here - Rabble.ca

Transcription

here - Rabble.ca

2008 Annual Report
NEWS FOR THE REST OF US
rabble.ca
community supported independent media
original
news and
columns
reprints of articles
from many progressive
sources
dozens of podcasts on a
wide range of issues
a multi-featured book
section with reviews and
more
large and active
moderated discussion
board
indie inside: Canada’s
independent musicians
on rabbletv
a free weekly
email news
summary
progressive newswire
and news from around
the world
Canada-wide
event calendar
featured links to social
movement and labour
stories
dynamic blogs from
writers and activists
across Canada
rabble.ca 215 Spadina Avenue, Suite 120, Toronto, Ontario M5T 2C7 [email protected]
Welcome from rabble.ca’s Publisher Kim Elliott
& President Duncan Cameron
At a time of crisis for working people across Canada the voices provided by alternative progressive
media are more important than ever. Thank you for the work you do.
Canadian Auto Workers Staff Representatives
rabble.ca is a community-supported media. With that support, rabble.ca was relaunched on October 26th, 2008 with an event hosted by Lorraine Segato at the historic Steam Whistle brewery in
Toronto, Ontario and across the web to the world. We brought together great artists, thinkers and
activists to celebrate our new look, new voices and new features.
Because of community support 2008 was the year that rabble joined the web 2.0 world –
increasing our ability to interact with visitors to produce and comment on content in new ways.
We had a pre-relaunch warm-up with the our special election blog that brought together political
commentators from across Canada in a highly popular and dynamic blog.
With blogs, new columnists, an expanded rabbletv and more, rabble has really become a unique
multi-platform website on the Canadian news media landscape. What has remained the same is
our commitment to keep all of rabble’s content 100% free. This means that we depend on
community support to survive and thrive. A number of our supporters were able to come to our
celebration and we saw media and community activists, labour organizers, politicians, other media
babblers and general supporters from all over. We were thrilled to throw a party for so many people that believe in independent media and who believe in the vision of rabble.ca
We were proud at our relaunch party to announce three new partnerships that will help rabble to
reach new people and new heights. The Council of Canadians has joined rabble as a two year sustaining partner providing general support to our efforts to expand and grow. We also publicly announced the Douglas-Coldwell Foundation’s support for our upcoming Activist Toolbox. We are delighted to join forces with the United Steelworkers as a key rabbletv sponsor.
In addition, before 2008 ended, we welcomed the Communication, Energy and Paperworkers Union
(CEP) on board as a major sustaining partner. rabble would not exist without the vision of all of
our sustaining partners, and we thank them for their on-going support in 2008! Special thanks go
to the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) for their support in 2008 and for relaunch event.
Finally we are pleased to welcome a new partner as we begin 2009 - the Ontario Public Service
Employees Union (OPSEU) (See full list of partners on page 14).
Fittingly our relaunch was on Media Democracy Day – a day of celebrating and strengthening independent media. This day included a daylong conference rabble organized in collaboration with local
Toronto independent media in the spirit of building the capacity of communities to not only have
access to media but to help build their own media. rabble.ca has worked hard for eight years (and
counting) to bring the “news for the rest of us” in a world facing increasing corporate media monopolization.
The relaunched rabble is, more than ever, community media. We look forward to growing.
Kim Elliott
Publisher
Duncan Cameron
President
rabble.ca annual report 1
rabble.ca 2008 annual report table of contents
welcome
1
the new rabble
5
behind the tech curtain
7
relaunch celebration
9
media democracy day
12
sustaining partners
14
news and columns
15
netted news
16
news and views
17
election blog
19
coalition coverage
20
blogs
21
community of independent media and activism
22
rabbletv
23
babble
24
rabble podcast network
25
in cahoots
27
book lounge
29
membership
31
advertising
32
marketing - rabble on the web
33
marketing - survey
34
marketing - memberships
34
marketing - media sponsorships
35
marketing - promotional exchanges
35
marketing - information tables
37
marketing - events and gatherings
37
marketing - media coverage of rabble
37
marketing - rabble’s weekly email newsletter
37
marketing - rabble 2.0 book
38
financial reflections
39
measuring website traffic
40
people at rabble.ca
42
rabble index
43
appendix A - rabble relaunch photos
44
appendix B - rabble timeline 08 highlights
45
appendix C - rabble contributors
46
appendix D - rabble podcast shows
47
introducing the new
A new look
with new voices
and new features
rabble.ca
The same
determination
to provide
news for the rest of us
rabble.ca
community supported
alternative media
100% free
Launched on Media Democracy Day on
October 28, 2008, rabble showed a new face
to the world with new features and more
content. The new rabble features:
original and reprint news and
columns
more than 40 podcasts
live and pre-recorded video
large moderated discussion board
multi-featured book section
Canada-wide event calendar
featured links to social
movement and labour stories
progressive newswire and news from around
the world
Activist Toolkit - a wiki style
resource
free email newsletter
It’s more than a
pretty face
We have a new open source content management system (Drupal)
that provides us more flexibility,
greater stability and improved features like a stronger search function, plus rss feeds, blogs, better
integration of videos and graphics
and more. (See “behind the tech
curtain” below.)
What’s new
at rabble.ca?
The Drupal system also lets rabble
have more of a “rapid response” to
emerging events - such as our
special section on the proposed
coalition between the Liberal and
NDP political parties that was
launched soon after the annoucement and featured articles, links,
video and more (see “news” section below).
Special thanks for our new look to
to our designer Phillip Smith of
Community Bandwidth and our
tech team: The Annares Worker
Cooperative.
A community of rabblers
With the new rabble comes new contributors, new podcasts, new videos,
new writers, new bloggers, and, as
always, new babblers.
Our community of supporters is growing too, with new members, both organizations and individuals, eager to
assist independent alternative media.
For their support to rabble, organizations get promotion and individuals get
gifts and prizes. See “Finances” below
for more details
rabble.ca is a non-profit organization
b e h i n d t h e t e c h
r a b b l e ’ s s w i t c h
c u r t a i n :
t o d r u p a l
A major aspect of our new site happens behind the scenes. With our redesign rabble moved
from an older outdated content management system (CMS) to one that puts us up to speed
with current web technologies: Drupal (www.drupal.org). With this new CMS we're in a better position to make use of current web technologies and get our content into the web 2.0
platforms and beyond.
Drupal: it's community and experience.
Drupal is a powerful open source content management platform that allows an individual or
a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a
website. Tens of thousands of people and organizations ranging from small volunteer organizations to large commercial companies are using Drupal to power scores of different
websites. It has experienced phenomenal growth worldwide, won numerous top awards,
and has a dynamic and rapidly growing user group and developer community in Toronto
and across Canada.
We're in good company. Barack Obama’s campaign, MTV, The Onion, Spread Firefox, Mother
Jones, Bob Dylan, Human Rights Watch, Oxfam, the NHL, Belgium, and many others have
begun using Drupal for their sites.
Drupal’s soaring popularity means that rabble.ca will benefit from experience with a system
and tools that are becoming widely used in the non-profit community. A key factor in the
decision to switch to Drupal was the community that comes with it. On a very limited
budget, our tech team is able to make use of the work of other developers and wield the
results of very active developers and de-buggers.
Open source and contributing back
rabble.ca has consistently chosen to use open source technology in its operations including
with our webserver infrastructure. The open source philosophy reflects a belief in the power
of communities to organize themselves and develop technology that works for them and is
accessible. To democratize media rabble believes we must democratize the tools of media.
In that light, while rabble benefits from open source we are also giving back to the Drupal
community. Throughout the redesign process and into the future our tech team is contributing
modules to the community, submitting patches to improve work of others, and adding valuable feedback, beta testing and support to the Drupal community as it focuses on improving
the software for the greater general good.
