The Mighty Pluck started publishing exactly five years ago with intent to provide an exchange of solutions, inventions or improvements on existing structures, services, laws or products, for humans, plants or animals.
Solutions could be practical, whimsical, demanding, provocative or visionary, across a broad range of topics including agriculture, art and culture, business and organizations, environment, health, lifestyle, public affairs, science, and technology.
Our ambition was to connect those who have good ideas with those who may need them; we wanted to openly encourage change and experimentation.
We still want this. But we are no longer able to host the party.
What Changed?
On some level nothing has changed, and at the same time, everything has changed.
The job of digital publishing is similar to traditional print, in that we need to curate content, sift through submissions, work with writers, create images, design layout, and so forth.
But then we have challenges of maintaining online properties across various internet browsers and email clients. These platforms’ rules change often and without warning; they require constant vigilance, maintenance and testing.
When we’re not overhauling or fine-tuning the tech issues, we’re battling imposter inquiries, comments, and submissions from automated bots or AI bandits. Why would any AI-wielding miscreant bother to fake pitch a niche publication? We’re not sure, but it does take time out of staff’s day to distinguish between a real person and a robot.
As a digital-only entity, we rely on search engines and social media platforms to rank our content high in response to relevant inquiries. But without paid-advertising or an established massive footprint, we struggle to gain and maintain top ranking by these visibility gatekeepers. Instead the tech platforms use our content to train artificial intelligence and feed large language models, reducing the need for readers to visit our site and spend time with the actual content.
We could opt out of relying on these platforms—take a stand against corporate tech, but these are the vehicles the majority of the world uses to engage with internet content. To find and expand readership, we need to meet readers where they are, not where we wish them to be.
The corporatization of the internet makes it very difficult to continue our independent journal.
This may sound like so much “technology, blah blah blah; artificial intelligence, la la la,” but that would be too broad to explain the deeper intricacies of what we’re experiencing.
For one thing, we use technology to publish. But even beyond that self-serving practicality, we’re generally pro-tech, starting with our admiration of the earliest peoples who looked at a stone rolling down the hill, and thought, how can I harness that?
We’re not unable to avoid our own insolvency—that would be ironic given we’re a solutions-focused publication. Much of what we’re citing here has been solved by others and can be solved by us.
For instance, we could pay search engines or social media to gain more viewership. We could recruit a social media promoter to grow awareness of our work. To raise the money needed for either of these investments, we could transform into a more commercially-viable publication by running advertisements on the site, offering paywall content, or partnering with adjacent brands. If we pursued a revenue-generating angle, we could pitch to investors. Many successful online publications use these tactics and others.
All we would need is time or money to implement some or all of these ideas, until investment or revenue kicks in. These two factors are in short supply, however, for a small, self-funded, under-staffed outfit like the Mighty Pluck. And we increasingly experience that the corporatization of the internet makes it very difficult to continue our independent journal. After five years of publishing under these circumstances, it’s time to take a break or pivot and do something else.
The Thank Yous
Before going, we’d like to extend an extra special thank you to our readers and contributors.
The Mighty Pluck core founding members are:
- Tasha Walters, Art Director and Illustrator
- Evelyn Hafferty, Advisor and Contributor
- Robin Rusch, Editor and Contributor
Guy Thursday provided advice, tech help, and hosting platforms, including our listserv and email.
Without the thoughtful, smart, interesting content of our contributors, there would be no publication at all.
And of course we are grateful to our readers who followed and encouraged us over these last five years.
What next?
We’ll still be out there flogging solutions. Perhaps we’ll return here or shape shift and resurface in another form.
Until then we’ll indulge in some human-to-human connections. If you would like to human-connect, drop us a word.
Robin Rusch Robin D Rusch
