True recently hit its 25th anniversary. But can a weird news story that I posted at NASA before This is True was “invented” be traced? This weekend I decided to find out, since it’s a pretty “famous” story considering it never ran in the newsletter.
True Business
25 Years
Last week, This is True wrapped up its 25th year of weekly issues. What a great ride it’s been — it went by in a flash.
Colorado Screws Over Small Businesses like This is True
UPDATE to the Update!
I Did Have to Stop Selling physical products to Colorado customers only because This is True is actually in Colorado. Jump to the Update or read on.
Continue ReadingColorado Screws Over Small Businesses like This is True
Online News: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
Sometimes I Smile, Sometimes I Roll My Eyes: About the news business, that is. As a news commentary column, news is, of course, the road this publication drives on. Here’s what I mean.
Continue ReadingOnline News: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
Can’t Help But Laugh
When readers unsubscribe from the free newsletter, the service I use allows them to send feedback — and while not everyone provides that, I always read it when they do.
Happily, the most-common feedback is along the lines of “I’ve upgraded to Premium” so they don’t want the subset of stories in the free edition that they’ve already read.
I Can No Longer Recommend Patreon
See Update Below! Patreon broke trust with every Patron registered with them, including This is True’s supporters, by suddenly announcing they would soon charge them more than their pledged amount. They billed it as something positive for creators. It absolutely is not: it is bad for creators. We creators got no advance notice of this, and no way to “opt out” … Continue Reading
Mailchimp Makes a Monkey of Us All
In my recent post about watching the Internet “grow up,” I noted True was a driving force in setting the “best practices” around email publishing — I pushed the first true Email Service Provider to add features I wanted, and one of those features was “double opt-in.”
The Ongoing Struggle
After My Discussion Last Week that said True is suffering tough times due to a reduction in Premium subscribers since the election, and really needs about 1 percent of you to upgrade to just get up to the “minimum sustainable” target to make the publication fully viable, Joe in California wrote to say he didn’t … Continue Reading
The Return of Randy’s Random
Long-time readers may remember that years ago, I had a separate mailing list called “Randy’s Random” — mostly jokes and funny stories. But how to deal with graphics? I didn’t want to email graphics, so Randy’s Random then morphed into Jumbo Joke, which (as you probably know) ran for years. I sold it a year ago.
First Patreon Goal Reached!
True’s Patreon campaign to help keep this publication going has broken its first goal: scores of readers have joined together to get great rewards, and, as of last Thursday, together are now providing more than $1,000/month funding to help pay the bills.
Alternative to Patreon, Please?
Premium Subscriber Erik in Nevada wanted to really help True, but he didn’t want to do it via the new effort on Patreon, the “crowd-funding” platform for creative endeavors.
This is True on Patreon
(Also see Update below.)
Last Week, I Noted I Had a High-Risk (but “audacious”) goal for True — and came up with a way to take most of the risk away.
Why I’ve Removed Google’s Ads
It’s a Matter of Control.
This is True went online in the first half of 1994, so True has been in business longer than many big names in the Internet biz, including Google (1998). As a classic feature column, I received (and turned down) syndication offers from two different newspaper syndicates, including one of the biggest in the business, because I wanted full control of True’s publication rights — including its online presence. And as of today, I’ve turned off Google’s “Adsense” service on this site for the same reason: to assert my control.
Forging My Own Path
What Would You Include as significant milestones in the “history” of weird news?
Cut Out the Middleman
While Looking for Something Else, I came across this letter from a reader dated May 30 …2005:
“Only in Premium”
The Minor Format Change introduced last week brought a lot of positive comments. Just one example: “Love, love, love the new way you tease the ‘missing’ Premium stories.” —Mark in New Jersey. That’s awfully nice. But, of course, there were protest unsubscribes last week because I stopped gathering all the “stories you missed” summaries into a large paragraph, and instead left their story slugs up among the full stories, and included a brief summary of the story there. A few examples:
Webby Come Lately
In June, This is True celebrates 21 years online — a pioneer in online publishing that predates Facebook, Google, Amazon, and the vast majority of other web sites you can find online today.
Know Thy Enemy
A Letter from Roland in Kent, England (where my family name comes from), really got spinning through my mind, because it really helps to put everything in perspective. Let me explain — starting with Roland’s letter (the italics are from the original):
Writers Write
In a discussion group I frequent, one of the members posed a link, and wondered:
“Not sure if the writers here see the need for this….”
The Pomplamoose Problem
An Interesting Article on the site Artist Empathy (yeah, I hadn’t heard of it before either) discusses “The Pomplamoose Problem”…