RSSInterview With ACD Founder J.J. Jackson (Part 1 of 2)
RonniesRayGun | February 8, 2009
I do not post often here but I thought that with the rate at which American Conservative Daily is growing, and me being a moderator for this site, that it would be a good idea to do an interview with this site’s founder, Mr. J.J. Jackson, President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc., just to help all the thousands of new visitors now finding this site get an idea for what is really going on here. I was able to get Mr. Jackson to take some time out of his busy schedule to answer some questions.
RRG: Thank you for taking time to do a little interview for the site.
Mr. Jackson: No problem Ron and thank you for the good work you do helping to keep American Conservative Daily running smoothly. I know that the job you and the other moderators do is thankless most of the time and that you are out there on the front lines taking heat from every troll and moonbat with a gripe.
RRG: We tend to try and do our best. But I do have some questions for you and I know that you are busy so let’s start off with this one. What is the history of American Conservative Daily?
Mr. Jackson: Several years ago, American Conservative Daily was started to compliment The Land of the Free, a conservative commentary site that had been growing by leaps and bounds since 2002. Originally that site was where I posted my own thoughts and opinions. But as that site grew and other authors contacted me about publishing their material as well, eventually I needed a place to post my own thoughts. So I started American Conservative Daily as the official blog of The Land of the Free. Then authors started to contact me about syndicating their work through that site as well so American Conservative Daily started to become a lot like The Land of the Free except that right now it deals with daily opinions where as the Land of the Free currently deals a lot more with authors that publish on a much more infrequent basis. Then I moved my own thoughts to a new blog (Liberty Reborn) but still kept them syndicated here as well.
RRG: And it is correct to say that American Conservative Daily presents opinion from a right of center view, is it not?
Mr. Jackson: Hence the name. When ACD was first being kicked about, I had a lot of names in mind but what I ultimately decided on was that I wanted the site’s name to be straight forward so that you knew what you were getting when you came here. I wasn’t hiding from anyone.
RRG: We have had some discussions about the future of American Conservative Daily off the record, are you ready to talk about any of those?
Mr. Jackson: Well, somewhat. There are a lot of potential changes that I have talked with you and the other moderators about because I value your input and because you do the job for free because you believe in the site so I don’t want to burden you with anything you would think you could not handle. We have had a lot of discussion about expanding the site to include more authors, and we have done that recently, as well as adding more resources to become a good clearing house of conservative opinions. Of course, as you and many of our regular readers are aware, our growth recently has also resulted in site performance issues at times. It seems like every time we are about ready to try something new our visitors increase and push us to a brink that requires a lot of time to work around. Then we have to reevaluate whether or not we want to go ahead and implement a new feature that will increase our sever load. We’re trying hard to get ahead of the curve but when you grow so fast that is not always possible.
Basically, in a nutshell, I think that everyone should be ready to see us as even more of a clearing house for information and opinions than we already are in the near future.
RRG: What have been the biggest challenges for American Conservative Daily in your opinion?
Mr. Jackson: Growth and the rapid rate of it for one. Another that goes hand in hand with that is that as we grow we are getting a lot more attention from those on the left who, needless to say, do not like us very much. We get the standard email threats from liberals telling us how they are going to contact our hosting provider and have us shut down, which never happens, as well as the slews of hate mail that are jamming up our inboxes, trolls popping by trying to post liberal claptrap and liberal bloggers whipping up their own (usually meager) readers into a frenzy over something that gets discussed here. But really they are just nuisances. The first problem of growth is really the big problem.
RRG: What is the one biggest misconception about this American Conservative Daily?
Mr. Jackson: I think that there are two that are equally big. First is that liberals think that this site is a place for them to get published. Every couple weeks some liberal blogger writes and asks if they can get published here. When I tell them no, they tend to get a little antsy screaming about freedom of the press or free speech or their “right” to counter what others are saying here on this blog itself. They are of course free to take on this blog and its contributors on their own sites and give us all the free publicity in the world, but they think for some reason that they are owed space here to do such. Of course, when you look at their blogs and do some research into how few visitors their sites get you understand why they are upset; no one is reading them and they want some free promotion. Second, in terms of big misconceptions, is that just because something is published here by another author that it means I personally agree with it. Even after adding a clear disclaimer to refute this silly notion it still happens that someone gets upset claiming I said something that was actually said by another author. Authors that are constantly out of line with my overriding beliefs are given the ceremonial boot, but those that disagree with me on one or a handful of issues are here and publishing daily. Conservatism, I believe, thrives when there is at least a healthy debate on issues that are indeed debatable. Now, if you are going to try to promote ideas that are so intellectually vacant, claim them as conservatism and do so on a regular basis then you are not going to post here.
RRG: Have you ever made a mistake with an author? First letting them post and then realizing that they were not right for the site?
Mr. Jackson: Yes, Grant Swank was an example of an author that I vetted but didn’t do a good job of vetting. Once we started syndicating his posts it became clear that he was not quite of the caliber that I demand and he was given the boot for his anti-Mormon mumblings that were just vitriol laced screeds as well as his repeated, repeated and repeated some more accusations about Obama being a Muslim. It was a shame because he did have some very good opinions but they were drowned out by the previously mentioned tirades. But I was certainly not going to keep him around based on the hope that he would cut out such tripe.
RRG: What qualifications do you look at when signing up new authors?
Mr. Jackson: We look, right now, for authors that publish multiple times a week if not daily and have a conservative take. All of our authors right now are general in their posts and cover a lot of different topics. There are some things that conservative authors really do need to avoid however if they want to be accepted here and stay on as a contributor. First is that they remain true to conservative ideology and the belief in inalienable rights and liberty. Second is that they have to be able to make compelling arguments as to why what they are saying does indeed just this. Third is they need to avoid degenerating into mindless banter like constantly blaming the “neo-cons” and that sort of lowbrow, nonintellectual stuff.
RRG: How do you keep American Conservative Daily running?
Mr. Jackson: Well, first of all, because my great moderator staff does a lot of the work for free because you guys and gals are passionate about conservatism. But the way we, and by we I mean Land of the Free Studios, Inc., keep American Conservative Daily, and all of our websites for that matter, running is by selling t-shirts, books, mugs and other paraphernalia through our shop here, sites like cafepress and zazzle, and also our affiliation with Amazon’s affiliate program and Google’s Adsense programs. We fund the entire company in this way so, at the risk of sounding like a shameless self promoter, please make sure to visit our stores and buy something if you want us to stay in business.
RRG: And how is the business doing in general?
Mr. Jackson: We are paying our bills and we have money to help us grow. So we are doing very well in general. Liberals like to kid themselves that conservative themed paraphernalia has no market, but it really does quite well.
RRG: Do you have any concerns for the future of American Conservative Daily considering the results of the last election?
Mr. Jackson: I think that anytime you get a man who can recite Marxist claptrap flawlessly everyone should be worried. As for being worried about this site under President Obama and Queen Nancy and Prince Harry, yeah, I have some concerns. Especially if they get a new Fairness Doctrine implemented against radio because the internet will not be far behind. But the truth is that the election of Obama has been nothing but good for this site. We have been getting a ton of new visitors each week and have been growing at an even fast rate since November 4th.
We’ll fight to the bitter end. That much I promise you.
To be continued in Part 2 tomorrow …
Contributor's website:
Content posted by users from other sites is posted for commentary and news purposes under fair use and each author is responsible for their own postings and a particular posting should not be construed as being endorsed by this site or its owner.
One Response to “Interview With ACD Founder J.J. Jackson (Part 1 of 2)”
Leave a Reply
Loading ...Recommended Reading:
[...] Continued from Part 1 [...]