Well, two posts ago I said my next post would be about marketing efforts for Documenting America. Events of the weekend caused me to alter that, and I’m tempted to alter it again. Last night we were in a string of strong thunder storms that spawned a number of tornados, strong straight-line winds, and much rain. That caused us to move to the basement twice, and keep our eyes glued to television to watch the progress of the storms. But, thunder storms are common here (not in January), so it almost isn’t newsworthy.

My thoughts for marketing Documenting America are to simultaneously send forty query letters, ten to newspapers in each of the four states closest to me: Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri. While not really an idealogical column, I’m sure DA will reflect my conservative politics without my even trying. These four states are all conservative, and should be good targets. I plan to query smaller papers in smaller towns and cities, both weeklies and dailies. I will query based on not marketing to competing newspapers.

Why not just target one of my local papers? Or the larger papers in these states? I will include two of the newspapers in the area that are non-competing, including the one that published the four trial ones. Obviously, I’m a no-name, and the larger papers may be unwilling to take on a columnist with almost no publishing track record. Smaller papers, I hope, will be more willing to do so. And, if I go with the larger papers, with their larger distribution, staying with only non-competing papers will reduce the number of potential papers. The fewer I can market to, the fewer I’m likely to be accepted in. So, if I market the column to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, since it has state-wide distribution, I could not market it to anyone else till I heard back from them. I don’t want my options tied up like that.

What is the likelihood of success? I’d tell you my dreams for this, but you’d laugh at me. Let me simply say I believe the column idea is unique, the writing is good, the length is right, the frequency is right, and the country is ripe for this kind of column. A few beta readers, from diverse backgrounds, and all found it worthwhile and something they would read. For all these reasons, I believe I’ll be accepted at more than one newspaper.

The next document I wrote on was a speech by Carl Schurz before the Massachusetts legislature in the pre-civil war years. The subject of the speech was True Americanism. Although Schurz was from Wisconsin at the time, he travelled to Massachusetts to address the legislature on an issue then before them. He contrasted America to the Roman Empire. I found the speech uplifting and inspiring. I immediately thought of how this could be worked into a Documenting America column, and wrote the piece. Once again it was deemed worthy by the local paper, and was published.

After this came two letters, one from James Madison to George Washington, then Washington’s reply, during the Articles of Confederation era (1783-1789). Madison was concerned that the colonies were going astray from the ideals upon which the Revolution was based, and were not living up to the Treaty of Paris. Washington concurred. I found these letters to have inspiring and informative information, so wrote a pair of articles and they were published.

The program for guest editorials allowed only one per quarter, appearing in the Sunday Op-ed section. About this time the editor who was a friend from church moved away, to Washington state, and continuance of the guest editorial program was in question. I decided to back off this for a while and concentrate on other areas of writing interest. I now wonder if I made a mistake, and should instead have continued to write the columns, and do the research for self-syndication. More on that in my next post.

The people of the United States of America don’t know their history. This fact has been proved over and over by surveys, man-on-the-street interviews, and scientifically structured studies. Too many of our citizens are ignorant—and choose to remain ignorant—of the forces and people, the trends and the decisions, that built upon each other to forge this great nation.

If they would just read—read the documents that tell us about our past. I’m not talking about the well-known documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Gettysburg Address. Our nation has been papered with an incredible number of documents, from diaries to letters to presidential proclamations to Supreme Court decisions to sermons to newspapers to pamphlets to editorials to too many to name.

My newspaper column, Documenting America, pulls documents from America’s past, analyses them, and ties them to some current event or issue. Using a mixture of document excepts, analysis, and interpretation, with each column readers will learn a little bit of American history they didn’t know (or long ago forgot), think about how what is in that document affected the building of our country, and consider whether and how those principles still apply. As much as possible, I try to end with an upbeat thought.

In this blog, I will discuss the process of how the column came together, what’s coming up in future columns, and possibly some additional analysis of a document featured in a past column.