Our new mission, further explained.
By Jes Alexander on February 12, 2010
We pulled the trigger.
Effective February 11th, 2010, the Herald de Paris et Cie. has a new mission. This decision was over a year in the making.
Sure, we’re still going to strive to bring you the latest news from around the world, world-class features, and engaging prose, that will never change. That’s what we do.
But here forth, we have taken it upon our shoulders to be a safeguard. As newspapers worldwide evolve over the coming months and years to an all-electronic publishing model, there is a problem. Right now, anyone with some loose change can buy a newspaper. Once purchased and read, a newspaper can be handed from person to person, and re-read innumerable times. When the print news media is all-electronic, that can’t happen, anymore.
First and foremost, more people on our planet DO NOT have access to electronic information than do. It may seem hard to believe if you are reading this right now, but it’s true. So, too, firewalls will prevent people from sharing newspapers in the global electronic community. We’ve said this before, but there is a very real danger that those with money and power will soon be the only ones with access to a daily source of print news and information.
Think about it. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide have never even seen a computer. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide can not afford a computer. Hundreds of millions of people can not afford an Internet connection.
Now, print media companies have begun to charge for access to their content. Of course, this is their right. However, by the same token it is OUR right to give that news away.
So, that is what we are going to do, give the news away – FOR FREE.
At the same time, We are going to continue to explore new technologies, and opportunities to remove the economic barriers to electronic information so that anyone on the planet who wants access to news, information, and knowledge can have it. I say continue because we began exploring these opportunities more than a year ago, and there is a lot of promise.
We are interested in new ways to deliver electronic information beyond the current Internet model, such as NASA’s promising Disruption-Tolerant Networking, the interstellar Internet currently being developed at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. These new technologies are perhaps decades away, but there are programs going on right now.
In the past 18 months, schools in Cuba have just now begun to allow people to learn how to use computers, only, there is no money to buy them. Small groups have begun to bring computers to schools across that island nation, but many more are needed.
Few people know that deep in the African interior, mobile telephone towers are sprouting up. Other programs are then using your old and discarded mobile telephones to disseminate information to remote villages, to let people know when and where they can get mosquito netting, malaria treatment, medical care, and AIDS prevention awareness.
In a very short time, the technology afforded to people in these remote locations will be allow people to conduct research, learn, and yes, read the news. What a shame it would be if when that day occurs, there is nothing to read that is not behind a monetary firewall.
That’s exactly why we’re doing this.
FIRST and foremost, we believe that the best way to ensure that our news content remains honest, pure, and altruistic is to eschew for-profit advertising revenue. We feel that the only true way to remain a completely unbiased world news resource is to rise above the devilish lure of the advertising revenue dollar. As such, you will soon find advertisements disappearing from our pages, replaced by more, better, and stronger news content.
SECOND, we believe that access to honest news and to information should never be brokered like a commodity. This is especially true for a nation that operates with a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the rights to both free speech and to a free press. As the noose of the almighty dollar tightens in the coming years around everything now free on the Internet, we hope to safeguard the notion that access to true news and information are indeed inalienable rights of all people, and should not be the sole provenance of those who can afford it. Why? Because unless people are afforded the opportunity to improve themselves, the gap between a wealthy governing class and a less disposable worker class widens.
A funny thing happens when you grant access to knowledge and information to everyone: cognitive learning. Give people the opportunity to help themselves, and the entire society benefits. This does not only hold true in the United States, or the G20, but in all nations. And so, as the print media continues to hurdle towards the electronic platform as its default method to disseminate information, we will further be working to remove the economic barriers to electronic information, so that everyone on the planet might still be afforded the same opportunity to learn, if he or she so chooses.
Come to the Herald de Paris. Point. Click. Read our stories. it’s that simple.
We know it’s not about us. It’s about everyone.
As we transition to becoming a fully non-profit company, please consider making a donation, so that we might be able to achieve our goals.
