Note from Bruce
Welcome to our irregularly-produced general newsletter! We put one of these out when there’s enough news to make it worthwhile – and we have a bunch of news for you today. Read on to learn more, and feel free to ping me back if you have comments or questions. Thanks for being one of our email subscribers!
Bruce Maples, publisher
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First things first – Get your absentee ballot! Takes about one minute, and helps build the case for no-excuse absentee ballots in the future. Go to GoVoteKY.com right now and request your ballot!
Forward Kentucky Updates
Important stuff to know – read on to be more informed!
Ads, sponsors, and membership
Ads on the site – We are putting ads back on the site, with the goal of getting non-profits, activist groups, and political campaigns to use the ad slots for their own promotion. (See below about sponsoring.) We won’t use any pop-up or pop-under ads, but only ads embedded in the content.
Membership and ads – One of the benefits of being a paying member is seeing less and less ads. If you are a Basic member, you will see some ads (not all). A Supporting member sees less ads, and a Sustaining member sees no ads at all. (The newsletter slide-in will still be seen by all, as we can’t control it by membership level.)
If you aren’t sure about your membership level, or whether you are a member or only an email subscriber, you can check your profile at the bottom of this newsletter. And remember, if you aren’t logged in, the system can’t tell if you are a member or not. So, to get the benefits of your membership, be sure to log in.
Becoming an advertiser or a sponsor – The ad slots on the site are avaliable for purchase. We also are adding sponsorship slots to our podcasts, videocasts, and newsletters. These are like public radio spots: “This podcast is brought to you by the Jane Doe campaign, which reminds you that …”
If you want to learn more about advertising or sponsoring with us, go to ForwardKY.com/Sponsor. It’s all explained there. And by the way, it is REALLY inexpensive.
Writers and reporters needed
We are always looking for persons who want to be contributors. However, right now we have two needs that we want to share.
Reporters for Northern Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky, and possibly Frankfort and Lexington – With our current list of contributors, we are able to cover many of the news-worthy events in Louisville and the western part of the state. We have some coverage in Frankfort (we could always use more). We don’t have any regular coverage in the northern or eastern parts of the state, and could use some in Lexington as well.
Reporting is about getting the facts and putting them into an article in a way that makes sense to the reader. You can either do the standard inverted-pyramid style of a regular news article, or the story-telling style of a feature.
Note that this involves talking to sources to get information, doing interviews, and possibly attending meetings. For example, attending a debate, and then talking with one or more of the candidates afterward. Or, writing up a story about an ongoing conflict in your community.
Writers of diverse backgrounds – If you look at our contributors page, you will see that we are not very diverse in terms of race, and also not as much as we would like in terms of gender or sexual orientation. We would like to change that.
So, if you are a writer that is a person of color, a woman, of another ethnic background, or LGBTQ, and you want to write about the issues we cover, please contact us. We can use more diversity in both our reporting (above) and our commentary work, and would like to talk with you.
Interested? – Drop a note to Bruce@ForwardKY.com and let him know.
Cleaning the email lists
The percentage of people who open our emails is higher than the industry average. Even so, there are some people who signed up at some point, and now don’t open any of our emails. (OR, they view an email in their preview pane instead of opening them, which keeps Mailchimp from knowing they looked at it.)
This is a problem, because sending emails to people that never get opened can get you marked as a spammer, and then NONE of your emails get through.
So, over the next week, we are going to send a series of emails asking people if they still want to subscribe. If they respond Yes, no problem. But, if they never respond, they will be unsubscribed.
You’re reading this, so you probably won’t be on that list. But, if you are one of those people who reads emails via preview, you could be. So watch for a “Do you still want to get our emails?” message, and respond.
Take advantage of our newsletters
A reminder that we have FOUR special-purpose newsletters, and some of you aren’t taking advantage of them.
- The Forward Five – a quick-read list of “five things to know today” delivered M-F
- Action Alerts – email alerts sent when there is an urgent action you need to take
- MOKP Newsletter – the weekly newsletter that accompanies My Old Kentucky Podcast
- Weekly Wrap – a weekly summary of all ForwardKY content posted that week
I especially want to highlight the MOKP Newsletter. It is done by Robert Kahne and Jazmin Smith, and it is one of the best political newsletters in the state. It doesn’t matter whether you listen to the podcast or not – the newsletter stands on its own, and is a great way to learn more about the important stories of the day.
To change your subscriptions, just follow the link at the bottom for “update your profile” and check the ones you want.