Harnessing Web 2.0 capabilities
The new framework also lets us make use of the way the Internet works now. We are able to
feed content from our site easily into other sections. RSS publishing allows us to put our stories into the news applications of powerful news readers on a daily basis. We can syndicate
our content easily to other websites (without even knowing about it), add content from websites we choose, and make use of new technologies and applications like Facebook and the
iPhone.
We have implemented the basic features and have laid a steady foundation to make use of
emerging trends and technologies in the web world.
Relaunch
Emerging Media, finding common ground,
making change. A celebration of rabble.ca’s
relaunch.
celebration
Media Democracy Day, October 23, 2008
Our relaunch event on Media
Democracy Day (see below) October 26, was an evening of
great ideas, delicious food, fantastic music, and fun. Held at
the historic Steam Whistle
brewery in Toronto we hosted a
special fundraising reception
and then a full-on party that
brought in a couple of hundred
people from many organizations
and communities. Special
thanks to Johanna Robertshaw,
our event coordinator!
We were honored to have newly appointed UN Senior Advisor on Water and Council of Canadians President Maude Barlow play an active role in the event. We were also pleased to announce two new partnerships. The Council of Canadians became a multi-year sustaining partner of rabble and the United Steelworkers became our main sponsor of rabbletv. Finally we
also announced funding from the Douglas-Coldwell Foundation for the development of our activist toolkit
The evening was hosted by artist Lorraine Segato and featured a roundtable discussion with
Maude Barlow, Jessica Yee, Anne Lagacé-Dowson, Murray Dobbin and Duncan Cameron.
We featured live music by LAL, Mraya with Juno-nominated artist Maryem Tollar and dj by
matt blair. You can download Matt’s rabble set here. It was a big splash (we were even in Macleans magazine). Check out video from the event here! See Appendix A for event photos.
Host Lorraine Segato at the rabble relaunch celebration
See appendix A for more photos
Relaunch Sponsors
The Public Service Alliance of Canada, The Council of Canadians,Steam Whistle Brewery,
Planet3Communications, NOW Magazine, Leslieville Productions, Rush Creek Wines,
Espresso, Burts’ Bees, Dufflet, United Food and Commercial Workers, Teksavvy, SONG (CEP)
Power Up Camp for Girls, OSSTF, CUPE 3904, Center for Social Innovation, CAW, w8nc, Whole
Foods, Shameless Magazine, therozblog.com, Matt Blair- mediareform.ca, Libby Davies MP,
Johanna Robertshaw, Jim Stanford, Kim Elliott, Chernozym Video, Campaign for Democratic Media,
Brian Iller, Blood Ties Four Directions Centre, Alexandra Samur, FoodShare
The gossip
tongues wag
over the rabble
relaunch
media democracy day
OCTOBER 26, 2008
rabble.ca brought together other
media activists, labour organizers, the Council of Canadians, and
others to organize one of the
most ambitious Media Democracy
Days ever undertaken in Toronto.
MDD was a full day of concurrent
workshops (three categories:
skills building, strategy and education), beginning and ending
with plenary sessions, at the University of Toronto.
The theme of the day was "Missing in the Media". The organizing
committee chose to make registration free, and arranged to have
most of the costs donated.
rabble organizers raised money to provide participants with a free
lunch, and the CAW arranged the printing of special MDD T-shirts
with "Missing in the Media" theme and logo. One of the participants created media literacy quiz that was handed out. About
250 people attended various parts of the day.
In the weeks before the MDD event, rabble hosted a free on-line
video making workshop. Participants went out onto the street
and asked passersby what they believe is "missing in the media".
One organizer worked with Sketch, a Toronto Art Studio for street
youth, to create another video asking the same question. These
videos are available on the blog that was created for the Toronto
MDD.
We also held two DJ nights at two different bars to raise money and awareness
for MDD leading up to the actual day.
Sponsors of Media Democracy Day:
rabble.ca, Ryerson Free Press, Council of
Canadians, Journalists for Human Rights, This Magazine!, w8nc.com,
MediaReform.ca, Campaign for Democratic Media, Amnesty International, The Real News, therozblog.com, The Left Institute, Chernozym
Video, CLIFF, Upping the Anti, OPIRG.
sustaining partners:
rabble’s Sustaining Partners are organizations that support rabble’s mission and
vision through cash and in-kind support and receive support from rabble in
advertising and site promotion. Thank you to our partners for their support
throughout the year!
Sustaining Partners 2008
B.C. Government and Service Employees’ Union
Canadian Auto Workers
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
Canadian Union of Postal Workers
Canadian Union of Public Employees
Communication Energy and Paperworkers
Council of Canadians
Douglas-Coldwell Foundation
Hospital Employees’ Union
National Union of Public and General Employees
Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation
Public Service Alliance of Canada
United Steelworkers
rabble maintains crucial partnerships
with labour organizations and civil
society organizations who recognize
the importance of independent media
as a tool to provide alternative perspectives and share their stories with
the world.
With the redesign we are better able
to recognize sustaining partners with
a special “thank you” section on our
front page (see image below of 2008
partners). In addition to thanks and
free advertising sustaining partners
are also in cahoots members.
Become a sustaining partner contact:
[email protected]
news and columns
“Our readers have more
content -- presented in a more
accessible way -- to choose
from than ever before on
rabble.ca"
Derrick O’Keefe, Editor
In 2008 rabble once again featured
original and reprinted articles from a
wide range of journalists and writers
from across Canada (and beyond our
borders). Our columnists were:
Alice Klein
Am Johal
Amy Goodman
Duncan Cameron
Heather Mallick
Jerry West,
Jessica Yee
Jim Stanford,
Jooneed Khan
June Chua
Keith Gottschalk
Linda McQuaig,
Murray Dobbin
Naomi Klein
Rick Salutin
Scott Piatkowski
Steve Anderson
Wayne MacPhail
Our many contributors included Tariq
Ali, Oscar Reyes, Leo Panitch, Sarah
Ghabrial, Sunera Thobani, Elizabeth
May, Stefan Christoff, Sharon Fraser,
Michelle Langlois, Hilary Wainwright
and many others. See Appendix C for
a full list of contributors.
rabble welcomed many new contributors in
2008 including June Chua and Am Johal.
June Chua is a Malaysian-born
Canadian journalist who has
worked as a writer, reporter and
producer -- spending a dozen
years with the CBC, where she
worked in radio, television and
online. She is currently a freelance writer and filmmaker and
completed her first independent documentary, Twin
Trek, in 2007, about Bengali-Norwegian twin brothers from Canada who uncover a surprising piece of
Norwegian history when they head to a family reunion in Northern Norway with their mother.
Am Johal is an independent
writer whose work has appeared
in Seven Oaks Magazine, Znet,
Georgia Straight, Electronic Intifada, Arena Magazine, rabble.ca
and many others. He completed a
Master of Economics specializing
in European and International
Studies at the Institute for Social
and European Studies and Corvinus University in
Hungary and has undergraduate degrees in Commerce and Human Kinetics.
Got troubles? Ask Ms.
Communicate.
Her
column Now What?
offers life advice from
an urban feminist.
We have added a prominent front page image, which is updated daily with original
photography, original graphics or art work,
or a screen shot from a program on rabbletv.
The personal may be
political, but that
doesn't make it all any easier to figure out. When the stresses and
strains of daily life combine with the
realities of an unjust world, sometimes you just need some good advice. Ask her a question!
The new, redesigned website highlights the
multimedia, interactive nature of rabble.ca.
