Disability Media Wire is the business behind Disability News Wire. My mission, and hopefully you’ll want to join in, is to provide useful help to disabled kids and adults through connecting the greater disability community and their allies.
I believe that the greater disability community can and must become an important force in the culture, economy, and politics of the United States and the world.
60 million disabled Americans and over 1 billion disabled people worldwide can no longer be left out of our local, national, and global communities.
But… this is a startup… and there is a long, long, long way to go.
Phase 1 – Connecting & Informing
The foundation of building a true greater disability community is connection… and I believe the most powerful connections come from shared stories and knowledge. I’ve started by pulling together a number of available online sources together, but that is just the beginning. We need a healthy disability media ecosystem – journalists and individual creators, businesses, and organizations.
… kind of like the PBS, but for the disability community:
- Thorough, high-quality news and analytic coverage of disability issues.
- Coverage of traditional news and issues from a disability perspective.
- A healthy pool of disabled and disability focused journalists and creators (that means paid).
My plan to do this is by subscriptions to directly fund work by journalists and creators and provide indirect support through royalties (syndicated content) and our Ambassador program.
Phase 2 – Organizing & Membership
The next step is to turn you, me, the greater disability community and their allies, into an “us” – a pool of potential customers, a bloc of potential voters, a group of people who must be heard…
Not About Us Without Us – requires action (and organization) by us.
So, once we reach a critical mass of founding members (1000?), we’ll launch an Association which will hopefully both directly benefit our members (discount and partner programs with businesses) as well as other issues – protecting and improving election accessibility being a fundamental issue.
Phase 2.5 – Supporting and Building
“Infrastructure” sounds boring, but it is critical. I want to make it easier to find and support the 35,000+ disability not-for-profits, develop and highlight new not-for-profit as well as for-profit businesses and organizations as well as help develop new disabled leaders and support our elected representatives who support the disability community.
Ready to join?
Your subscription will help produce more, better disability-related news and media and support the work of journalists and disabled creators.
(COMING SOON)
* Referral Codes
The easiest and most direct way that I can support disabled journalists, disability organizations, and great disability work is to compensate them. I also want to thank subscribers and members who help grow this business and association.
If you refer any who joins, twenty-five percent of their first-year membership fee and/or subscription will be directed to a disability-related not-for-profit of your choice.
This system also supports direct compensation for journalists, disabled creators, and other partners to help strengthen the disability media ecosystem.