Happy New Year! Thanks For Your Support!
Good news for us and many thanks to the 2,091-plus people who contributed to our end-of-the-year fundraising campaign: we surpassed our goal, pulling in well over $90,000. In fact, this was our most successful end-of-year campaign ever! Thank you all again for your generosity.
We are already making good use of the money by adding editorial talent, improving our investigative capacity and making sure the site works fast and smoothly for everyone.
Along those lines, you may have noticed that we gave ourselves a facelift: new story presentation, logo, colors, and more. We had the previous, very popular, design for more than six years. But at this point, it was old and stale looking—and we were sick of the mustard color.
Mobile, Too
Our goal for the site was an upgrade, not a radical change. We hope the site feels more energetic and pleasing to the eye, and is easier to read with more white space.
Because more of you are accessing AlterNet on your phones, iPads and other tablets, we’ve also improved the functionality of our mobile site. We’ve been amazed by how much our readers’ habits have changed in the last two years alone, with many of you now reading AlterNet on the Facebook app.
We did the work in-house, with associate publisher Roxanne Cooper and our tech guru Ben Nguyen doing the heavy lifting on design and coding. Our logo was done by New York designer Clare Wilderson, who doubles as the bartender at Manhattan’s Merchants NY on weekend days. Stop in and give her a good tip—but also hire her for her design and art skills.
We like good design. But we think the content is most important, along with the headlines, the writers and the subject material. This is why we did the work in-house rather than spending a bunch of money on pricey design companies; we are committed to excellence the frugal way.
Of course, not everyone loves change. And we will continue to tweak things for a while. Please send comments and suggestions to feedback@alternet.org and we will see what we can do.
Best,
Don Hazen
Executive Editor
