[Lnc-business] MOTION to relax publishing restrictions

Thu Jan 3 18:31:44 EST 2013

Starchild:

I understand what you're after, but I do not think this is the right way to
do it.

Some specifics: 

Nothing can be considered approved if it is not rejected  - let's change our
rules so that a motion passes if there are not nine votes against it. Then a
motion would pass with a vote of nine against and one for.  Not a good idea.

The APRC can only reject for very narrow guidelines, so we could not reject
because a blog is essentially redundant, or contains gross misspelling
errors, or is factually incorrect, or is too long, etc.  There MUST be some
form of editing and scheduling.

But most of all, this motion is a great example of a bad mail ballot - too
many words, and too much discussion needed to get to a passable motion.  If
this gains enough support for a mail ballot, I will vote against it, just
because we cannot amend on a mail ballot.

Geoffrey Neale

From: Lnc-business [mailto:lnc-business-bounces at hq.lp.org] On Behalf Of
Starchild
Sent: Thursday, January 03, 2013 11:43 AM
To: lnc-business at hq.lp.org
Subject: [Lnc-business] MOTION to relax publishing restrictions

Arvin,

            I strongly agree with you and Paulie that our current policies
regarding blogging are overly restrictive, and it seems like this problem
should be relatively easily addressed. Accordingly, I will make the
following motion in line with your call to action. These changes would relax
our restrictions of online publication while simultaneously increasing the
authority of the Advertising & Publications Review Committee as a safeguard
against the publication of inappropriate materials, and by streamlining the
language in Section II.6, would actually make the burgeoning Policy Manual
slightly shorter despite the expanded role of the committee:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------

MOVED that Section II.6 of the LNC Policy Manual be revised to read as
follows...

Section II.6 PARTY COMMUNICATIONS

1) Role of elected leaders

The Chair serves as the Party's chief spokesperson and may preempt other LNC
members 

when representing the Party to the public, including the business community,
media, 

elected officials, and government agencies, or when planning or directing
investigations 

or negotiations pertaining to cooperative efforts of the Party with other
groups or the 

acquisition or sale of major assets.

LNC members and state affiliate chairs or their designees may publish blog
entries 

on LP.org, with approval of the Advertising & Publications Review Committee
(APRC) 

being both necessary and sufficient for such publication.

            ...and that Section II.2 of the LNC Policy Manual be revised to
read as follows:

Section II.2 COMMITTEE SCOPE AND RESPONSIBILITIES

1) Advertising & Publication Review Committee

The APRC is responsible for reviewing public communications of the Party and

rejecting for publication or distribution any materials it finds to be
non-compliant with 

the LP Bylaws or Platform or contrary to the Non-Aggression Principle.

All proposed public communications on behalf of the Party for which written
copy, audio,

or video exists shall be submitted to the APRC for review. APRC members
shall be given at 

least 24 hours to review submitted materials, unless a communication is
extremely time-

sensitive and such advance notification is not possible, in which case it
may be submitted 

to the APRC simultaneously with publication or dissemination. However this
exception 

shall not apply to LP News, Liberty Pledge News, proposed party literature,
or similar 

printed materials of a more enduring nature, which shall always be made
available to 

APRC members for review at least 24 hours prior to the final proofs being
approved for 

printing and distribution.

APRC members shall review all communications submitted for their approval as
quickly as 

possible while exercising due diligence. If a proposed communication is
extremely time-sensitive 

and the APRC has not reviewed it within 6 hours of submission (24 hours for
less urgent 

matters), it may be published and disseminated prior to APRC review with the
approval of 

the Chair or Executive Director. 

Rejection of any proposed communication shall require a majority vote of
APRC members,

and communications shall not be rejected for any reasons other than those
listed above. 

The APRC shall give immediate notice of any rejected communication to the
LNC along 

with the rationale for its decision, citing any relevant Bylaw or Platform
planks. Decisions 

of the APRC may be overturned by majority vote of the LNC.

If the APRC rejects a communication after it has been published or
disseminated to the public, 

the committee shall prepare a notice of retraction which shall be issued in
as timely a manner 

as possible via the same medium in which the original communication was
issued, unless there 

is an LNC motion to overrule the LNC, in which case publication of the
retraction shall be put 

on hold pending the outcome of that motion. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------

          I invite co-sponsors of this motion, welcome discussion, and
resign myself to the inevitable criticisms.  :-)

Love & Liberty,

                                    ((( starchild )))

At-Large Representative, Libertarian National Committee

                                  (415) 625-FREE

On Jan 2, 2013, at 12:08 PM, Arvin Vohra wrote:

I agree with Paulie on this. 

