Atlanta Progressive News

(APN) ATLANTA — Dear APN Readers, We made it!  Another year of bringing Metro Atlanta a progressive, independent alternative to the corporate news media.

I want to start out by thanking you, our readers!  We exist to serve and empower you to make a meaningful difference in the democratic process.  The primary purpose of Atlanta Progressive News has always been to enhance our democracy.  Knowledge is power, and so we exist to empower our readers with knowledge about local government, public policy, activism, and elections.

I made the decision to start a local news service nine years ago, in 2005.  [As many of you know, that service was supposed to be the New Orleans Street News, but I moved to Atlanta following Hurricane Katrina.]  I felt that the Internet provided an immense potential to serve the goal of boosting democratic participation, and that if I were to focus my energies on one Metro Area, it would be a reasonable scope of coverage through which to serve our mission.

The response to APN has been amazing.  For those of you who send us donations to support our work, I thank you!  We have received many, many small donations over the years that, together with some larger ones, make our work possible!

DONATE HERE: http://bit.ly/1vCIK63

It’s been a tremendous and transformative year for APN, especially because we had brought our blog section–for shorter-form, quick updates–back into regular publication, thus dramatically increasing the breadth and quantity of our coverage.  We identified certain coverage priorities where we sought to increase our coverage, including labor, DeKalb County, and the environment, where we were able to provide additional blog posts in addition to full-length news articles.

As you may have noticed, I’ve transitioned more into an editor role, where I’ve been writing fewer stories.  Your donations have helped us to bring on new freelance writers, like Amanda Hill-Attkisson, Anna Simonton, and Barbara Payne.  Because I still edit every story, there is substantive editorial consistency across news articles, where they refer back to one another; there is stylistic consistency; and, yes, there is consistency in terms of the way of viewing the world, one that acknowledges the impossibility of objectivity, and that provides progressivity in a transparent manner.

We are a bit behind in our fundraising goals for 2014.  Our goal is $5,000, and we’ve only raised $2,750, with $2,250 left to go.  In addition, we’ve had some emergency expenses come up related to our website re-design.  And with that, let me give you an update on the website.

DONATE HERE: http://bit.ly/1vCIK63

WEBSITE UPDATE

A few weeks ago, we learned that our website was taken offline due to the content management software that we were using, Interspire.  The company that made the software, Interspire, had stopped support and updates to their product in 2012, only a year after we launched our most recent version of our website, “APN 3.0,” in 2011.

So… we’ve taken a number of steps to secure our archives of over 2,200 articles, blogs, op-eds, and videos, dating back to 2005.  We have the archives stored with multiple back-ups, including one in a safety deposit box at a bank!  Meanwhile, we have a contractor who is manually moving all the articles into WordPress, where our new website is being designed; she started about a week ago and is about a quarter of the way done!

To review, our archives are safe, our history is safe.  We are planning a wonderous and exciting new website for you, with a more centralized layout, with less scrolling; access to articles by locational and topical categories; and more easier social media sharing.  We are hoping to do a soft launch once the archives are moved over, with more features to be added as we go along.

In the meantime, we have been publishing on an interim site, available at www.atlantaprogressivenews.com, using the basic web publisher, Image Cafe, which is offered by our hosting company.

We would love to hear your thoughts and ideas about the new website and tools that you might be looking for!  Email us at atlantaprogressivenews@gmail.com

Also, we have quite a bit of web design work ahead of us that will require more contractors, and for that, we are counting on reader donations in a time-sensitive manner!  So, if you could help us reach our goal for the year, we would be ever so grateful.

YEAR TEN

Bringing you the reality of your municipality, this is

Matthew Charles Cardinale