Each day, we select 'top picks,' which could
be news features, podcasts, rabbletv videos,
columns or blogs.
n e t t e d
n e w s
rabble.ca believes in strengthening
the community of independent media makers in Canada. As such,
we’ve made space for news from
other independent news outlets
above the fold, on our homepage.
We pull RSS feeds of original news
from other independent media
sources including:
• The Dominion
• Canadian Dimension
• Briarpatch Magazine
• The Tyee
• The Bullet
• Herizons
• Alternet
• This Magazine
• The New Internationalist
News from elsewhere
Reponding to requests from
readers surveys, we incorporated news from mainstream
media sources. Of course, rabble being rabble, we define
“mainstream” broadly. Readers
can get up to the minute news
browsing rabble from CBC, al
Jazeera and the Guardian. This
feature is also on on our front
page.
NEW S A ND VIEW S
From the struggle at Grassy Narrows to
the coalition, to the Tar Sands and beyond rabble kept the stories coming.
Highlights: the following is just the tip of the iceberg of original writing
published on rabble.ca in 2008. For a full list of our contributors, browse
our news features section on the website.
In January, Laura Janecka reported on the long-running struggle at Grassy Narrows for indigenous rights. And Stuart Neatby looked at the reasons for opposition to the CanadaColombia Free Trade Agreement, in a twopart feature interview with Manuel Rozenthal.
In February, rabble columnist Am Johal
interviewed Vancouver activist Harsha Walia
on migrant rights. Johal, in addition to filing
interviews with activists and thinkers,
initiated a rotating hunger strike at the end
of 2008 that will run through the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and beyond. He will be
blogging about this direct action for change
on homelessness for rabble.ca
In March, Clayton Thomas-Muller looked at
the impact of the Alberta tar sands on the
environment and indigenous rights. And
rabble intern and student issues blogger Mai
Nguyen investigated the UN's response to
experimental drug harm reduction programs
in Canada
In April, Jennifer Kilty and Tara Lyons examined Bill C-484, and in particular the
threat it posed to the gains made by the pro-choice movement in Canada. And Lia Tarachansky reported from the front lines of protests against the country's largest arms trade fair in
Ottawa.
In May, Raja G. Khouri urged Canada to join the worldwide movement to ban the cluster
bomb, while Pam Kapoor urged Hillary Clinton to
see the writing on the wall and give up her nomination battle with Barack Obama. Jessica Yee, one
of rabble's new columnists, critiqued the Canadian
government's 'Sorry excuse for an apology' on the
residential schools issue.
In June, Paul Benedetti and Wayne MacPhail
broke the story of an Alberta woman who sued
chiropractic for half a billion dollars. This story debuted on rabble.ca before being picked up national media. rabble also featured an exclusive
video interview with the plaintiff's husband.
Also in June rabble podcast speeches from the Canadian Labour Congress convention and
Shelagh Day reminded readers of Stephen's Harper's hostility to the 'E word,' equality.
In July, on the day of the much anticipated iPhone release in Canada, Ottawa contributor
Robin Browne reported on the deadly impact of electronic consumer devices on the conflict in
the Congo.
,
In August, Art as a verb columnist, June Chua, filed a story from Norway, where she had
previously filmed her documentary, Twin Trek. Also in August, one or rabble's newest contributors, Maha Zimmo, reviewed John Cusack's War Inc. The film touched on themes
dear to rabble's heart:"War, Inc. is a political
satire, Western love story and dynastic drama
rolled into one. In other words, War, Inc. is
about the privatization of war, the militaryindustrial complex, the commodification and
manipulation of diverse cultures into one homogenized for-profit brand of culture and the
gross exploitation/pornification of women. In
essence, it speaks to the reality that, when a
society's only ideal is profit, that society then
faces the depths of moral bankruptcy."
In September, as soon as the writ was
dropped rabble's election blog kicked into
gear: "With over 20 contributors from across
the country, our rabble federal election blog
provided the best available progressive coverage of this election, with multimedia updates
daily. The blog stirred things up and broke
stories. Blogger Scott Piatkowski was the first
to report on an unflattering email from the
Green Party as they
searched for candidates, while Steven Staples exposed the disturbing connection between the
mainstream media and the defense lobby.
In October, in addition to our intensive coverage of the federal election on our special election blog, (see below) rabble participated in and helped organize Toronto's Media Democracy
Day events (see above).
At the end of November, rabble was on top of the big story in Ottawa -- a coalition of the
opposition parties to topple Harper. We established a special page for all our coverage of this
showdown in Canadian politics (see below).
In December, we featured an exclusive interview with Naomi Klein, by rabble publisher Kim
Elliott, on the coalition in relation to her theory of the shock doctrine that became one of the
most talked about articles of that period and was reprinted in U.S. and European media. Plus
we continued our coalition news coverage as politicians moved into the holiday season. Finally, we got festive with a special year end round-up, unveiling our top 10 'naughty' and
'nice' lists for 2008. Public personalities, beware, rabble wants you to be good (and progressive) for goodness sake!
election blog
Within hours of the 2008 federal election being called rabble set up an election blog bringing
together an amazing diversity of voices from across Canada. This beta blog (it was prior to
our relaunch) proved to be very popular with over 40,000 unique visitors checking it out and
it quickly became one of the go-to places for political junkies.
Blog sponsors: rabble staff and contributors volunteered their time on the blog, and sponsor contributions supported an advertising campaign that helped rabble reach out to thousands of new readers.
Kudos to the election blog sponsors: Community Bandwidth, Teksavvy, the Council of Canadians, the
CCPA, HEU, VDLC, CAW, PSAC, CUPE, CUPW, USW, NUPGE, CEP, OSSTF and Teamsters Canada - Rail Conference MWED
Our election bloggers
Pierre Beaudet
Dionne Brand
Briarpatch Magazine
Campaign for Democratic Media
Centre for Policy Alternatives
John Cartwright
Robert Chernomas
Dave Coles
Department of Culture
Murray Dobbin
The Dominion
Aaron Ekman
Sharon Fraser
Matthew Good
Lily Gontard
Pam Kapoor
El Farouk Khaki
Alice Klein
James Laxer
Gordon Laxer
May Lui
Brian McKenna
Mai Nguyen
Scott Piatkowski
Ben Powless
Blair Redlin
Corvin Russell
rabble staff
Vicky Smallman
Steve Staples
Jim Stanford
David Suzuki
Clayton Thomas-Muller
Ariel Troster
Bernadette Wagner
Fred Wilson
Jessica Yee
Beisan Zubi
coalition coverage
Arguably the biggest news story of the year in Canada was the announcement of a proposed
coalition government that would remove the ruling minority party and the prime minister.
Soon after the coalition was announced rabble launched a special coalition section of the site
featuring an aggregate of columns, video coverage, podcasts, and news links about the coalition plus event listings, twitter feeds, and photo montages. This page became the “one stop
shop” for coalition news junkies. This section was the first special coverage we were able to
do quickly with our new content management system.
b
l
o
g
s
The success of our election
blog was a great sign of
things to come with our
redesigned site. Now we
have diverse bloggers from
across Canada with
dynamic writing and insight
on the issues of the day.
Kim Elliott
Publisher
Blogs are a popular and important source of news and opinion on the Internet and
rabble.ca hand-picks our bloggers to cover different issues
and regions from divergent
perspectives.
In 2008 our bloggers were:
Mai Nguyen, the Regina Mom, James Laxer,
Pierre Beaudet, Sharon Fraser
Ben Powless, Jessica Yee, Corvin Russell, I Read
The News Today Oh boy, Word of the Rings.
