriage For New York, which attracted almost 150,000 fans in a fairly short period of time. They’re doing a great job advocating for the same thing we are — marriage equality — and I hope you’ll “like” both pages. (This ad expired Tuesday but the pages are very much active on Facebook. Please visit them!)
Keep Education FAIR is an ad that’s running free of charge too because I’m personally very concerned about the future of SB 48, California’s FAIR Education Act. You should be too. I reached out to Equality California, GLSEN, and the GSA Network and asked how I could help. Hopefully we’ll be doing more to help ensure SB 48 stays the law in California. I hope you will be too.
And Lemon Sky is a great and important off-Broadway show here in NYC that just started previews last night. Lanford Wilson, a gay playwright who died earlier this year, wrote the show, and we wanted to support the production. And, on a personal note, my fiancé is the assistant director, and so we wanted to support the show even more because of that, but we would have run the ad regardless.
The other ads on the site are important too, like “The Missing link,” and the ad that reads, “Shocking Meat Video,” both of which have very generously helped support us the past few months.
Another word about ads. We don’t blindly accept ads. There are plenty of ads we’ve rejected, because we won’t support their mission, or because we felt they were inappropriate and would degrade the quality of the site overall.
Some ads, mostly those via Google, may occasionally upset you. Once in a while we get emails asking why we’re running ads for, say, Michele Bachmann. It’s not by choice — Google serves ads based upon content and based upon your browsing habits. If you see an ad that upsets you, please email us and let us know the site the ad goes to so we can ask it be blocked.
Lastly, as I said, the only income we receive is via ads. Not totally accurate.
If we write a piece that mentions a book, often we’ll link to the book at Amazon, and on the rare chance you buy the book through that link, we make a tiny amount of money. To date, that amount has been $11.79.
Also, on the bottom right hand side of the page, you’ll notice a yellow “donate” button. A few generous souls over the past few years have used it to show their gratitude for our work. While we don’t usually mention it, of course, we’d be most grateful if you found yourself wanting to use it.
In fact, at some point soon we may be forced to actively campaign for donations, perhaps much like PBS does now. We’ll see. Delivering high-quality content isn’t free, nor is it easy.
You can help keep us running and help us get our message of equality out. Donations are one way. Bringing more visitors is another.
If you like an article here, please, share it with your friends, family, and co-workers. Tweet it, Facebook it, Google+ it, Reddit it, Fark it, Digg it. The more people who visit, the more we can focus on delivering high-quality news, information, and opinion to you.
I wanted you, our loyal readers, to know a little bit more about what we’re doing here and why.
Questions? Thoughts? Answers?
Drop a comment below, or email me directly: davidbadash@gmail.com
Thank you for your loyalty.
David