It was 15 years ago today that Elizabeth Farah and I got the crazy idea to start what we deemed at the time as “the first Internet newspaper.”
Even many of our closest friends and supporters were, shall we say, skeptical.
It wasn’t exactly that we didn’t have the credentials for such an undertaking. Elizabeth was a gifted marketing person and adept at learning new skills like HTML, the new language of this medium. I had spent 25 years in the newspaper business, the last 10 actually running major market dailies.
It was a question of resources. We didn’t have any.
It was also a question of doing something that had not previously been attempted before. It had not.
Yet, I was convinced that a national or global newspaper devoted to the honest pursuit of truth – no matter where it led – had great potential and represented a great public service, one for which I believed God had specifically trained me.
Since there was nothing else like “WorldNetDaily,” as it was known then, it became something of an instant success – at least in terms of building an audience rapidly. Between Matt Drudge’s uncanny sense of news judgment and WND’s fledgling news-gathering team, the New Media were born.
You can read the whole story behind it – including the trials and the tribulations – in my autobiography, “Stop the Presses: The Inside Story of the New Media Revolution.”
But, suffice it to say that May 4, 1997, was an auspicious day in that revolution.
This was an endeavor built on an actual mission statement – one we have attempted to remain faithful to over the last 15 years: “WND is an independent news company dedicated to uncompromising journalism, seeking truth and justice and revitalizing the role of the free press as a guardian of liberty. We remain faithful to the traditional and central role of a free press in a free society – as a light exposing wrongdoing, corruption and abuse of power. We also seek to stimulate a free-and-open debate about the great moral and political ideas facing the world and to promote freedom and self-government by encouraging personal virtue and good character.”
We take that mission very seriously – and even our harshest critics would have to agree that WND is a fiercely independent news company committed to hard-hitting investigative reporting of fraud, waste, abuse and corruption in government and other powerful institutions.
Since those early pioneering days, WND has expanded its boundaries – most notably into book publishing and moviemaking. We also maintain one of the most vibrant e-commerce sites on the Internet, the WND Superstore. The next big hurdle for WND is to become a TV superstation, as we develop new video content and explore the new emerging delivery methods.
I could wax eloquent all day about what WND has accomplished – the big stories we have broken, the number of “firsts” the company achieved, the friends and allies we’ve met along the way, the great team we have assembled.
But today I just want to ask for your prayers and continued support, because I know none of our success would be possible without you – those who have come to depend on WND for their news and information.
Bless you for helping to make my wildest professional dreams come true.
Many challenges lie ahead. In fact, we face them every day – lawsuits, threats, intimidation, coercion, boycotts, slander, copyright violations, plagiarism, you name it.
But with your support and God’s blessing, I have every confidence we’ll be around for at least another 15 years.
If you appreciate what we uniquely do at WND, I hope you will lift a glass of wine in celebration with Elizabeth and me and the entire WND family today.
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