From the Olympics, to foreign policy, to Canadian
politics, to American perspectives on Canada, our
blogs stirred it up in 2008.
The blogroll continues to grow in 2009, check them out
now!
A community of
independent
media and activism
It’s one thing to read, listen, watch
and discuss the news. It’s another to
find out where in the community people are doing something about the
issues of the day. That’s where our
free national calendar of events,
what’s up, comes in.
You can use our what's up listings to find or post events
staged by social justice, arts
and other organizations in
your community, or across
the country.
Events listed on what’s up can be
sorted by city, by date, added to ical,
and is available as an rss feed.
Even with our “top picks” it can
be hard to keep up to date with
all the news and views coming
out of rabble.
That’s why rabble offers a
free email news summary with links and
summaries of news stories, columns, blog picks, podcasts, in cahoots content, a featured babble discussion or two as well
key events from our what’s up calendar.
rabble.ca reached about 6,000 individuals a week with the news summary
in 2008.
r
a
“rabbletv
offers
viewers
coverage,
c l i p s , m us i c i n t e rviews, live
feeds and
more. With
t h e r e d e sign rabble
videos are
easier to
search and
find and
they have a
stronger
presence
on the
front
p a g e .”
To r
Sandberg
producer
rabbletv
b
b
l
e
t
v
Video is changing all over the Internet
and the story is no different with rabbletv.
We have a new look, new
shows and a new partner. rabbletv is
proud to have the United SteelWorkers
Union as its main sponsor.
rabbletv features original content, plus
video from around the Web.
Overwhelmed by the possibilities of YouTube and other online video?
Our
news editor brings together the
“must sees” of the Internet.
rabbletv also goes beyond recorded
video to providing live video coverage
of events. On March 15, 2008 rabbletv launched live coverage of some
of the largest protests the country
has seen with anti-Iraq war marchers
in Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver.
Thanks to our partnership with
Mogulus.com (who provide the tools
permitting this kind of live coverage
and live discussion) rabbletv brought
unique coverage of these historic
events to the computers of people
across Canada.
These events were just the beginning
of our live coverage, which included
our live coverage of an evening of poetry in Hamilton, Ontario “The Live Poets Society” and we streamed the Council
of Canadians keynote panel from Edmonton that focused on the Tar Sands. This
streaming allowed council members
across the country to watch and discuss
the event in real time.
2008 also saw the launch of “indie inside”
rabbletv’s own show highlighting video
from independent
Canadian music artists, featuring a regular CD
giveaway. This show is curated by Vancouver-based Adriana Byrne. In
2008 we featured the Allegories, Maryem Tollar, Wendy McNeil, and
Luke Ducet with many more treasures in 2009.
You can also find rabbletv videos on our Youtube channel:
www.youtube.com/user/rabbletv
B
A
B
B
L
E
“babble is
integrated
with the rest
of the site
now, with
discussion
topics posted
throughout
rabble and
with select
discussions
featured on
the front
page”
Michelle
Langlois
babble
co-moderator
Canada’s most-talked-about talk site is babble.ca. babble is an original feature of rabble and
we have hosted thousands of discussions on countless topics, all moderated by staff and volunteers. babble is a space committed to promoting dialogue, discussion and just plain old
thought-provoking chat.
Every day there are people from across Canada (and in fact across the world) who care passionately about the issues of the day and they find a home at babble.
So if you want to throw in your own two cents on issues from politics to culture and beyond
put on your thinking cap and head on over to babble.
Here are just a few discussions of the hundreds babblers had in 2008:
Venezuela Elections
Don’t look, don’t tell, troops told
De-regulation may be behind
listeria outbreak
Supreme Court of Canada to hear
Omar Khadr illegal detention plea
Apology for residential schools rings hollow
Trouble in Bank Land II
The rabble podcast network is a growing
collection of Canadian podcasts that offers
an alternative take on politics, entertainment, society, stories, community and life in
general. They've been handpicked and are
hosted on a platform created by rabble.ca.
“The redesign of the rabble podcast network
website marks some innovative changes to the
way we present our podcasts. The new landing
page allows listeners to sample podcasts easily
from the site, and features new material in a
way that makes listening a quick and easy
process. RPN podcasters have risen to the
challenge that our added visibility gives them
by producing even more innovative and highquality current affairs programming.”
Meagan Perry rpn producer
See Appendix D for a list of all 2008 rpn
shows
This year the rabble podcast network added a variety of new programs while continuing to
produce compelling programming that is widely used by community radio stations across
Canada.
The rpn’s new site gives visitors the opportunity to
subscribe to one of 10 channels which will subscribe
them to a set of programs rather than one program
alone. Channel topics include current affairs, documentary, web and life and music. Channel subscriptions
continue to be snapped up by our listeners and we plan
to continue this programming option in the new year.
The rabble podcast network has also built its volunteer
base and has worked more closely with communicators
across Canada to seek out material from awardwinning producers, high-profile labour activists and
journalists. We have also worked with the Canadian
Labour Congress to present audio of high-profile labour
leaders from all parts of North America, and we continued to add documentaries from around the world to
our roster.
New shows at the rpn!
rpn highlights
This is a small sampling of content
from the rpn. Check it all out on:
www.rabble.ca/podcasts
The Alternatives Podcast: Since
1971 Alternatives Journal has
been Canada's informed voice of
environmentalism to everyday
readers. Our podcast complements Alternative Journal's bimonthly peer-reviewed print issues. Segments will include contributor interviews, in depth discussions of feature articles, and
an editorial overview of the current and upcoming issues.
Swimming in Snafu, a short audio
postcard featured on rabble radio
was included in Chicago Public Radio’s program Re:Sound, a program featuring the best documentaries from around the world.
Rawi Hage, winner of the Impac
Dublin prize appeared on Radio
Tadamon! to speak about his
prizewinning novel Deniro’s Game.
The Labour Show: Host Scott
McWhinnie features challenges
and successes in the modern labour movement. In 2008 the
program featured trailblazers like
Pauline Niles, interviews on a
surprise exodus by migrant
workers from Canada and a series on the labour movement in
Canada. The show was featured
in an article in Our Times magazine.
rabble podcast network producer
Meagan Perry was part of CBC Radio One’s Federal Election coverage, advising on babble commentary on election night.
The Alternatives Podcast series on
Sustainability “Size Matters” featured interviews on small-scale
farming, environmental devastation
on the Island of Nauru, and a discussion of the question “Is smaller
always better?” We look forward to
more of this challenging programming in the future.
Pivot Legal Society: The Pivot
Legal Society has expanded their
work with the poor living in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side to
include a podcast discussing the
issues that affect them. They
took on issues such as private
policing, RCMP funded anti-safe
injection site research, and
Pivot’s appeal to the UN for action on homelessness.
Needs No Introduction features the
voices of Labour. Speakers from
the labour movement across Canada and the United States were
featured on the rpn’s speaker series throughout the year.
Tikkun Toronto: In this tenepisode series Jewish Canadians
hoping for peace in the middle
east explore their feelings toward
Israel and its policies toward
Arab nations.
The Ruckus: A new music program joined the rabble podcast
network, bringing some of Canada’s best known and up and
coming musicians to the
rabble.ca airwaves. The program
adds to our roster of arts and
entertainment programming,
which now features music as well
as film and literature.
I Read The News Today, Oh Boy! In
this program Matt Adams and Keith
Gottschalk discuss Canadian and
United States politics. In December, the program was featured on
the landing page of the rabble podcast network and rabble.ca for
their discussion of Canada’s constitutional crisis.
