I heard someone suggest the other day that, “in Internet time,” every 90 days equals a year.
I have no idea why that would be or what that means, but, by that questionable standard, WND would be turning 36 today.
By normal standards of telling time, however, WND turns 9 years old today.
When you think about it, that’s quite an achievement. When WND began May 5, 1997, there was no Google. The Internet was a different landscape altogether. Some of the biggest names on the Net from back then have now been all but forgotten.
Remember Compuserve? Do you remember Prodigy? On the news front, back then, one of he biggest names was Nando.net. Try that link now and see what’s there.
But WND, the largest general news service of all those begun specifically for the Internet, is still here – bigger and better than ever.
And, with our 9th anniversary today, we kick off what I see as a 19-month celebration of our first decade on the Net. From now through December 2007, we’re planning conferences, parties, galas and other festivities to mark the occasion.
I remember May 5, 1997, like it was yesterday. It seems impossible that it was nine years ago.
Elizabeth and I had grand aspirations from the start. The idea was to create on this new medium a news service that pulled no punches, blazed new trails, recaptured the watchdog spirit of the American press and fearlessly skewered sacred cows.
Eight years ago, my wife was the self-taught webmaster and “high-tech guru” and I was the editorial staff. The whole thing was cooked up nightly in our bedroom-office – mostly after we put the kids to sleep.
We started without fanfare because, truthfully, we had no idea of what we were doing – or how it might be received. Nobody had done it before. We were creating a nightly electronic newspaper every day – just the two of us.
I had some experience with newspapers – having run major metro dailies in Los Angeles and Sacramento and done just about everything one can do in that industry, from reporting to publishing.
In the beginning, WND was primarily a place to go to get a picture of what was going on around the world through links. We always had a few original news stories and there was my daily column – and, by the way, you can read the first one here. Occasionally Elizabeth would write a column, too. She still does.
However, it didn’t take long for us to see that we were on to something with the simple WND formula. Almost immediately, thousands of people discovered us. I don’t know how, other than to say that we got a lot of help from hundreds of Internet links and talk-radio hosts from coast to coast.
In fact, we have heard from hundreds of talk-show hosts – some big names and other local radio personalities – who say WND remains an essential component of their show prep.
Anyway, within a month or two, we couldn’t help but notice we had thousands of people checking out WND every day. So, it inevitably became a bigger part of our lives each and every day for the next nine years.
By the summer of 1997, we were adding other original columns. Alan Keyes was among the first and still writes for us occasionally. The late David Hackworth joined shortly thereafter. We also began running news stories by a handful of staff writers.
We’ve come a long way since then. We now have many regular columnists, and several, including myself, have been launched into national syndication after first appearing here.
We now have a dedicated and growing full-time editorial staff that includes our first, permanent foreign bureau in Jerusalem, headed by Aaron Klein.
Has WND made an impact over these last eight years? I’d say so:
- WorldNetDaily was voted the most popular website in the world for nearly 100 weeks in a row – every week, in fact, until the ranking agency itself closed down;
- WorldNetDaily is consistently ranked as the “stickiest” newssite on the Internet – meaning readers average more time on it than any other;
- WorldNetDaily draws around 8 million “unique visitors” (meaning different people) every month;
- WorldNetDaily attracts between 40 million and 60 million pageviews per month;
- WorldNetDaily is now quoted widely in the establishment press and on national television virtually every single day.
- WorldNetDaily was the first content site on the Internet to begin a book-publishing imprint that has revolutionized the publishing industry in many ways.
- And WorldNetDaily was the first Internet content site to launch a daily, nationally syndicated radio show based on that content – in fact, we’ve done it three times.
WND is leading an information revolution. I don’t think I exaggerate when I say this. It is read in every nation around the world daily. It is read by the most influential newsmakers and by those in the media who report on them. But it is also the primary source of news for a growing number of regular people, particularly in the United States.
Pretty amazing, considering the humble beginnings. But, I believe, this revolution is still in its infancy. I will predict – right here and now – that WND will one day soon become the largest news force on the Internet.
And to make this challenge more interesting, I’ll even explain our secret right here in front of all the competition. WorldNetDaily is a hit because we do journalism the old-fashioned way. We believe the central role of a free press in a free society is to serve as a watchdog on government. We believe in investigative reporting into government waste, fraud, corruption and abuse. We believe we must be credible, relentless and fiercely independent to succeed. And we believe the truth will set all of us free.
That’s our trade secret. And, with God’s help, we’re going to take it to the top.
