On July 8, 2008, I posted my first post under the name “Eclectablog”. It was a brief post, directing folks to my wife Anne’s panoramic images of the Rothbury music festival. I had already been blogging for four years under various other names at other sites but, when I jumped to Blogger in 2008, the name “Eclectablog” was born.
In the early days I didn’t blog exclusively about politics. It was more eclectic and the name Eclectablog was intended to be a mash-up of “eclectic” and “blog”. Here’s what the logo looked like then:
Over time I wanted a more stylish logo so we changed it to this one:
However, as became more politically active in my personal life, the blog morphed along with me to the point where nearly everyone thought the name was “Electablog”. We decided to make the “C” a little more obvious and landed on our current logo which made the “C” into a giant keyboard key:
People still make the mistake, of course ; )
In the ten years I’ve been blogging under this name, our little blog has grown up. It’s become the premier progressive blog in Michigan and, along the way, we managed to help change things for the better. From Emergency Managers to the Education Achievement Authority, Eclectablog has been holding corporatist profiteers accountable for their attempts to take over our state government. Our work has been featured on The Rachel Maddow Show, in The Nation magazine, in the New York Times magazine, and in countless other important news outlets. We also brought on some other writers starting with LOLGOP and Amy Lynn Smith, more recently, with Mitchell Robinson and Ammara Ansari (with many more in between.) And all along the way Anne’s photos and graphics have provided unique visual elements that took us to a more professional level.
I dabbled with running ads for awhile, but that’s in the past. Now my goal is to build a community of supporters that get enough value from the work we do to support us with a financial contribution from time to time. So, other than a smattering of ads that come in with the Disqus commenting system, Eclectablog is essentially ad-free.
That’s why we come to you a few times a year to ask you to make a financial contribution to keep us going.
Please consider making a contribution and joining the growing community of supporters here at Eclectablog. One really terrific way to support us is to make a recurring monthly donation. You can choose your monthly giving level using this form:
There are two other ways to help, as well. First, you can use the handy PayPal form at the top of the right sidebar to make a one-time donation via Paypal in the amount of your choice. Second, you can send a check (which avoids Paypal taking out a percentage of your donation) to Chris Savage, P.O. Box 32, Dexter, MI 48130. Please make the check payable to “Eclectablog”.
If you are able to help support us financially, we would be most grateful. As Mitchell Robsinson put it, every dollar and voice counts. Thank you for your support.
P.S. Over the past year or two, Google, Twitter, and Facebook have changed their algorithms significantly meaning that fewer people are seeing our content in Google searches and on the various social media platforms. You can help us out by sharing our content far and wide and it won’t cost you a thing.