Award winning author Salman
Rushdie gave an exclusive interview on radio book lounge to speak
about his novel The Enchantress of
Florence.
in cahoots
Share your news with us and we'll share it with the world! in cahoots is
our direct link to civil society partners. We link straight to social movement sites featuring key issues and news events.
“in cahoots
now has
incredible
visibility on
the home
page, and
with the incorporation
of large
images, it
has become
an even
more
prominent
feature of
rabble.ca.”
Jenn Watt
in cahoots
editor
From Walmart unionization to tainted food, to humanitarian crises,
to the tar sands and Flaherty’s economic council and beyond, in
cahoots brings you stories from the perspective of social movements. The rabble redesign put in cahoots at the top of our front
page to increase the visibility of the over fifty groups who are in
cahoots members.
All “Sustaining Partners”, organizations that provide significant financial contributions (see below), also receive in cahoots benefits.
in cahoots partners
in cahoots membership is charged on a sliding scale, designed to match an
organization's ability to pay.
Sustaining Partners:
BC Government Employees Union
Canadian Auto Workers
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
Canadian Union of Public Employees
Canadian Union of Postal Workers
Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada
Douglas-Coldwell Foundation
Hospital Employees Union
National Union of Public and General Employees
Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation
Public Service Alliance of Canada
United Steelworkers
in cahoots:
Africa Files
Amnesty International
BC Teachers Federation
Canadian Council for International Cooperation
Canadian Media Guild
Centre for Social Justice
Canadian Palestinian Educational Exchange
Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions
Canadian Labour Congress
Canadian Peace Alliance
Cathy Crowe Newsletter
Citizens for Public Justice
DisAbled Women's Network Ontario
Democracy Watch
Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies
The Consultative Group on Early Childhood Care and Development
Environmental Defense
FAFIA
International Fund for Animal Welfare
International Freedom of Expression Exchange
Greenpeace
Journalists for Human Rights
MSF (Doctors Without Borders)
Toronto and York Region Labour Council
National Farmers Union
The North-South Institute
Parkland Institute
Polaris Institute
Probe International
Rights and Democracy
South Asia Partnership Canada
Service Employees International Union
Taking IT Global
Working TV
Contact
business@
rabble.ca
to become
an
in cahoots
partner
the book lounge
Great minds don't always think alike — and that's when things get interesting. The
book lounge has an emphasis on the fantastic work coming out of Canada's small
presses with original (and reprinted) reviews from perspectives you don't read every
day. Plus, we post independent best sellers, a free listing of book events across Canada,
and we have an online book club, a podcast and even some video!
Book Events
The book lounge is more than just a great virtual place for
books. We also sponsored book launches including:
• Our Town Café in Vancouver featuring a reading by
Sunera Thobani from her latest book Exalted Subjects:
Studies in the Making of Race and Nation in Canada;
• A book launch in Toronto featuring Peter Hallward for his
book Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics
of Containment;
• A talk by Herve Kempf in Toronto for his English release
of How The Rich are Destroying the Earth;
• A book launch at the Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto with Sally Miller, author of Edible Action: Food Activism and Alternative Economics;
• A rabble organized event The Live Poet’s Society with Allison Pick and Adam Getty in Hamilton Ontario.
The book lounge was also a media sponsor for PEN Canada’s cross-country literary tour for
freedom of expression, Words Without Borders, which featured exiled Kurdish writer, Jalal
Barzanji alongside writers Afua Cooper and Sheng Xue.
Multimedia
The book lounge featured six literary podcasts – three by podcaster, Cathi Bond, the creator
of prosecast and three by brothers Stuart and Brendan Woods including a rabble exclusive
interview with Salman Rushdie discussing his tenth novel, The Enchantress of Florence. These
podcasts also highlighted: D.R. MacDonald’s Lauchlin of the Bad Heart, Life on the Refrigerator Door by Alice Kuipers, The Outcast by Sadie Jones, Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and
Travels in the Other China by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid and The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry.
The book lounge also featured its first ever video reading featuring Jessica Valenti reading
from her book: He's a Stud, She's a Slut, and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman
Should Know (which was also featured on rabbletv)
One major change was the closing of the book store with redesign. The store generated traffic but was not high enough in sales to allow for us to “rebuild” it for the new site. But with
the redesign the book lounge is launching a new book blog in 2009 called “bound but not
gagged”. We’d like to again here acknowledge the support and partnership of the York University Bookstore for the rabble bookstore.
The book lounge is a busy place with great reviews
popping up all the time. Our 2008 reviews:
Non-Fiction
Dark Days (Kerry Pither), Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized
Labor and A New Path Toward Social Justice (Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Fernando Gapasin), Edible Action: Food Activism and Alternative Economics (Sally Miller), Opting In: Having a Child Without Losing Yourself
(Amy Richards), My Mother Wears Combat Boots: A Parenting Guide
For The Rest Of Us (Jessica Mills), How The Rich Are Destroying The
Earth (Hervé Kempf), Branding Miss G: Third Wave Feminists and the
Media (Michelle Miller), The Age of Oprah (Janice Peck), The Harper
Record (Steve Patten), Economics for Everyone: A Short Guide to the
Economics of Capitalism (Jim Stanford), Women Behind Bars: The
Crisis of Women in the U.S. Prison System (Silja A. Talvi), The Perils of
Empire: America and its Imperial Predecessors (James Laxer),
Wasase: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom (Taiaiake Alfred), Apples to Oysters: A Food Lover’s Guide to Canadian Farms
(Margaret Webb), Fruit Hunters (Adam Leith Gollner), A Mother’s Road
to Kandahar (Andria Hill-Lehr), Paradigm Shift: Globalization and the
Canadian State (Stephen McBride), In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts
(Gabor Mate), The Myth of Mars and Venus (Deborah Cameron), Left
of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones
(Carol Boyce Davies), No Laughing Matter: Adventure, Activism & Politics (Margaret Mitchell), Liquid Gold, Energy Privatization in British
Columbia (John Calvert), The Geography of Hope (Chris Turner)
Fiction
Leslie’s Journal (Allan Stratton), The Saver (Edeet Ravel), The Sherpa
and Other Fictions (Nila Gupta), The Four-sixteen (Virginia Ashberry),
Nikolski (Nicolas Dickner), The Milk Chicken Bomb (Andrew Wedderburn), Orphan Love (Nadia Bozak), Certainty (Madeleine Thien), Elle
(Douglas Glover)
Poetry
What it Feels Like for a Girl (Jennica Harper), Bowling Pin Fire (Andy
Quan), Words Without Walls: Writing and Art by Women in Prison in
Nova Scotia (Books Beyond Bars, eds.)
Anthologies:
Belonging and Banishment: Being Muslim in Canada (Natasha Bakht,
ed.), Cleavage (Deb Loughead and Jocelyn Shipley, eds.), Front &
Centre (Matthew Firth, ed.), Writers Under Siege (PEN Canada), Building Feminist Movements and Organizations (Lydia Alpizar, Anahi Duran, Anahi Russo Garrido, eds.)
Graphic Novel
Skim (Mariko and Jillian Tamaki)
Drama
Canada Steel (J. Karol Korczynski)
“ r a b b le . c a ’ s n e w s ite h a s e n a b le d th e n e w b ook
lou n ge to c on tin u e grow in g an d n ow f eatu res
videos, a blog an d easier n avigation . It’s bec ome
a trul y exciting place for our readers to explore!”
A le x S a m u r r a b b le a s s is ta n t e d itor
membership
an annual fundraising drive promoting contributions from $5/month.
rabble is a community supported media site and we are
continually working to promote membership and
donations to our non-profit
site. (rabble.ca/membership
and rabble.ca/donate)
An innovative part of our
membership program is the
support of independent media in Canada and North
America. In 2008 as a special “thank you”, members
were given the option of
choosing a one year subscription to one of the following independent print
magazines:
The new rabble redesign allows rabble to better advertise membership
and donation drives on the site itself.
