Reaching A Proud Landmark
Today, Left Coast Voices broke into the top 500,000 blogs according to the Alexia rankings. That puts us in the top 0.123% of blogs in the world (yeah, I did the math). With a great team of Tom Rossi and Roger Ingalls, more people are reading the blog every day and our future looks bright.
As you might have noticed, the blog is a mix of political commentary, recognition of grassroots activism, and experiences and developments in the writing world. The latter will now be restricted to weekend posts for the near future.
If you have a moment, please share in the comments some feedback regarding the following questions:
1. What do you enjoy about the blog and what is missing?
2. Are you more interested in political commentary/grassroots activism/insights into the writing world?
3. Is there a particular issue/organization/topic that you would like one of us to cover?
One aspect that we feel we are lacking is a woman on the team. Do you know a woman who might be interested in blogging once a week, perhaps focusing on women’s issues, or just highlighting a woman’s perspective?
So a big Thank You to my publisher, Lloyd Lofthouse, at Three Clover Press, who has been a great source of knowledge and support in every aspect of blogging. A really big THANK YOU to Roger and Tom for their weekly posts, their dedication and enthusiasm. But most of all, the biggest THANK YOU goes to you, our readership, who make our day by reading the post, adding to the comments and proving that honest debate and social activism is the most important component of a thriving democracy.
In a world where so many are fighting at this moment for the right to open debate and democracy, our freedom is something we should all be proud of. This spring, blogging has shown itself to be a powerful tool for freedom. Blogging knows no borders. Hopefully freedom of expression and debate will soon truly be a global value in a brave new world.
——————————————————————————————————
Alon Shalev is the author of The Accidental Activist (now available on Kindle) and A Gardener’s Tale. He is the Executive Director of the San Francisco Hillel Foundation, a non-profit that provides spiritual and social justice opportunities to Jewish students in the Bay Area. More on Alon Shalev at http://www.alonshalev.com/and on Twitter (#alonshalevsf).
Left Coast Voices 
I quite enjoy this blog! I particularly perk up at the insights into the writing world and glimpses into who Alon is as a person. I think it would be fun to have a bit more focus on Berkeley – since it is such a quirky bastion of activism, politics and diversity.
It is an amazing place to live. I will definitely try and add some stories from Berkeley. Are you familiar with the on-line Berkeleypost?
Alon
http://www.alonshalev.com/
Alon, congratulations and thanks for giving me some of the credit, which I’m sure I don’t deserve.
-Tom Rossi