In today's podcast, I kind of non-specifically teased a new project I've been mulling and messing around with for awhile. After I wrapped up the podcast (the recording of which curiously ends abruptly a few seconds before I stopped talking), I stopped mulling and messing around and got down to business. Web site. Facebook page. Twitter account. First piece of content. And here we go ...
Check out The William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism.
Over there is where the action is. Over here is where I explain myself and maybe toot my own horn a little.
First, a little about the things I do and why I do them. Some of my projects blossom and survive, maybe even thrive. Rational Review News Digest is now in its 13th year of continuous publication and I went to work for its predecessor publication ... wow, about 19 years ago. I've been at the Center for a Stateless Society for awhile now (coming up on five years as media coordinator and I wrote there for awhile before that), although strictly speaking it isn't a "Tom Knapp project" (Brad Spangler and Roderick Long started it in 2004, I think). Other projects, well, I throw them at the wall, see if they stick, move on if they don't. Or if they require the cooperation of other people, I just let them hang there to see if anyone shows up to make things happen. For example, NOTA 2016 (jury's still out on that one, but it's looking better than you might think). I expect, and hope, that this one will be of the surviving/thriving/long-term variety because it's right in my wheelhouse. Which brings me to ...
My "skill set." I got my start in journalism 36 years ago writing club notices for my small town's local newspaper and it kind of went from there. Starting in the early 1990s, I became a fairly prolific author of letters to editors and op-eds. I promised myself I'd stop counting when my 100th such piece got published and I did. I know the total was around 150 when I self-published Writing the Libertarian Op-Ed in 2002. I'm still not keeping a careful count, but my reasonably well-educated guess is that to date my op-eds have been published in newspapers and other "mainstream media" outlets more than 500 times. And I also help the other writers at C4SS get their work published.
The upshot: I'm probably at least as well-equipped for the job as most people operating and working in libertarian op-ed shops and more so than most. Call that vanity if you want, but I think that I can make The Garrison Center go.
No, I'm not leaving any of my other jobs, duties or projects to do this, at least for now. I plan to die at my desk getting RRND ready one morning. C4SS has first mortgage on my time (and on any of my writing that fits their specific content needs). But readers of this blog know that I like to noodle around with policy pieces and other things that don't scream "left market anarchism." Might as well put that stuff in harness.
The Garrison Center is not an "organization," really. At least not yet. It's me, the mission and hopefully some other writers as time goes on. The Center neither seeks nor accepts donations. I do. See the sidebar for Patreon, PayPal and cryptocurrency options, and thanks in advance.
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