In 2008 rabble hosted a special
“membership-a-thon” to encourage
people to sign up their friends and
colleagues as members with prize
incentives.
rabble also hosted our annual donation drive, for those that like to
support independent media with a
simple one time donation. rabble
offered prize draws for donors in
2008.
rabble continues to work towards
our goal of 2000 members and ran
a 2008 reader survey which
provided strong demographic data.
•Briarpatch
•Broken Pencil
•Canadian Dimension
•The Dominion
•Geez
•GEIST
•Herizons
•Maisonneuve
•Middle East Report
•Mother Jones
(digital pdf version)
•New Internationalist
•Our Times
•The Progressive
•Ricepaper magazine
•Shameless
•Sub-TERRAIN magazine
•This Magazine
•Yes! Magazine
In 2008 we ended with 500 members contributing between $5 and
$50 a month.
a d v e r ti s e @ r a b b l e . c a
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Looking for the most visited alternative online
news source in Canada?
Welcome to rabble.ca.
Our new site allows for more
versatile ad placement, higher
visibility and we will be able to
target ads to specific geographic
areas in 2009.
rabble aims to increase revenue
from advertising with the new site
design and recruited a few new
clients in 2008.
In 2008 we used our advertising
space not just as a revenue
stream but as a service to our
sustaining partners and our
fundraising partners, such as
the magazines that donate
subscriptions for our
membership drive.
rabble also ran ads for
events that we cosponsored including book
launches, media democracy day, film festivals and
other social movement
events.
Want to learn more? See:
www.rabble.ca/advertise
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rabble continues to market itself through a
variety of venues from Facebook to Twitter
to mobile news feeds to advertising, sponsoring events, tabling at events, memberships in media organizations, presentations
at conferences and more.
rabble around the web
Our Facebook page remains an important
source of news and updates for the over
1000 members (and growing) of the page.
We give updates on programming, post internships, and spread the word about
events.
We continue to use our “mascot” of Ruckus
the sock monkey in many promotions. Since
2006 we have asked readers to “raise a
ruckus” in fundraising campaigns and he continues to appear in promotions and even has a
following on his own facebook page.
People on the move can now find rabble on
their mobile devices. To get rabble on your
mobile open your phone’s browser and go to:
http://go.feedm8.com/gmndgj
rabble is also listed as a newsfeed source
around the web and you can find a growing
list of rabble photos on flickr including ruckus.
i
rabble was also an early adopter of the web
tool “twitter” which asks people “what are you
doing?” and provides space for a short ans w e r.
F i n d ra b b l e o n t w i t t e r a t :
http://twitter.com/rabbleca
n
You can also find rabble in Second Life where
we can host events and promote independent
media.
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SURVEY
At the end of 2008 we launched a new rabble
visitors survey to help us better know our
visitors and to better meet their needs. The
survey continued into 2009.
MEMBERSHIPS
Over the past three years,
rabble.ca has been a member of the US Progressive
Media Consortium. The Media
Consortium is a network of
leading progressive independent journalism organizations, who work to “amplify our voices; increase our collective clout; leverage our current audience and reach out to new ones; transform our
sector’s position in a rapidly changing media and political environment; and redefine
ourselves and progressivism for a new century.”
rabble is an active member with the Consortium which focus on mutual cooperation
and learning experiences in building infrastructures, increasing revenue generating
opportunities and amplifying the voices of progressive media. The US consortium is
largely foundation funded, and has been an important learning and sharing experience.
rabble.ca is also a founding member of the Canadian Independent On-Line Media Alliance. The Alliance has pooled resources and obtained a collective discount for the
email serving program “What Counts” and have shared infrastructure development,
ad swaps and are exploring other the potential for other forms of cooperation.
rabble is also an active member of the steering committee
of Campaign for Democratic
Media (CDM): “A diverse array
of groups and individuals
across Canada are building a
new organization to support the development of a truly democratic media system.
The Campaign for Democratic Media is a network-structured, education- and campaign- oriented, movement-building, national, non-profit and non-partisan media reform organization. We are primarily interested in helping to create the conditions for
diverse, accountable and quality Canadian media to thrive.” The CDM’s work included
“Save Our Net” to oppose a “gatekeeper” network proposed by some corporations to
control traffic on the Internet. The CDM was also active in Media Democracy Day
(see above).
In 2008 rabble also became a member of the British Columbia Association of Magazine Publishers (BCAMP). BCAMP “represents, connects and promotes the BC magazine industry by uniting the talent, knowledge and skills of its publishers. BC magazines foster award-winning talent and represent some of the best periodicals published in Canada. BCAMP membership is made up of more than 80 titles, including
arts and culture, news, business, lifestyle, leisure and special interest magazines.”
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MEDIA SPONSORSHIPS
As a way of building relationships with activist organizations as well as marketing, rabble offers media sponsorships. To find out more about media sponsorships, write to
[email protected].
rabble was a media
sponsor to a number of
events and campaigns
in 2008:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
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•
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Net Neutrality National Campaign
Save Our Net Ottawa Rally
Vancouver International Film Festival
No One Is Illegal, Benefit Concert with LAL
Planet in Focus Film Festival
Defenders of the Land Fundraiser, Toronto
Fair Aid Society supporting Congolese Health Care, Whitehorse
Headlines Theatre, Vancouver
Barriere Lake fundraiser, with Naomi Klein at the Bloor Theatre, Toronto
Waves of Resistance, young feminist conference, Montreal
Global Choice: Abortion, Access, and Reproductive Rights Conference
Peter Hallward national book tour
Toronto Disaster Relief Committee May fundraiser
Bella Donna, by Burning Passions Theatre
Mayworks Festival of Working People and the Arts (Toronto)
PEN Canada's Words Without Borders
A Little Bit of So Much Truth, national video promotion
Confronting Racial Profiling: Racism, Policing and Community Responses, Toronto
Toronto Palestinian Film Festival
PROMOTIONAL EXCHANGES AND GIVEAWAYS
rabble is always on the look out for promotional giveways
to share with members and readers. Here is a sampling of
giveaways in 2008:
•La siembra workers cooperative, Cocoa Camino products
•93 Harbord restaurant, dinner for two
•movie tickers, including A Mighty Heart, and Confessions
of an Economic Hitman
•CD giveaways including KD Lang, Maryem Tollar, LAL, and
more than a dozen others
•Buddies in Bad Times Theatre tickets
•Flip Video giveaway
•Books, including Jim Stanford's Economics for Everyone
CONFERENCES
rabble.ca as an organization, and individual staff, are frequently asked to participate in
conferences. Below is a list of conferences rabble staff participated and/or were invited
speakers or resource persons.
M
a
• MESH 2008 (Canada's Web Conference)
• Personal Democracy Forum
• Podcamp Toronto
• National Conference on Media Reform
• Journalism that Matters Conference
• Media that Matters conference at Hollyhock
Institute
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• Tech Soup
• Council of Canadians
Annual General Meeting, and visit to the Tar
Sands
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• WAM: Women, Action
@ the Media
• Magnet 2008
•Northern Communicators conference in Whitehorse
• The Parkland Institute's Moral of the Story Conference
• Camp BCAMP (the BC association for magazine publishing)
• Labour Tech Conference Toronto
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INFORMATION TABLES
Whenever we can, we put up information tables at conferences. Here is a sampling of
events we attended with information tables in 2008:
Canadian Labour Congress National Convention
CAW Political Action Committee National Conference
Colour of Poverty Conference
Word on the Street: Toronto and Vancouver
OPIRG – Toronto Presents: Naomi Klein on the SHOCK DOCTRINE: The Rise of
Disaster Capitalism, Toronto
• Toronto Social Forum
•
•
•
•
•
EVENTS AND MEMBER GATHERINGS
In addition to our relaunch panel discussion, and media democracy day workshops in
Toronto, rabble organized book events and members meet ups across the country.
