Welcome to our Common Sense News Network
Welcome to our Common Sense News Network and our course on how to build a secure news website! Our goal is to help you create your own news website using free and secure web building tools.
Why Start Your Own Local News Website?
Throughout our nation’s history, a free and independent press has been the key to overthrowing corrupt rulers. Our first revolution began with the courage of newspaper writers such as Ben Franklin who understood the power of the press to persuade people to rise up against an unjust King.
Never has there been a greater need for independent news sources than there is today. All of the traditional news sources from newspapers to radio to television have been taken over by wealthy multinational corporations.
Our freedom of thought, our ability to communicate and our right to free and equal elections are all at risk due to the lack of honest, independent news sources.
The corporate takeover of our news has also led to a dramatic decline in local news reporting – which in turn has led to a lack of community. It has also led to an inability to learn and share the truth about important issues affecting all of us. Instead, we are bombarded with fear-driven propaganda by the Information War Machine.
Nearly everything they see on TV News and nearly everything they read in corporate newspapers are carefully crafted lies. We are like fish swimming in increasingly polluted waters.
Thankfully, the American people are starting to catch on to this scam. Gallup Polls used to show that two out of three people trusted the corporate media to tell the truth. Now, after decades of lying to the public, the majority of the American people no longer trust the corporate media.
Two out of three Americans are seeking alternative sources of information. They are increasingly turning to independent online news websites.
Online News Websites are already the most trusted news source
In the past 10 years, Internet news websites have passed TV, radio and newspapers as the Number One source of news. According to Pew Research, in 2024, 86% of U.S. adults say they at least sometimes get news online from a News website (from a smartphone, computer or tablet). Over half, 55% say they often get their news online from a news website. Only 30% say they often get their news from a TV network. Just 10% get their news from a radio station. And only 5% get their news from a traditional print newspaper. https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/news-platform-fact-sheet/
Every year, the shift to online news grows more apparent. It is time for a new kind of independent media – one run not for pursuit of profit but for the pursuit of truth and the sharing of wisdom. It is time that We the People reclaim control over our own local news!
Here are nine more reasons to make the effort to start your own community news website:
Reason #1 There is a war going on between Good versus Evil… and currently Evil is winning!
Reason #2 There is also a war going on between Freedom versus Slavery. We should not take our freedom for granted:
Reason #3 There is also a war going on between Truth versus Lies. One of the main reasons to start your own community news website is to help members of your community learn the truth!
Reason #4 There is also a war going on over the future of our nation and the future of our currency. The National Debt is now so high that we are paying more than a trillion dollars a year just in interest payments to corrupt Wall Street bankers.
Reason #5 There is also a war going on over the security of our elections:
Reason #6 There is also a war going on between real science and fake science. An independent community news website can help readers learn the difference!
Reason #7 There is definitely a war going on against parents right now. You can help parents by promoting meetings of local parents that are independent from the insane policies of the Washington State PTA.
Reason #8 The drug corporation controlled media is waging a war against our children by promoting the Toxic Trans agenda.
Reason #9 There is also a war against our girls and fairness in girls sports. Just last year, a biological male won the Washington Girls State Track Championship:
There is also a war going on in our state prohibiting gender confused kids and requiring that their only option is to take toxic Trans Drugs:
As a result of these insane policies, Washington kids now suffer from among the worst mental health problems of any kids in America:
The Rise of Lies
The billionaire plan to take over our government and our economy began with the consolidation of the media and the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine in the 1980s. The Fairness Doctrine required major media sources to provide both sides of the debate on important public issues as a condition of getting their license to use the public airwaves.
With the loss of the Fairness Doctrine, the American people were no longer allowed to hear or read debate from both sides on major issues. Instead, we are only allowed to hear one side, the billionaire side of the debate, filled with lies exactly as predicted by George Orwell in the book 1984.
