Why your visit to CNBCfix matters
Posted Friday, Feb. 27, 2009
Thank you for visiting this site.
We mean it.
And if you’re feeling this tough economy, a special thanks.
It’s obvious that someone operating a Web site called CNBCfix.com would be interested in the stock market. Thankfully, in times like these, that has always been just a side project to a traditional job.
This writer has worked in daily print journalism. And in the last couple of years, known highly talented colleagues who were led out the door by a crestfallen security guard, carrying favorite old, yellowed clippings, plaques, small awards, maybe some notebooks and lists of contacts, if allowed.
A few were not effective employees. The majority were excellent journalists, let go strictly because their salary and skills no longer fit into an undeniably shrinking structure.
There is no less demand whatsoever for the product they produced. It is read daily by CEOs, mayors, governors, senators, even presidents. What these journalists did, and their remaining colleagues now do, gets mentioned in State of the Union addresses. Readership and interest in news, including online, is at all-time highs.
Throughout CNBCfix.com you will notice a strong free-market, independent viewpoint — an adamant belief that jobs, businesses and even industries must be given freedom to operate, and freedom to fail, if that is the natural course of economics.
Sometimes that “natural course” catches up with people who most certainly do not deserve it. Those people may be auto workers. Construction workers. Sales associates. Bank tellers. Hospitality workers. Realtors. Journalists.
They will struggle with immediate concerns — how to pay the bills — and then deal with longer-term issues, which may include feelings of lesser self-worth or insensitive responses from skeptical friends or relatives who think they know better.
But they will be OK. Economic displacement is temporary. Hard work, innovation, productivity and ideas are forever. That is where CNBCfix comes in. This site, less than a year old, rose from the meltdown in daily print media. It exists to provide something people want.
Surely, odds are against it. The Web is awash in similar concepts, many with ridiculously more firepower. HuffingtonPost raised $37 million at the end of 2008. Salon.com lost — lost — at least $83 million after a few years.
The CNBCfix.com budget is very close to $0. There is nothing for a Web designer; HTML programming skill is something that must regularly be picked up on the fly. There is no photo budget, unfortunately, as much as it would be great to post the faces of CNBC. (If you’ve ever been embarrassed by work you’ve done, you should’ve seen this site during its first few weeks.) There are also no annoying advertisements that waste time, slow your browsing and bounce across your screen over the editorial copy.
What does CNBCfix.com offer? Information, as fast as your browser delivers. A zest for the news, for CNBC television, for the stock market. Honesty in the posts, fairness to the subjects. Determination to constantly improve this site. You see it on the banner atop this page: Dedicated to the highest standards of journalism.
We’re fighting for every click we get.
Ronald Reagan declared at age 81, “While I take inspiration from the past, like most Americans, I live for the future.”
So do we.
Thank you for visiting CNBCfix.com. Please come back.
You’ve given us a chance.
E-mail: comments@cnbcfix.com