BTW, anyone who wants to can already *submit* blog content. The problem is
that it has to go through two steps (at least it did last time I checked)

1. APRC, to make sure it follows the platform and bylaws, as well as doesn't
have any other major problems.

2. Staff approval, which is wayyy more restrictive.

Last I checked, the following were the rules.

1. Total word count: 150-600 words. For videos, closer to 150 or even less!
Text can be
longer.

2. Breakdown:

.10-40% - what's wrong with government / damage it does

.10-30% - proposal and any explanation of how it works that's needed

.5-20% - preempt / rebut anticipated objections

.30-60% - immediate and direct benefits to voters

These rules have been put forward by Carla, with Geoff's approval and
oversight.

To me, this is not just overly restrictive, but ineffective in some
important situations, as well as totally ludicrous in others. I mean, if you
write an article about the difference between Libertarians and
Constitutionalists (a popular blog post before these micromanagerial
restrictions were added), and pontificated for 60% of the article about the
immediate and direct benefit to voters about knowing the difference, you
would look insane, and also that would heavily decrease the virality in
social media. 

>From the sense I got, even more specific restrictions were put on video
production, which is one reason that video production crawled to a halt in
the last months.

Now that the election is over, the LNC and the State Chairs of this party no
longer need to be treated like 6th grade remedial writing students. I would
say that APRC approval is enough. That's what the committee exists for.

We have so far erred on the side of caution that we have turned our website
into a dud. It's not the colors that really cripple the site. It is the
one-note, heavy handed polispeak, rarely updated content.

This is one of those cases in which I believe description of the benefits is
actually in order:

Imagine if the particular argument that powerfully resonated with a few
passersby at a LP booth could be heard by not just 3 or 4 people, but by
thousands. Imagine if people would say, "Hey, I really liked the article I
read on LP.org. You guys are much more honest and authentic, and I can get
behind that. There were a couple articles I didn't identify with, so I just
ignored those." Imagine if the LP members could share varied and interesting
articles, with their non-Lib friends.

Imagine if some articles had a soft touch, and used the soft sell approach
that Dr. Lark has used so effectively throughout the libertarian movement.
Imagine if others had the hard sell approach that Harry Browne used so
brilliantly. Imagine if we had some articles that could help shift the views
of our statist friends a drop at a time, and others that called to those in
Campaign for Liberty, and got them to register Libertarian.

Imagine if a single article, not despite breaking the above mold, but
because it did, went explosively viral OUTSIDE of libertarian circles.
Imagine if our persuasion was no so limited to super-inner-circle stuff like
beating the difference in a race that normal people actually wanted to read
it. Imagine if we could tap into the thousands of professional writers in
this party, and turn LP.org into a site that gets not 30,000 hits a week,
but 30,000,000,

No matter how much we prettify the site, restricted content will always be
restricted.

Now for my call to action:

We call for the immediate opening of the LP.org blog to all LNC members and
state chairs, with approval by the APRC being both necessary and sufficient
to get a post on the blog. If this experiment doesn't work, we can reverse
the rule change immediately. 

Anyone want to cosponsor a motion?

-Arvin

On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 1:53 PM, <travellingcircus at gmail.com> wrote:
Can we make LP News available electronically and/or integrate it better with
LP blog? 

A) I would like to share articles on IPR and other places. Other people may
want to share them with their friends by email, on facebook, etc. 

B) Even if the answer to (A) is no I would like to be able to receive LP
News while I am on the road, which is most of the time. I just received the
new LP News and it is much improved over what I have seen in several years.
We should make it easy to share the good news. 

C) LP blog is not updated much. LP News stories already exist and are
already content that we have sent the membership (ie approved), so they
should be an obvious source of LP blog posts that should take very little
staff time to post (or I would be willing to post them as a volunteer if I
can get them emailed to me and a login to do so). 

D) Can we get a link somewhere that would make it more obvious that people
can subscribe to LP News without becoming LP members? If there is already
such a link at LP.org I am not noticing it 

E) Now that the election is over I would like to see if we can restore the
ability of LNC members and/or volunteers to submit LP Blog content. It's
fine if we have to have it go through APRC before it goes out or whatever
means we need to use to ensure that we don't embarrass ourselves. 

As much of this as can be done without LNC motions would be awesome. 

If LNC motions are a prerequisite for making any of it happen, I ask that
full members please submit motions to make it happen. 

Thanks

Paul Frankel 415-690-6352
LNC Alt Region 7 (AL, MS, OK, LA, TX)

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