Today, we are witnessing the results of decades of media domination by the billionaires. Our elections have turned into a corrupt bribery and kickback scheme with fake billionaire sponsored politicians who claim to be on the side of the people but then write new laws to allow billionaires to take over our public airwaves and get billions in illegal tax breaks.
We are forced to pay for an out of control war machine that costs ten times more than the military spending by all the other nations of the world combined. This is trillions of dollars that could have and should have been invested in our young adults to provide them with the education they need to compete in the global marketplace of ideas.
At the bottom of this entire corrupt rigged system is the billionaire controlled media – which has managed to keep the people of the world in the dark by diverting their attention away from this robbery and onto fake meaningless topics like the million dollar divorces of Hollywood movie stars. Never in our history has their been such a concentration of the media in the hands of a few corporations controlled by a few billionaires.
Today, the majority of the public media is controlled by just 3 corporations: Comcast (NBC & CNN), Disney (ABC & ESPN) and News Corp (FOX NEWS). Together these three mega corporations account for $150 billion in annual revenue. Media researcher Ben Bagdikian, has written several editions of a book called The Media Monopoly about the danger of the media monopoly for the past three decades. Below is a graph of his analysis of the consolidation of the number of corporations controlling the majority of the media in the US.
Instead of having lots of choices, what people really wind up watching and reading are the same phony marketing slogans repeated over and over again. Consolidation of the media in the hands of a few billionaires makes it impossible for the public to learn the truth about the corruption that destroys our economy and our political system.
Not only has the quantity of sources plunged, but the accuracy of reporting also dropped as experienced reporters were fired and replaced by “talking heads” that do little more than repeat the press releases issued by their corporate masters.
The same powerful people who sit in the boards of the corporations of the military/industrial complex, the large banks, drug companies and oil companies also sit in the boards of the large media corporations. They have the power to hire editors and reporters who mislead the public and fire editors and reporters who tell the truth. Over time, this has led to the current culture of lies in the corporate news media.
This concentration of of the news media is so complete than people who get their information from the billionaire controlled media become brainwashed into believing that the unemployment rate is only 5% and economic recovery is just around the corner – when in fact, the debt level in the US is at the highest level in history. When the fake economy crashes, what will really be around the corner is the Second Great Depression.
How to Solve the Information War Problem
The only way to solve this Information War problem is to start winning elections. But this will not happen until voters are better informed!
Our plan is to help voters become better informed by helping concerned citizens learn how to start their own Community News websites all across Washington state.
How We the People Can Reclaim the Media
It used to be that to create a fully functioning online news website required a team of computer programmers to hand code the website on a daily basis. However, thanks to recent improvements in a web building content management system called Joomla, it is now possible for each of us to create and maintain our own online news website without any knowledge of computer programming – at a cost of only a few dollars per month! Each of us can offer the public an alternative to corporate controlled news.
Why does online news website security matter?
Unfortunately, there is also a Technology War being waged against us. It is certain your News website will be attacked within minutes of going online. This is because the Internet is currently a Hacker Heaven – where hackers make millions of dollars by hacking websites, stealing and selling data and/or turning your News website into a Bitcoin mining machine!
The most common way hackers take over websites is by gaining access to your Windows computer and downloading your website administrator passwords. Every year, Windows computers suffer from hundreds of “remote access” (online) backdoors:
To prevent these Windows hacker attacks, we show you how to create and use a secure Linux computer for posting articles to your news website.
The second most common way hackers gain access to your news website is by exploiting vulnerabilities in whatever tools you are using to build your news website. The most common of these “Content Management Systems” is called Wordpress. Unfortunately, Wordpress, like Windows suffers from hundreds of vulnerabilities every year:
To prevent Wordpress hacker attacks, we show you how to use a more secure and powerful Content Management System called Joomla. We teach you how to build a secure news website where you have full control over the appearance, content and function of your website without computer programming – simply by clicking on a series of buttons!
