Canada's pioneering progressive news site shutting down after 13 years
by Ish Theilheimer, Publisher, Straight Goods News
I'm writing to thank you for your readership of and support for SGNews and to let you know that SGNews is going out of business. The good news is that we are joining forces with the online progresssive news source, rabble.ca. Our two boards of directors have reached an understanding under which rabble.ca will feature all the SGN writers that choose to come over, post our archives, and enjoy our cooperation to build one, strong progressive Canadian news service.
We wish the folks at rabble.ca luck in this difficult work. They face all the same challenges we have dealt with for 13 years. I hope joining forces will strengthen progressive Canadian online news.
At rabble.ca, you will ultimately find almost all the SGN contributors and features you value and more. I certainly hope to contribute as often as I can, though I've got some big writing projects on the go that may make it hard to do so as often as I'd like.
It's hard to say goodbye to a dream, but speaking and writing truth have never been lucrative. We launched in 2000, when online news was new and untested. It was the era of so-called "media convergence," when ultra-rich conservatives like Conrad Black and Rupert Murdoch were creating huge media monopolies designed to flood the public with their right-wing views while laying waste to the jobs of thousands of reporters and others working in news.
Truth-telling has actually become considerably more difficult since then. The difficulties we had trying to expand the readership and support base for SGNews are very typical of what many others doing serious work encounter on the Web.
I do want to tell you how much I have valued your support and readership. I'm very proud of the work of our outstanding staff and of the national stable of writers who freely contributed to make SGN a great read, week after week. I'm proud to belong to a nation- and world-wide community that includes you and thousands of other caring people who think for themselves and act on what they think and believe. I do hope you'll transfer the kind of loyalty you've shown us to our new partners at rabble.ca.
Your email will be added to rabble.ca's email list of readers, and you'll be hearing from them very soon, with the option to take your name off that list should you choose.
We encourage you and all readers to transfer your support to rabble.ca. You can sign up here.
Thanks again for your faith in SGNews. I will miss you, our writers, and our staff a great deal!
Best regards,
About Ish Theilheimer
Ish Theilheimer is founder and president of Straight Goods News and has been Publisher of the leading, and oldest, independent Canadian online newsmagazine, StraightGoods.ca, since September 1999. He is also Managing Editor of PublicValues.ca. He lives wth his wife Kathy in Golden Lake, ON, in the Ottawa Valley.
eMail: ish@straightgoods.com
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