Tuesday, May 08, 2007

A plug for the ol' day job

I don't mention Rational Review News Digest much here, but I probably should -- it's my "day job" and has been for more than four years.

Claire Wolfe calls us "the Net's very best libertarian news site."

My late friend John Stone, whom some of you may remember as a frequent commenter here on Kn@ppster -- and who didn't tell very many people that he was a retired Air Force colonel -- compared RRND favorably to the Defense Department's daily "Early Bird" roundup, which covered foreign policy and defense issues. I seem to recall that "Early Bird" ceased publication a couple of years ago. We're still kickin'.

We call ourselves "the libertarian movement's daily newspaper."

What, precisely, is Rational Review News Digest?

It's a daily "roundup" of news and commentary, available on the web or via email. It's produced "by hand" (by myself and four fellow editors -- R. Lee Wrights, Steve Trinward and Mary Lou Seymour gathering material, with Brad Spangler handling tech support) rather than via automation/aggregation.

A normal edition of RRND includes summaries of, and links to, 25-30 news stories, 30-40 political commentaries and 5-10 radio shows/podcasts/videos. We also run a weekly issue "symposium" for reader comment and debate, and a movement events calendar.

We've produced RRND every non-holiday weekday since December 23, 2002 (with the occasional "weekend special edition"). This morning's edition was our 1,145th.

Email subscriptions to, and web viewing of, RRND is "free" up front -- but we rely on the financial support of our readers to keep the thing going ... and we're running our quarterly fundraiser right now.

As a side note, our VERY FIRST contributor, from way back in 2002, is also a Kn@ppster reader -- hi, Fred!

Anyway, check out RRND. If you like it, read it. If you really like it, throw a few bucks our way. It helps, and I appreciate it.

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