Lew has done an excellent

March 2024 Forums World Socialist Movement Save the Socialist Standard Lew has done an excellent

#126607
alanjjohnstone
Keymaster

Lew has done an excellent dispassionate exposition of why we must move on. I agree with his flexibility in doing run-offs of appropriate articles at appropriate occasions. I agree with you Robbo that we should let a thousand flowers bloom and like Lew i have also suggested that we also do hard-copy distribution of the Standard, not blindly as we do now, but to targetted audiences and events.I am all for retail outlets but sadly we have tried and not succeeded…why do you think we placed a bar-code on the Standard, Robbo? We have approached the commercial distributors. They simply aen't interested. We have to create our own means of putting out the message.If we are to be truthful, on the wider market, bookshops and booksellers are slowly disappearing. Kindle is a blossoming business. Gnome could only cite two but i am sure he could add some more such as Housemans but stockists we can count on his fingers. No getting away from that.The free three Standards has been fruitful, no doubt about that…bringing in interested and eventual new members. A free pamphlet or two, can be its replacement. We can still have a form of subscription for an e-zine…delivering it to your inbox and for applying, we could offer some of our seldom-used promotion stuff…a teacup…a tee-shirt. We have tried to gauge feedback, but i think you do the internet an injustice when it comes to evaluating hits and their worth. There are many tools and i am by no means an expert but i think members who are,  could contribute their thoughts on this aspect. Online surveys…online quizzes…As for the face to face interaction, you overlook another proposal, Robbo – a national membership structure – not a branch based one. That will be more of a threat than any lack of interaction on the internet…but i question the basis of your assumption and cite such as this discussion list that tries to remedy that handicap.The Party members at one time were organised around the Socialist Standard. I recall in my early membership we spent Saturday mornings and afternoons street-selling it and on Friday and Saturday evenings pub-selling it. Our monthly order was in the hundreds and hundreds were sold. No branch is able to perform like that these days. Even members aren't too fussy about buying a copy when they can read online. The online monthly version is not a fit substitute for an e-zine and was not originally designed to be. Adapted by our imaginative internet committee i think we could do very much better.I am a bit biased because i have tried to make our blog into a daily press review of socialist related posts often without the customary conclusion ( …with socialism this will mean…), hoping readers can reach their own insight but the input it is still mainly the work of one person with limited internet (or artistic layout ) skills and a copy and paste thief, rather than original creative writing.  A lot of stuff is left out. RobertS does a thrice weekly news-round up. The blog does not include too much theory whereas the Scottish blog does include general promotional material every day.I envisage some very necessary editorial control being imposed which is a weakness of the current blog practice but i am sure some form of review and approval of submissions can easily be devised and then shaped by further experienceThe e-zine should exist to draw in much more collaborative cooperative involvement and participation than the blog. I am sure ALB once said that the problem with the Standard is that we have too much to choose from. Surely we shouldn't have this thought of as a problem. Any way, Lancaster deserve credit for raising the issue and i recall being extremely critical of their previous idea that we charge for reading the Standard online. We shouldn't duplicate the newspapers who are charging for what they cal their premium articles (The Telegraph) or place pay-walls (The Times) or limited access to 5 or 10 stories (The Herald).