A secure news website requires a secure foundation:
Use a Linux computer to create secure LibreOffice documents. Then use a Debian VPS and the Hestia Control Panel to create a Joomla website with a Helix template. Then use the LibreOffice Image compression tool to create secure web images. Then use Joomla to transfer your Libre Writer article to your news website:
In this course, we will show you how to create your own Community News website the right way – using a series of online security tools.
You do not need to be a computer programmer. We show you how to use each of these security tools with clear step-by-step instructions.
If you can bake a cake, you can run a secure Community News website.
During our online course sessions, we cover every step needed to create and run a secure News website:
We also cover how to enlist community groups to help you run and expand your Community News website:
A key component in growing your Community News website is promoting and reporting on local community events:
Is there a market for Secure Community News websites?
We recently completed a study of every community news site in every county here in Washington state. There are currently a total of 118 community news websites.
30 of these local community news websites are in King County and 9 more are in Snohomish County. At first glance, it does not look like there is much room for additional Community News websites. However, a little research found major problems with ALL of the existing community news websites!
About 30 of these news websites declared bankruptcy in January 2024 after their parent company lost $58 million in 2023. In March 2024, all 30 of these Washington News websites were sold to a group called Carpenter Media Group. These 30 websites are still losing millions of dollars per year in part because they use a “paywall” model that severely limits the traffic and growth of the websites. By contrast, websites that do not use a paywall model, and provide useful content to their community, typically have a rapid growth rate. Here is the three year growth of one community news website here in Washington that started in 2021 and does not use a paywall.
Another problem with the 30 Carpenter News sites is that they all use Wordpress which is easy for hackers to take over. In January 2024, they suffered a hacker attack which cost them $500,000 to fix. More attacks are likely in the future.
To make matters even worse, their business model does not make use of community volunteers. Instead, they use one person who often runs three to five news websites all at the same time and thus has no time available for anything other than selling ads. For example, the Carpenter Media Group owns 14 news websites in King County. Of these, the Bellevue Reporter, Bothell Reporter, Issaquah Reporter, Kirkland Reporter, Mercer Island Reporter, Redmond Reporter and Snoqualmie Valley Record are all nearly identical websites that are all run by the same person!
These are not really Community News websites. Instead, they are merely marketing gimmicks pretending to be community news websites.
Finally, many of these “advertising based” news websites also attempt to publish weekly print versions of their news websites. The print versions are huge money losers – especially given that only 10% of people still read print newspapers.
Of the remaining 88 news websites here in Washington, about half use Wordpress – which as we have already pointed out has more than 1000 security problems. It is only a matter of time before these 44 Wordpress sites are hacked and taken offline- leaving only 44 news sites left.
Sadly, 29 of these websites use very outdated version of website building tools called Bootstrap and Jquery. Both of these suffer from major security problems, which while not as bad as Wordpress, still leave websites that use these tools wide open to hacking attacks. Subtracting these 29 insecure Bootstrap and Jquery sites leaves only 15 local news websites left here in Washington state.
All 15 of these remaining news websites use a very expensive site building tool called Blox – which can cost over $12,000 per year. This huge annual expense can quickly drive your Community News website into bankrupcty and leave no money left from ad revenue to pay for reporters and editors!
In summary, there are currently ZERO secure community news websites here in Washington state. Instead, there are merely a bunch of insecure and nearly bankrupt News websites many of which will be gone in the next couple of years. By starting your own Community News website now, you will be able to fill the void left as these other news websites shut down.
Join us and help inform your local community!
If you are feed up with corruption and want to help voters become better informed, then take our course and start your own community news website.
Creating your own news website requires a commitment of time and effort – not only to research the content for your news website but also to learn how to transfer that content to the Internet and display it in a well organized manner on a secure news website.
If you are willing to put in this time and effort, we will show you how it is done!
If you have any questions, feel free to email us: David(at) Create a Secure News Website.com
We look forward to meeting you!