We hosted the following book events:
• Our Town Café in Vancouver featuring a reading by Sunera Thobani from her latest book Exalted Subjects: Studies in the Making of Race and Nation in Canada;
• A book launch in Toronto featuring Peter Hallward for his book Damming the
Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment;
• A talk by Herve Kempf in Toronto for his English release of How The Rich are Destroying the Earth;
• A book launch at the Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto with Sally Miller,
author of Edible Action: Food Activism and Alternative Economics.
We held members meet ups in: Toronto, Regina, Edmonton, Vancouver
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MEDIA
rabble was frequently cited or reprinted in other media, and rabble staff are often interviewed in other media including being featured in a CUTV documentary about independent media in Canada.
Other media mentions or interviews in 2008 include: Toronto Star, Now Magazine,
The Tyee, Yukon News, CBC, Macleans, The Globe and Mail, Consumer Health Digest,
Convergence Magazine, The Ryerson Free Press, the National Post, Sponsorship
Magazine, Media in Canada, Our Times, Shameless, CBC "Q", COOP Radio, and
CKUT.
WEEKLY ANNOUNCE
rabble offers a free email news summary (www.rabble.ca/alerts) with links and
summaries of news stories, columns, blog picks, podcasts, a featured babble discussion or two as well key events from our what’s up calendar. This is a key way we
keep in touch with about 6000 rabble readers.
BEST OF RABBLE 2.0
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In 2008, rabble.ca released our
second “best of rabble” book with a
2.0 version, edited by Jenn Watt
with content originally edited by
Derrick O’Keefe and Alex Samur
The best of rabble 2.0 brings together a diverse mix of writers and
activists who embody Gramsci’s
maxim, ‘pessimism of the intellect,
optimism of the will.’ That is, they
bring a critical perspective to their
writing, while at the same time identifying with – and often participating
in – movements for social change.
In this collection of articles published at rabble.ca in 2007 and
2008, you’ll find stories of aboriginal
peoples’ fight for land and rights,
analysis of poverty and addiction on
the city streets, critiques of mainstream art, reviews of progressive
books and interviews with some of
the more inspirational activists today.
Contributing authors to best of rabble.ca 2.0: Am Johal, Gina Whitfield, Matt Silburn,
Alex Samur, Stephan Christoff, Gavin Fridell, Robin Browne, Paul Benedetti, Wayne
MacPhail, Jenn Watt, Amber Vora, Laura Janecka, Matthew Behrens, Arsheen Devjee,
Marjorie Griffin Cohen, Derrick O’Keefe, Kyall Glennie, Dawn Moore, James Laxer, Keith
Gottschalk, Duncan Cameron, Carmelle Wolfson, Brad McCall, Libby Davies, Jessica
Rose, June Chua, bigcitygal, Lia Tarachansky, Tor Sandberg, Lief Eriksen.
order your copy today: [email protected]
Only $10 + 2.95 s/h
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Financial reflections
The regular operating budget for rabble in 2008 increased marginally from 2007 from
$150,000 to $154,000. An additional $49,000 was spent on the website redesign, bringing
the overall budget to
2008 revenue
$203,000. rabble.ca
ended 2008 with a small
surplus.
10%
6%
Sustaining partners re7%
main rabble.ca’s largest
9%
source of revenue, representing 52% of total inAdvertising
Donations
come for 2008. This repGrants
Memberships
resents a smaller perSustaining Partners
centage of total income
Special Events
from 2007, where
16%
sustaining partners repre52%
sented 58% of total revenue. Memberships increased marginally in
2008, however revenue
remained 16%.
Special
events: the relaunch event and federal election blog sponsorships add a new item to the
revenue mix, representing 10% of total revenue in 2008.
Technical
34%
rabble’s budget was weighted more
heavily toward technical this year, due
to the website redesign. The chart to
the left illustrates the divide between
technical, editorial and administrative
and fundraising costs.
Editorial
38%
Editorial
Admin & Fund
Technical
Admin & Fund
28%
Measuring website traffic
rabble.ca’s website traffic continued to grow in 2008, hitting two historic all time highs for visitors and page views in October 2008, with nearly 170,000 unique visitors and over ten million
page views. 1
The site’s redesign and subsequent server move resulted in statistics not being recorded for
most of the month of November. In addition, the site closed for annual holidays in for two
weeks in August and a week in December.
Excluding those three months, the monthly visitor average for 2008 was 140,000 unique visitors, and average page views 8 million per month.
The main entry points to rabble in 2008 were, in the following order: babble, the home page,
columnists, news features, What’s Up, and the rabble podcast network. rabble continues to
receive a great deal of traffic from Google and other search engines, with 41% of our traffic
coming from search engines.
1 A count of unique visitors is the number of visits from different IP addresses, so each address (presuming one computer =
one person) is counted only once. This statistic is considered the most relevant in terms of measuring a website’s audience
size. A count of page views is the number of complete pages that are requested by browsers (excluding robots and web
crawlers).rabble.ca’s stats are based on log file records (AW Stats) and Google Analytics.
Geographically speaking, rabble visitors are 80% from Canadian sources, and nearly 20%
from the United States.
Visitors from Canada increased over 2008, as did the number of originating cities, up from 585
in 2007 to over 1000 Canadian cities in 2008. The top cities in Canada were: Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa, Calgary, Montreal, Edmonton and Winnipeg.
people
at rabble
rabble operates with a small part-time
staff and volunteer staff, and our work
is supported by interns, volunteers
and a volunteer board of directors.
Staff
You can read biographies on key
people at rabble at:
www.rabble.ca/about/bios
There is no central office to rabble we are a virtual organization with staff
located around the country. Our editors are in BC, our rpn producer is in
the Yukon, we have babble moderators in Ontario, the publisher lives in
Ottawa, and others are scattered
about the country. We have columnists, bloggers, podcasters and video
makers coast to coast.
