i remain grateful for the Huffington Post blogger platform i enjoyed from may 2013 – jan 2018, but do wish to track my posts as they appear at HP & on the web:
in case anyone is curious, here is the text of the email sent to independent Huffington Post bloggers on January 18, 2018, to announce their independent blogger dump:
Dear HuffPost Contributors,
When HuffPost launched in 2005, it introduced a group blogging platform that revolutionized and democratized online commentary. It allowed teachers, parents and protesters to share space with celebrities, politicians and CEOs while trading ideas on the pressing issues of the day. Over the years, more than 100,000 contributors have posted on the site, with many of you posting from the start.
Today, with the proliferation of social media and self-publishing platforms across the web, people have many more opportunities to share their thoughts and opinions online. At the same time, the quantity and volume of noise means truly being heard is harder than ever. Those who are willing to shout the loudest often drown out new, more-deserving voices. The same has proven to be true on our own platform.
It is with this in mind that we have made the decision to close the contributors platform on our U.S. site. Going forward, when you log in to the portal at contributors.huffingtonpost.com, you’ll see that you are able to access your previous drafts and published posts — and unpublish those posts if you choose to do so — but you won’t be able to post anything new. We won’t be taking down or making any changes to previously published content ourselves.
We’ll still be publishing commentary on the site, we’ll just be doing it at much smaller scale, collaborating with writers to share smart, original ideas and making sure that we’re lifting up the voices that have been left out of the conversation in the past. We hope to keep hearing from many of you in the future, and more information about how to pitch us your ideas will be published on the site.
Thanks for being an integral part of the HuffPost community. Your bold, thoughtful contributions to HuffPost’s contributor platform have helped to make us what we are today, and we are so grateful and proud to have had you with us in this endeavor.
Sincerely,
The HuffPost Team
this dump heralded the launch of “HuffPo” with new editor in chief, Lydia Polgreen at the helm. the re-named HuffPo now leans leftist and extremist, rather than being the broader spectrum progressive behemoth it once was. as the site now exists, i no longer align myself with it. but my words stood there then and they stand there now, and i remain grateful for having had this place to park them, and for the editors who vetted and published (most of my) my articles under the HP banner (…in retrospect, i suspect at times they just weren’t paying attention when they approved a couple of them…).
reading past posts that were accepted, i see i differed somewhat back then from their evolving agenda. a few articles of mine were indeed nixed; one was later was published at Judgy Bitch, on the culture of obesity perception re-programming. Her website is now, sadly, fully erased
HP’s blogger dump was for me well-timed. i had resolved at the start of 2017 to conscientiously differentiate myself from “bloggers,” who write about themselves, what i call the billboarding of self. i am a writer, and as such made it my plan to write about others, understanding full well that i as the author still existed not only between the lines, but within every word i wrote. i made this decision also, having come to realize it is far more interesting to tell others’ stories; my boredom and quick-delete inclination of others’ blog-posts were proof. additionally, my awareness of the disintegration of real conversation solidified my conviction, having found myself feeling pitched when out among so-called friends, rather than having been engaged in any meaningful back-and-forth discourse. so, after spending a wonderful year writing about others, i wrapped up 2017 with my three-part posting of Jacob, the most satisfying blogger denouement I could have wished for. given that the blogger dump was wholly unexpected, i believe my spirits were working alongside my muse to ensure my final three posts would be among my most deeply felt and joyously shared works, of all.
you might note, in online bios and email signatures, that the Huffington Post credit is now and will be, going forward, noted with a start date.
and an end date.
kimann schultz: issues, advocacy, current affairs 