Welcome Home

Welcome to GeorgiaPol.com. We hope you stay a while.

Let’s start with a bit about ourselves and why we are here. GeorgiaPol.com strives to be “the” media hub for news, analysis, opinion, and discussion of politics and policy in the state of Georgia. Hopefully that’s a vision that is sufficiently broad, strategically focused, and necessarily flexible enough for us to be what we want to be today, and will need to be in the future.

Those that begin as authors with us today have all been contributors to a similar effort for up to a decade. Comparisons are therefore unavoidable. We start today fresh however. As such, I continue on with a few words about who and what we are, and some about what we are not.

“We” are a group individuals that represent the political spectrum in Georgia. Our background ideologies range from an Occupy Atlanta organizer to a Freedom Caucus apologist. These talented people speak individually and only for themselves. “We” do not have an organizational opinion. Citations such as “GeorgiaPol said….” Or “GeorgiaPol endorses…” are and will be categorically false. We are a collection of voices, and do not speak as one.

Our authors are here not in the pursuit of a singular agenda nor to participate in groupthink for a uniform opinion. This includes the opinions and the professional or private agendas of the publisher.

What is asked of contributors is to bring their best thoughts, ideas, knowledge, and perspective to shape the political and policy discussions of our state. This will include original reporting, news, analysis, and opinion.

As is customary with new media, articles may not be as clearly defined within those rigid categories. As such, we will not pretend that our authors do not have biases or agendas. Rather, we believe the true honest debate is one where these biases are worn on our sleeves.

The politics of our country and our state is crying out for a legitimate battle of ideas. Those who participate here should believe in competition. Should you chose to participate, bring your A-game. We’ll each try to bring ours. Please come prepared for and to participate in a fair discussion.

And yes, while trying to maintain this idealist pursuit of high minded debate, our writers will still try to begin these conversations with wit, humor, and other elements of personal style. We shall endeavor to balance the desire to be entertaining with the need to remember the bigger picture goals.  We know you’ll remind us when we may have pushed too far. We hope to laugh a lot – and that you will too – on this journey.

Unlike other blogs that are either banning comments or allowing free-range unmonitored comment sections that allow ideas to be strangled by the weeds of vitriol and randomness, our comments section will be heavily moderated.

We will soon post a list of written rules for these comments. They will be somewhat flexible, subject to change, and always up to the discretion of the moderators as they see fit. But the first rule of commenting here is our golden rule: Bring to the discussion a tone of debate that you wish to receive in return.

I wish to make this clear because we endeavor to be an interactive community, not an outward facing factory of propaganda. The basis for any community worth becoming part of and growing alongside is the quality of life. For internet based communities, quality of life begins with tone. You are responsible for monitoring yours until others have to make that decision for you. Let’s avoid that.

You should note that everyone here is participating as a volunteer. At this time there is no revenue model for this site and one is not immediately anticipated. Each contributor is expected to disclose outside conflicts if and when they exist for articles they author.

Each contributor has his or her own reason for doing this as an unpaid avocation. How much of that is articulated publicly will be up to them. As publisher, I will address my own reasons in a separate personal post.

Above all, those that have been asked to participate here as authors and contributors are here not because of a common agenda, but because we can agree on a common principle: We believe that an informed, honest, and vigorous debate provides us better candidates, better elected officials, better politics, and better policies.

And we believe the internet and political media as a whole needs at least one small corner where fear, anger, vitriol, and obstinance yield to those in search of hope, optimism, and fellow travelers who seek a better state and nation despite the different path we may prefer to get there.

We realize this is not the conventional (i.e. marketable) approach for most organizations that look similar to us. We know that’s what makes us unique. And we hope that’s what helps you feel at home, appreciate the quality of life, and makes you want to stay awhile.

Welcome Home.

Charlie Harper,
Publisher