rabble is a member of the Centre for
Social Innovation in Toronto, where
we have access to work and meeting
space and can connect with other
progressive organizations and busi-
Board
Diana Bronson
Duncan Cameron
Wayne MacPhail
Manmohan Panesar
Diane Touchette
John Urquhart
Advisory
Committee
Lynn Coady
Linda McQuaig
Dave Mitchell
Sharon Fraser
John Urquhart
Fred Wilson
Kim Elliott, Publisher
Derrick O’Keefe, Editor,
Alex Samur, Assistant Editor, Book Review Editor
Wayne MacPhail, Director Emerging Media
Meagan Perry, rpn Executive Producer
Tor Sandberg, rabbletv director
Matthew Adams, Program and Special Projects
Coordinator
Laurel Smith, Administration and Membership
Coordinator
Jenn Watt, in cahoots Editor
Michelle Langlois, babble co-moderator
Frank Preyde, babble co-moderator
Michelle Gregus, babble moderator
Jessica Rose, babble moderator and Facebook
administrator
The Anarres Worker Co-op, Technological support
regular volunteers & advisors
Interns
Allendria Brunjes
Adriana Byrne
Ted Cooper
Lindsay Gallagher
Debbie Jorgensen
Sarah McConnell
Cam MacLean
Mai Nguyen
Aneka Rao
Nicole Rogers
Stefania Seccia
Lia Tarachanksy
Roz Allen
Steve Anderson
Cathi Bond
Dawn Buie
Chris Cavanagh
Mike Constable
David Fernandes
Sharon Fraser
Michael Goodman
Madelyn Hershorn
Brian Iller
Tarnjit Johal
Anita Kranjc
May Lui
Jude MacDonald
Greg Macdougall
John MacLellan
Sally Miller
Eric Piché
Josh Patterson
Melanie Redman
Johanna Robertshaw
Corvin Russell
Stephanie Russell
Phillip Smith
Steve Stunell
Mark Surman
Tonya Surman
Steve Thompson
Jeffrey Vicq
Fred Wilson
Bill Wittur
Yee-Guan Wong
Ellen Woodsworth
Nina Wyndham
rabble index
# of podcasts uploaded - 1,619
# of posts on babble - over 142,453
# of videos uploaded to rabbletv - 280
# of writers published on rabble in 2008 - 311
# of bloggers listed on rabble - 27
# of bloggers who participated in rabble's federal election
coverage 08 - 39
# of in cahoots partners - 35
# of cities featured in book events - 3
# of artists featured in Indie Inside- 12
# of members in 2008 - 500
# of members we hope to have by 2009 - 2,000
# of part-time staff, interns, and volunteers who
regularly worked on rabble in 2008 - 73
# of unique visitors monthly in 2008 - 140,000
# of Canadian cities visitors come from - over 1,000
Appendix A- rabble relaunch photos
APPENDIX B: rabble has an online timeline hosted at dipity.com. You can
check it out at: www.dipity.com/wmacphail/rabble_ca
Appendix C: our contributors
Alan Woo
Alex Samur
Alexa McDonough
Amy Packwood
Andrew Mindszenthy
Aneka Rao
Anita Krajnc
Arsheen Devjee
Ashifa Kassam
Augusto Bohrquez
Ben Powless
Ben Shingler
Beric German
Bernadette Wagner
bigcitygal
Blair Redlin
Brad McCall
Brendan Woods
Brent Erickson
Bryan Evans
Carleen Pickard
Carmelle Wolfson
Carole McGowan
Cathi Bond
Celes Davar
Chris Arsenault
Clayton Thomas-Muller
Colleen Anne Dell
Corey Balsam
Dahr Jamail
Dan Freeman-Maloy
Dan Kellar
Dave Markland
David Rovics
Debbie Jorgensen
Denis Lemelin
Dennis Pilon
Derrick O'Keefe
Edur Velasco Arregui
Edward C. Corrigan
Ekua Quansah
Elaine Golds
Elan Mastai
Elizabeth May
Emily Schultz
Eva Bartlett
Federico Fuentes
Fred Wilson
Gavin Fridell
George Heyman
Gina Whitfield
Greg Palast
Gregory Albo
Harsha Walia
Henry Martinuk
Hilary Wainwright
Ian Angus
James Laxer
Jasmine Ramze Rezaee
Jen Peirce
Jenn Watt
Jennifer Kilty
Jessica Mills
Jessica Rose
Jessica Valenti
Jillian Skeet
Joel Harden
John Clarke
John Gordon
John Riddell
John Saul
Jonathan Cook
Jordan Marr
Judy Finlay
Judy Rebick
Justin Podur
Kathleen McKenna
Katie O'Connor
Ken Georgetti
Kim Elliott
Kirsten Marshall
krystalline kraus
Kshama Ranawana
Larry Gordon
Laura Flanders
Laura Janecka
Lawrence Boxall
Leo Panitch
Lia Tarachansky
Libby Davies
Lief Eriksen
Lise Lareau
Lynda Weston
Lynn Williams
Maha Zimmo
Mai Nguyen
Malalai Joya
Marjorie Griffin Cohen
Martin Lukacs
Matthew Behrens
Meera Karunananthan
Melanie Redman
Melissa Fong
Michael Byers
Michael Lithgow
Mohammed Khan
Mordecai Briemberg
Myles Estey
Nadine Straka
Natalie Mehra
Nathan Crompton
Nick Van der Graaf
Oscar Reyes
Paddy Johnson
Pam Kapoor
Paul Benedetti
Paul Boin
Paul Kellogg
Paul Moist
Paul Tulloch
Peter Julian
Peter G. Prontzos
Rahat Kurd
Raja G. Khouri
Richard Roman
Robin Breon
Robin Browne
Roger Annis
Roger Hollander
Roger Keil
Romy Clark
Sally Miller
Sarah Ghabrial
Scott McWhinnie
Sebastian Lamb
Shelagh Day
Simon Black
Stan Hister
Stephen Salaff
Steve Anderson
Steve Patten
Stuart Neatby
Stuart Parker
Stuart Trew
Stuart Woods
Sunera Thobani
Susan Howatt
Tara Lyons
Tara Quinn
Tariq Ali
Tarnjit Johal
Toby Sanger
Tor Sandberg
Wajdi Mouawad
Walden Bello
William Brehl
Yves Engler
Appendix D: rpn shows 2008
Africafiles: the pulse
Uncensored, unfiltered news
from the African continent.
Alert Radio
Weekly Canadian news and
current affairs not hear on
mainstream radio
Everybody Knows
Different stories and
perspectives
Health the Earth
Environmental news and
interviews with
scientists authors and activists
Alternatives Journal
Canada’s informed voice of
environmentalism
House of Sound and Fury
Arts in community building
and cultural vitality
Boiling Frog
Exploration of off grid activist
friendly living
I Read the News Today
(oh boy!)
News from two sides of the
48th parallel
CitizenShift
The National Film Board
presents podcasts from across
Canada
Labour Show
An up close and personal look
at the labour movement today
Commeuppance
Celebrating storytelling and all
things narrative
Living On Purpose
Ideas, music and talk in a
spirit of health and well being
Needs No Introduction
A series of speeches and
lectures from some of the
finest minds
Red Eye
On the political social and
cultural issues of the day
Pivot Legal Society
Law reform, legal education
and strategic legal action
Reel Women
Judy Rebick and Cathi Bond
dive into the DVDs
Podcast DYI
Tips and tools on creating
your own podcast
Stark Raven
A critical look at incarceration
and criminalization in Canada
and around the world
Prosecast
Cathi Bond talks to Harper
Collins Canada authors about
their latest work
The Dispatch
Briarpatch magazine with
essays, interviews,
music,spoken word, satire
rabble radio
Our own mix of politics,
music , art and more!
The Dominion
News from the grassroots
radio book lounge
Author readings, interviews,
book reviews, storycasts
and more!
The Speakeasy
Smart perspectives on stories
both familiar and unheard of
Radio Tadamon!
Media activists and social justice organizers reporting from
Lebanon
Tikkun Toronto
Exploring tensions,changes,
complexities in personal
relationships with Israel
Sign up for our FREE weekly news summary: www.rabble.ca/alerts
support rabble
support independent media
•
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depends on memberships to survive and thrive. We offer great “thank you” gifts for all
members. Of course we also accept donations, see:
https://secure.rabble.ca/supportrabble
•
Have your organization join in cahoots - our sponsored portal of news from civil society
groups in Canada. See: http://www.rabble.ca/incahoots Contact: [email protected]
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rabble. Contact: [email protected]
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Advertise on rabble.ca. rabble is Canada’s largest independent online news site. Contact:
[email protected]
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Spread the word and tell your friends, colleagues and networks about rabble and encourage them to visit. You can email articles with a touch of button.
A special thanks to our 2008 sustaining partners:
pssst. . .
check out the new
rabble.ca!
215 Spadina Avenue Suite 120
Toronto Ontario M5T 2C7

here - Rabble.ca

Transcription

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