[Van-Parecon] The NewStandard

[vancouverparecon at resist.ca]

Dear list subscribers,

For this mail out we would like to bring your attention to ‘The
NewStandard’(TNS), a progressive web based media outlet in Syracuse, New
York. This is a one time only fundraising pitch for an organization that
The Vancouver Parecon Collective believe deserves to meet their
fundraising goals. We have two reasons for this belief. First, the folks
at TNS are providing an alternative to mainstream corporate media by
providing original news articles, cartoons and commentaries, all with
progressive news values and high production quality. On this front, The
Vancouver Parecon Collective is not the only one with this belief. Author
and renowned social critic Noam Chomsky has this to say, “The NewStandard
is an exciting initiative by people with great experience and impressive
achievements. It offers real promise of meeting needs that are widely and
rightly felt: for regular news about important issues, truly independent,
not constrained by concentrated power.”

Recent TNS developments include wrapping a tour with Dahr Jamail, TNS
Baghdad correspondent, who returned back to Iraq on April 1st. Jamail’s
work is very important and supporting The NewStandard will be, in affect,
supporting his on-the-ground investigations of US military forces,
corporations and NGOs while in Iraq. You can view his April 5 report here:
http://blog.zmag.org/iraqdispatches/archives/000089.html

In addition, TNS editor Simone Baribeau put together the first of what
they hope will be a weekly (and eventually daily) feature called
"Corporate Digest," The NewStandard's antidote to your daily newspaper's
"Business" section. Instead of gearing their corporate news toward
investors, TNS operate from the perspective of workers and consumers to
see what combination of the environment, labor or consumers is being
affected. Veiw here:
http://newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_item&itemid=167

Our second reason we think they deserve to reach their goals, and the main
reason we are making this announcement to you, is that The NewStandard is
an institution that operates on the model of Participatory Economics. They
have instituted the defining features and values of equity,
self-mangement, solidarity and diversity. They pay for effort and
sacrifice, operate on ‘balanced job complexes’ sharing both empowering and
dis-empowering tasks, members have decision making input in proportion to
the degree affected, and they value a diversity of perspectives and
participants generating an outcome that appeals to a broad audience. As a
local collective interested in promoting and implementing parecon in
Vancouver/Canada, we see a direct correlation between ensuring their
financial stability and practical steps towards a participatory economy.

Please check out their web site and make a donation or pledge:
http://newstandardnews.net

Thanks,
Chris Spannos
The Vancouver Parecon Collective
http://vanparecon.resist.ca


Below is further information about their fundraising efforts:

We hope that by now you have had a chance to check out The NewStandard
online.  Since our launch in early January, The NewStandard has published
more than 100 original news articles, cartoons and commentaries. We
believe each item reached a standard of excellence rarely seen in the
media, and we are well on our way to building a source that regularly
provides news relevant to the public, rather than biased toward
corporations and the government.

We are so grateful to those of you who donated funds to keep The
NewStandard running and help it become a stable, viable news source. Your
generosity made it possible for us to pay our January production costs,
the majority of which went to compensating our amazing group of
journalists for their hard work.

However, we have not yet raised enough money to move us to the next level
- becoming subscriber-sustained and producing substantially more content
than we published last month. But our fundraising efforts have just begun
and you have given us a great start.

So we are regrouping to focus on fundraising in order to come back at full
strength as soon as possible. For at least the next month (we expect) we
will virtually stop publishing content. During this period we will be
building time-saving and site-enhancing infrastructure while raising the
$80,000 necessary for The NewStandard to have the boost it needs to begin
publishing again.

We know raising that amount of money sounds quite ambitious, but so is the
scope of our project. We are confident in the appeal of a viable challenge
to the corporate news.

In order to raise enough money we are going to need help from people like
you who want to see a viable alternative to corporate news. We believe our
work over the last month has proven how dedicated we are to The
NewStandard and how close we are to making it a sustainable reality. We
hope that you all will join us in this project and help us bring it to
fruition. With help, we can reach our funding goals and be back up and
running soon.

Here's how you can help:

(1) Spread the Word
One of the best ways you can support The NewStandard is by spreading the
word about our project and about our fundraising campaign. We expect our
ability to raise enough money will be dependent on reaching enough people
with our appeal. So if you know people who consistently complain about the
corporate media, ask them to support The NewStandard as a real
alternative.

Though our funding goal of $80,000 may seem high, we are confident that
we'll be able to raise at least that much if our readers step up. We know
there are thousands of people who are disillusioned with the corporate
media and will be willing to help us build a real antidote. We need you to
help us reach them. We have chosen not to fund The NewStandard with
advertising, investors, or grants precisely because we want The
NewStandard to be grassroots-funded, accountable only to its subscribing
readership.

(2) Put Us In Touch With Potential Donors
If you know wealthy progressives who may be interested in donating to
PeoplesNetWorks, please put us in touch with them. While we know the bulk
of the donations we receive will be in the $5 - $200 range, we are looking
for several people to donate at the level of $500 - $1000 and a few to
donate at levels above $5000.

We will happily contact anyone you can put us in touch with by phone,
postal mail or email. In addition, our business plan entitled “Our Plan
for Success in Online Media” is available upon request. We need you to
send us whatever information you can (name, email address, postal address
and telephone number) to: fundraising at peoplesnetworks.net

(3) Donate or Pledge
If you have not donated already or if you can afford to give more, we ask
that you donate or pledge to donate to The NewStandard. We realize that
many of you may be holding back from donating large amounts or from
donating at all because you don't want to risk giving your money to a
project before it fully starts up. That's why we have added a pledge
option to our online donation form. When you check the checkbox next to
“pledge” it means that we will not charge your credit card until we have
enough donations or pledges to move forward with The NewStandard. That
will help us tremendously -- knowing the money is coming is for us as good
as having it in the bank.

The NewStandard, http://newstandardnews.net