Thank you,
Jes Alexander, Publisher
Herald de Paris et Cie.
What a fantastic endeavor. One filled with a great amount of courage and generosity. I commend you for it and wish you the utmost success! If there is anything we, as readers can do… let us know.
Thank you, Lidia. Don’t worry – you are on my list … you’ll be hearing from me on this.
Your passion and enthusiasm are contagious and inspiring. Throughout history, every medium eventually gets lucky enough to have a respected but innovative publication come along. These innovators herald unprecedented changes in the very perspective society has regarding what it means to communicate, to inform, to teach, to inspire, and to empower. The Herald de Paris truly is a herald. I do not think it a coincidence that in many religions, the bringers of news are supernatural beings. We humans are a storytelling species, and we tend to organize ourselves into units that benefit from the trustworthy sharing of information. I think one of the hallmarks of a great culture is how well-informed its people are, and what motivates those who enjoy the sacred trust of reporting the news. That would be the role that publishers and journalists have occupied in modern times. Now, many publishers became profit-driven conglomerates more moved by spreadsheets than broadsheets. Too often reporters stopped being journalists, their topics mostly stopped qualifying as news, and their actions looked more like acting than reporting. You have given me new hope towards a future for my young son–a future in which journalism isn’t creating its own news or spending more time reporting on how it reported the news than it spends on the news itself. I idealize a new era when ”Who benefits from my believing this?” stops taking up more dogged investigative work on the part of the reader than was invested by those who presented the news in the first place. It is time to evolve beyond the knowledge despots and information sphincters of today, and beyond the obsolete and wrong-headed business models that support them. You have taken on a leadership role in that evolution. We are riding a whirlwind fueled by undreamed-of ways to communicate and share thoughts and ideas. It promises to disrupt our communities and our commerce. It threatens to alter how we talk, how we learn and what we value. It’s frightening, perilous, uncharted, and I wouldn’t miss it for the world. It’s going to be a long and jarring journey, and I consider myself fortunate to have the Herald de Paris as a traveling companion, a beacon, and a conveyance. Thanks for the lift. In standards, in spirits, in hopes, in expectations, and in vision–thanks for the lift in so many things. I think it’s going to be quite a ride.
When I think about newspapers, I normally think of a voice that was intended to be the voice of the people but that over the years has been more likely to be the voice of the ones that are at the top of the power elite who have very well found a way to control the masses by shaping what goes into the consciousness of the people.
After all, I think that the problem with humanity has been the fight over power and the eventual misuse of it and the inability to learn from history and past mistakes. Our younger generations are more interested in what new video game came, the special effects of a movie and what’s the new gossip in Hollywood then sitting down to brainstorm about new thoughts, new ideas that will help us live and create a better world.
Reading this article made me think that not all news papers are the same and that there is in deed hope. When I saw the blogging era rising, it was inspiring to see that everyone could have a voice, and these days the temptation kind of repeats (at least as how I see it). If you have a blog with thousands of readers, why not put ads all over and make big money? … and eventually the blog becomes just another mass media outlet and the focus is then on making more money than providing good, unique and valuable content.
So, I agree with Lidia: “what a fantastic endeavor” and with Al Boss: “Thanks for the lift” … and with Jes: “the best way to ensure that our news content remains honest, pure, and altruistic is to eschew for-profit advertising revenue.”
BRAVO
I am switching my monthly subscription payments that I used to spend on a lesser publication, to pay it toward Herald de Paris instead since you have become one of my primary resources for news.
Is it possible for you to set up some sort of recurring payment option with PayPal so I don’t have to remember to donate every month? (I ran out of RAM when I was thirteen. The more I can automate routine payments, the more likely it is that they’ll get paid.)
Jes…there’s just not another like Herald de Paris! Congratulations on creating a true gem. We will continue to support your noble efforts.
Roger W. Morgan
Galaxy Star Radio