Leveraging the Blog Toward Greater Unity: News, Organizational Information and More Writers!

This blog  can get a few hundred visits a day, especially on days when there are one or two new articles.  We offer information about our own activities as well as activities of our partner organizations and struggles around the state and nation.  Sometimes we serve a news function, sometimes offer analysis and  sometimes action proposals.  How much of a role the site plays in motivating actual participation iis hard to measure.  Suffice it to say that this blog site is on the whole a positive aspect of our work and is helping to contribute to greater awareness of our presence in the struggle for decarceration and related focuses of the struggle.

I would like to set some goals for the blog site that could propel it to be more successful and to play a greater role in promoting Decarceration in NJ and beyond as well as promoting greater unity among all the forces working toward system challenging social change in NJ and beyond.  If you are interested in helping in any of these tasks and goals, please write to Decarc@DecarcerateNJ.org .

1.       If we had more authors that write regularly we can give wider coverage to the events and issues of NJ.  Perhaps if somewhere between 2 to 10 writers were committed to writing something at least once per week or every other week, that would give us more prominent and varied content.  So if you want to write – even just once – send you email address to Decarc@DecarcerateNJ.org .  Give contact information and an idea as to what you are interested in writing about.

2.       If we can begin to play more of a news reporting function – not to rival mainstream media but to cover the struggle in progress particularly in NJ.  If you are at an event – make a point to write an article.  Even assembling tweets, or notes, etc. – does not have to be a masterpiece but as long as it conveys the issue, the purpose and as best as possible the character of the event.  You can put something up and then continue to edit it as the event unfolds and as more information comes in – even if you are not there – you can grab the quotes coming in over networks and stream them together into a semi-cohesive report.  Always include contact information for the organizers.

3.       Covering organizations – we can set up a weekly article for key organizations – for example – like Peoples Organization for Progress and then as communique’s come in – just merge them into the article.  Ideally representatives of each respective group would maintain their group’s information.  I can help out but it would be good if it was driven by volunteers that maintained the pages.

4.       2 articles per day: Currently we have anywhere from 100 – 1000 visits per day.  I believe if we can shoot for 2 articles a day we can easily move toward 500 visits a day – especially if the writers assist in tweeting, sharing etc. the articles.

5.       One time writers – Even if you want to write once about an idea, a topic, an initiative you are involved in or an opinion you want to share .  . . get in touch, provide your e-mail address and I will send you an author invite.

If you have ideas or want to help out with any of these suggestions, please contact Decarc@DecarcerateNJ.org .