Posted on 05/15/2003 7:33:51 AM PDT by conservativegirl
The public can vote for its favorite nominees through May 23 in the related People's Voice (www.webbyawards.com/peoplesvoice/index.html).
...It's possible you've heard about the Webbys.
After seven years, the awards have an international following and are considered a sort of online equivalent to the Oscars. Just as winning an Academy Award can help a career, winning a Webby can boost a site's status and bottom line...
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
The proper choice for FreeRepublic, then, is to FReep the chat rooms and other functions surrounding the award of the Webbies. Bias in the media obviously extends to the Internet. Can some champion researchers at FR discover who's behind the Webbie nominations?
Congressman Billybob
Activism:
ActForChange http://www.actforchange.com
Greenpeace http://www.greenpeace.org
The Jane Goodall Institute http://www.janegoodall.org
voice yourself http://www.voiceyourself.com
World Resources Institute http://www.wri.org
Politics:
Congress.org http://www.congress.org
Environmental Working Group http://www.ewg.org
IssuesPA http://www.issuespa.net
MoveOn.org http://www.moveon.org
The Note http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/US/TheNote.html
News:
allAfrica.com http://www.allafrica.com
BBC News Online http://www.bbcnews.com
Google News http://news.google.com
MSNBC http://www.msnbc.com
Romenesko http://www.poynter.org/medianews
Print + Zines
AlterNet http://www.alternet.org
Boxes and Arrows http://www.boxesandarrows.com
Metropolis Magazine http://www.metropolismag.com
Shift Online http://www.shift.com
The Onion http://www.theonion.com
The Onion is nominated in Humor as well... good on them!
Government & Law:
NASA http://www.nasa.gov
National Weather Service http://www.weather.gov
Publius http://www.publius.org
Rete Civica Iperbole - Comune di Bologna http://www.comune.bologna.it
United Nations http://www.un.org
Keep in mind that FreeRepublic is in the top 500 websites in the world... I doubt that the UN.org, Italy's Rete Civica Iperbole - Comune di Bologna, Jane Goodall, or allAfrica.com are even close... and I doubt the National Weather Service, Congress.org, Greenpeace or the Environmental Working Group have the entertainment value FR does.
If you do write in FR, make sure you write them in for Activism and Politics. Don't spread out our votes too much!
Here's my nomination entry under Activism:
I agree with Ken's assessment. The lack of any representation of Right-leaning activism sites is curious. Since the nation, as evidenced by the 2000 election, is rather evenly split, it is disingenuous to believe that only Left-leaning sites are worthy of mention. I'd like to nominate FreeRepublic.com. Here's the opening lines on their main page:
"Welcome! Free Republic is an online gathering place for independent, grass-roots conservatism on the web. We're working to roll back decades of governmental largesse, to root out political fraud and corruption, and to champion causes which further conservatism in America. And we always have fun doing it. Hoo-yah!"
FreeRepublic.com is an exceptional discussion board, featuring over 100,000 registered users (about 20% of which are active on an almost daily basis). It frequently cracks the top 500 worldwide in website traffic, and has even scooped the wire services on a few important stories in the past two years. It is very common to see a discussion about a topic and have some actual insiders chime in with details that you won't find anywhere else. (The most recent example I noted was an NBA "thread" that a former NBA referee made some very interesting contributions to.) FR also was found to be, by far, the "stickiest" website for home users. (Neilsen/Neet ratings, February 2002 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/672477/posts)
At least 75% of FR's threads are initiated by the posting of a national or local news article. The hotter topics can see a thread hit 100 posts in mere minutes, with some getting over 1000 posts within two days. For myself, it has almost entirely replaced television as my source of national news. Other posters dedicate some serious time to writing analytical pieces that put the major newsweeklies to shame (Look for poster JohnHuang2, among others), creating artwork that has even made its way to the troops in Iraq and numerous televised showings (look for Registered, among others), and composing songs and poems (especially haiku) about virtually any topic.
The amazing thing is that FR does not allow ANY advertising on their site. There are no pop-ups, either. The site's expenses are entirely covered by voluntary donations. It's exponential growth from 1998-2002 had been entirely due to word-of-mouth and accidental hits (which is how I stumbled upon it). For the past year, FReepers have been given numerous speaking opportunities on cable news channels, and occasionally mention the site on AM radio call-in shows to help make the site known.
While the problems inherent to any open forum site (rude posters, "flame-wars", etc) are present, the moderators do a decent job of keeping it clean. In my humble opinion, they tend to be a bit too quick on the trigger when hard-core liberals post intentionally provocative threads. Personally, I would prefer to see them left up so that the hard-core "Freepers" can post rebuttals (but the majority do tend to simply make personal comments in those instances).
It is virtually impossible to find this mix of news, analysis, humor, personal comraderie, artistic talent, and high-volume discussion anywhere else on the net. It is a shame that the editors here apparently refuse to consider right-leaning sites for the award categories.
AC, would your ping list want to get in on that action?
We're better off not getting major attention. The Vichy Chicks manager tried to demonize us for "FReeping" her record label's office. Of course the leftist coordinated an online scampaign to flood political offices with phone calls, faxes, and emails (some participants made over 500 such calls on their employers' dime, at least one company dismissed some employees they caught in the act).
The Washington Post and the LA Times (and Chicago Tribune?) prevent us from citing full article content on FR. The more visible we are, the more news agencies that might try to block content. It is a good way to catch up on articles that we may have missed or to cite details that we read once but that are no longer reported.
Chauhardy (one of the students who was stopped in Florida during that bomb scare) turned up in a google search for a late 1990s blog comment that had been archived. He helped SLAM an MSNBC poll to put Mohommed at the top of a list of most influential philosophers. Again the numbers for the other names wasn't even close.
This never makes the press. DirtyUnderwear will DUMP on a poll (and include a weblink on their site) and it won't make the press. The Rats will notify the press now and then though when FR has a thread that says "FReep this poll". FR is the only website that I've seen mentioned by name in an article that talks about the pushing of online polls.
Online polls are crap. They deserve to be pushed because they can be pushed. They merely serve as a superficial form of propaganda. "79%" believe (although that number is admittedly not "scientific").
I even saw the Atlanta Urinal Constipation remove an online poll when I clicked it up to 800 against (when it was 20 votes for) a lame editorial cartoon about Hillary Clinton. They have put the poll mechanism back online, only Hillary was spared the indigity of low poll numbers.
That's by intention. That's also part of the reason the Webbys have been cancelled; it's not very smart to alienate 50% of your potential audience when 98% of your fraud-based sponsors have gone bankrupt.
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