We’ve made it another year in business and in many ways this past year has been our most challenging one. We’ve had a horrific slowing down of traffic as a result of the tsunami of Americans tuning out from politics that has caused companies like CBS and MSNBC to rebrand themselves, in a panic to get viewers to tune back in.
People will tune back in when they’re ready. The most basic law of political physics and the only one that you can depend upon, even in this interminable era of Trump, is that the pendulum always swings back. No matter how far out things get, the pendulum will always swing back at some point.
We’re beginning to see that very thing happen right now. Trump’s SOTU speech was the biggest flop ever and the worst of the ones he has given to date. His polls are tanking and he’s alienating portions of the electorate that the GOP needs to stay in power. Last but most emphatically not least, the Senate is looking to be in play this fall. If Trump loses both chambers of Congress, he is beyond screwed.
And it could happen. The pendulum swings with a vengeance sometimes.
Which takes us back to PolitiZoom and our journey. Nobody achieves any worthwhile goal alone. It takes a village. It takes concerted effort. PolitiZoom launched eight years ago this week. We got very little traffic here, initially, because such is the way of the internet. This isn’t like Field Of Dreams, where if you build it, they will come. The internet is immense and we were a fly speck in cyberspace.
But we persisted. We kept posting. And we worked our way up to a medium traffic site with over two million pageviews at our apex. We’re attempting to work our way back to that benchmark, but it won’t happen overnight.
If you can help financially in any way, it would be appreciated. We’re a small group of people and we’re committed to what we do. We have no corporate benefactors or deep pockets supporting us. We only have you and our best efforts.
So far that has been enough. We’ve been fighting this battle for eight long years and we will continue to show up and fight because the forces of darkness aren’t lessening. We need your help. Every blog on the internet is asking for your money but none of them are as small and totally grass roots as we are. We’re a handful of avid Democrats in our sixties and seventies, that do this work because we believe in it, not because we are making bank. All we want to do is keep on keeping on.
Thank you for being here and for reading this and our other pieces. And many thanks to those of you who do subscribe and donate and keep us in business. You are the wind beneath our wings.
Happy Birthday!
Keep on keeping on!
We need help to do that. I hate to stand here with hat in hand and beg, but it has been a brutal year for traffic and the overhead expenses are still there. Tragic but true. I don’t ask, I don’t get.
I lurked on another, larger and well known site for years before finally signing up to post comments and then “diaries” (as they pretentiously insisted on calling them) but it lost its allure. Community writers who were widely read, even beloved getting bojo’d without explanation. Changes that allowed stories that didn’t catch on with lots of views right away getting pushed off the front page while a half dozen or more “breaking” (literally the first word so often) from different contributors saying essentially the same thing using essentially the some quotes from some article often resulted in good stories being pushed from view.
Then I wrote something that caught Ursula’s attention and we struck up a friendship and she told me about a site called Daily Sound & Fury which included what became Politizoom. I was hooked because the writers here were awesome. Many, if not all came from that other place. With fewer stories, which were almost always worth a couple (sometimes more) to read the pace here was a lot more enjoyable than that other site. Early on I didn’t write much. There was a tab those who weren’t feature writers could use to post articles. I sometimes used it, and Ursula drove herself nuts at time tried to coach me away from a style that earned me a reputation (at least in part deserved but the in-part is a long story) of being too long winded.
What I could do was help in other ways behind the scenes and I was happy and proud to do so. In time, I became a feature writer myself. Never on the level of others here but we lost some great contributors over time and I began to write more and more. And one of the best things about being here is that what I wrote didn’t disappear from view in a few hours as it usually did at the old place. People who were busy and couldn’t read everything could come back later and view one or two more articles when they had time, including the next day.
To put it bluntly I liked being a fish in a smaller pond. I’ve never been the big fish here. But both as a writer and in behind the scenes work and projects it’s been a privilege to be part of what we have here. Having been forced into early retirement on disability (ironic that in a job where I managed care of people with disabilities I lost my job when I became that way myself!) being part of PZ gave me a sense of purpose for which I’ll be forever grateful.
Doing what I could to help Ursula along the way went from being a privilege to a labor of love. Most of the writers here during our history have felt that way. It’s a bummer that so many tuned out as the 2024 campaign unfolded, probably fearing (in horror) that what happened would happen. It got worse after the orange hued human shaped rectrum returned to the Oval Office. But like others here I’m not about to give in.
I’ll never see my hometown again because except for a handful of people I’m not welcome there. The guy who’s family donated the land on which it sits, was a friend of Grant’s and served well as a General in the Civil War was once it’s favorite son. Now a punk-ass piece of shit, the little brother of a classmate who used to be a friend despite our different political views is a Congress Critter and how he’s more respected than John A Logan is appalling. So I will never go home because I wouldn’t want to put the few people who’d be glad to see me in the uncomfortable position of being seen with me.
I can sit and be bitter about that, and that the country I served and my father almost died serving in WWII isn’t worthy of all the service that got us this far. And to be honest sometimes I am. But mostly I work to try and turn it back into being a country we can be proud of despite our flaws and missteps. A country that recognizes we have work to do to become the “more perfect union” as it says in the Preamble of our Constitution. I make phone calls and help organize during campaigns. Once upon a time when I was mobile I’d knock on doors. I can’t to that anymore but all it costs me is time to call people on a list to get them engaged to register and vote.
I can advocate and I do. I seldom get out of my apartment anymore but when I do I talk to people I encounter.
And I can help here by staying active on PZ, both writing and in other ways. I often tell people to contact their elected representatives as anyone who reads me knows. Why? Because it works! But like other writers here I try to not only comment on matters dominating the news but call attention to important things that like on that other site I came from quickly slip from view. However small things matter because like the ripples of hope in the famous quote by the REAL Bobby Kennedy they can build up into a wave,
If you’re a regular think about how often you see something here that one of us found, which days later suddenly gets talked about on news outlets. That’s why it’s worth your time to come here and get others to do so. Being the first among people you know to talk about an issue that turns into a ‘thing; gives you credibility and makes you someone others pay attention to. Which in turn helps you convince them to get involved. Show up to meetings and protests. Call their Congress Critters as well as state and local ones. And most importantly register to vote and then vote. Also help others do so and we all need to be even more vigilant this year to ensure when it’s time to vote we’ll be able to do so despite GOP efforts to suppress the vote.
Ursula built this site from almost nothing into something that’s lasted eight years. Many a site has gone dark during that time but somehow we’re still here. It’s because of readers who come here. Readers bring ad revenue. And if I had the gifts of Shakespeare I couldn’t begin to express my thanks to those who have when they could kicked in donations to help keep us going.
So thank you all for supporting us by continuing to come to PZ. One final thought. If sometimes you think “I could write a better take on that” while reading an article give it a try and email it to the link on the main page. If Ursula doesn’t have time she’ll ask me or someone else to take a look. I happen to believe we have several regular commenters that would find articles they write well received. Don’t see yourselves short. Yes, it stings to get rejected and most people don’t want to take the risk. I say what’s the worst that can happen? So you’re bummed out for a day or two. Then again, you might find people want to hear what you have to say. Think about it.
Denis
Here we go with Year Nine. I wonder how long we’ll be writing about the war with Iran? :((