Enter Stage Gabbing

The year end report

By Steven Martinovich

(December 20) -- I generally dislike writing "year end" missives since I don't look at December to be much different from January, especially if you live in Sudbury, Ontario where it only gets colder from one month to the other. That said, a lot of people have been wondering what's going to be changing about ESR in 2000 considering how much it changed in 1999.

This year has been a big one for ESR. The number of people reading all or part of the magazine has exploded by 40 per cent and we went to a weekly schedule in June, our third anniversary. We've added a number of new writers and sections to the magazine and finally stuck with the same look to our front page for more than six months. Heck, I even "came out" and began publishing this thing under my own name after years of using Gord Gekko as a nomme du plumme.

So what's coming up for ESR? As traffic continues to grow rapidly for the magazine, I'm keen to turn it into more of a community. With that in mind, I'm in the early stages of testing forum software which will be hosted on site. Readers will be able to discuss whatever they like, whether it's material in ESR, ESR itself or any issue of the day. Date of arrival: unknown

Also coming soon are on-line archives of previously published material. Sometime this year -- hopefully -- we'll have the entire run of this magazine on-line and searchable. Before that, however, ESR will begin offering the previous month's issue in simple format -- no pictures, merely the text of the article itself. Date of arrival: June 2000

As ESR gears up, ESR's Conservative Site of the Day may be gearing down in the coming months. After two years on-line, the number of sites left which could make the grade as a Site of the Day are getting slim. Not enough new sites are going online to make possible to update the site for much longer. Of course, I've said that before so you'll probably continue seeing ESR's CSotD into 2001. Date of arrival: Unknown

Increased publishing schedule? Unknown

I'd like to thank some people who over the past year made a big difference, chief among them Michael Miller of Quackgrass Press. With infinite patience he's helped me out over the past year with any number of things: advice on how to proceed with ESR, editing my articles, warning me of potential mistakes, clearing up some of my foggy logic or just providing me with some great conversation. Behind the scenes Michael has been a tremendous help and I owe him a lot.

Writers are the key to any magazine and we had a whole bunch of truly superb people contribute to ESR this year. Thanks goes to (in rough order):

Vin Suprynowicz, Gerard Jackson, Jeremy Lott, Tim Loughner, Phyllis Schafley, Steve Farrell, Tom Adkins, Rod D. Martin, Amy Ridenour, George Reisman, Dennis Rice, William Westmiller, Jerry Taylor, Dana Sherman, David Ridenour, Michael Kreca, Patrick Ruffini, Michael R. Allen, Col. David Hackworth, John Carlisle, Mark Vorzimmer, Eileen Ciesla, Craig Docksteader, Justin Valente, David Wilens, Clay Waters, Radley Balko, Roger Phillips, P.J. O'Rourke, Joshua London, Lawrence Henry, Peter Zhang, Phil Carmichael, Christopher O'Leary, Walter Robinson, Jim Hill, R.D. Davis, Tom DeWeese, Kevin Avram, James Henry, Rory Leishman, Kimberly Wilson, Patrick Reilly, Danny Glover, Lonnie Shoultz, Steve Montgomery, Joyce Mucci, Diane Alden, Ronald Bibace, Eric Heubeck, Antonia Feitz, Elizabeth McGeehan, Steve Myers, Marvin Olasky, Jason Morrow, David Bardallis, Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Brian Carnell, Linda A. Prussen-Razzano, Pete Dominic, John Gizzi, Joe Roessler, Earl Hilliard, James K. Glassman, Henry Lamb, Joseph D'Agostino, Sam Packard, Mitch McConnell, Don Young, Joe Schembrie, Charles Bloomer, Jon Jewett, Lewis J. Goldberg, C. Dodd Harris IV, Daniel T. Oliver, Thomas Kelly, Erik Jay, Scott Carpenter, Gregory Bresiger, Ivan Vesely, Mary Mostert, Brad Aisa, Mike Green

Thanks also goes to editor-at-large Steve Lendt, the people at ViaNet, Todd Frawley, Fabian Hynes and Anthony Szwec for all of their help in making this possible.

And thank you!

Thanks for reading,

Steven Martinovich


Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

web posted December 20, 1999

ESR doesn't earn me money but I am content with kind words. Some of kindest to be aimed my way recently came from Eileen M. Ciesla.

In a recent piece entitled The Genesis of a URL for The American Partisan, Eileen discussed how she struggled to get published in the real world only to be rejected. Her arrival on the Internet spurred her to launch her own web site to counter what was being published. By happenstance, she wrote, she found Enter Stage Right.

"I happened to click on a link for GenX magazines. And in there I was one level above the hell of post-modern poetry. These people were generational separatists. Everyone was rejecting something. Some sites sneered, others smirked and still others pouted, beautifully. I methodically visited each one, checking in on the thought processes of my generation. I came upon a site with a link that lit up like a Roman Candle: Enter Stage Right, a journal of modern conservatism.

"It was a dense moment. I was slightly stunned. There are writers who are both young AND conservative! I had, until that point, held the defeatist belief that if you were a conservative writer you were either a personal friend of William F. Buckley or you were unemployed. Further, if you were young and conservative you only spoke in code.

"As I read each article in the March 1999 edition, I felt delirious with a new sense of purpose. And from ESR, I found dozens of sites expressing the libertarian and conservative ideas that I thought had been effectively outlawed from public discourse. This unpoliced electronic universe might have plenty of bizarreness, but it also has its share of innovation. The media censors are the victims of their own self-assuredness. It is, without exaggeration, truly revolutionary.

"Yet a final fortunate incident occurred in those first months of 1999, Monica Lewinsky explained the subtle nature of thong-snapping. I wrote an essay, and ESR gave me my first publication that April. With that, I had rediscovered my creative momentum. "

Eileen goes to tell readers how she is now being published regularly by magazines all across the Internet and how the experience of meeting people on the Internet who think like her has sparked a creative renaissance in her.

Kinder words haven't been spoken about Enter Stage Right and I thank Eileen for hers. It was a pleasure to be the first to print her material and I look forward to working with her again! Read more of her work here.

ESR wants you!

The rate of expansion here is frankly overwhelming and its soon time to begin expanding the staff around here. Interested in getting on our masthead? Want to volunteer writing, editing, whatever? Write us!

Visit our sister site

ESR's Conservative Site of the Day has been up since January 1, spotlighting the best in digital conservatism every weekday. Up to 200 people a day now visit! If you're jonesing for a good conservative website, make sure to visit it at https://www.enterstageright.com/site




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