Townhall.com
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Townhall.com is a web-based publication primarily dedicated to conservative and libertarian United States politics.
Townhall.com was previously operated by the Heritage Foundation, but is now owned and operated by Salem Communications.
From the Townhall.com About Us page:
Townhall.com was launched in 1995 as the first conservative web community. At that time, only a handful of political sites existed and Townhall.com was the first major investment in online activism made by either side. In 2005, Townhall.com split off from The Heritage Foundation in order to expand the scope of Townhall.com's mission to inform, empower and mobilize citizens for political change. Today, Townhall.com is a web site that pulls together news and information from its 120 different "partner organizations," political commentary and analysis from over 100 different columnists, and activism tools developed to empower an active citizenry. Townhall.com is designed to amplify conservative voices in America’s political debates just as the 2006 and 2008 election cycles begin to heat up. By uniting the nations’ top conservative radio hosts with their millions of listeners, Townhall.com breaks down the barriers between news and opinion, journalism and political participation -- and enables conservatives to participate in the political process with unprecedented ease. As a part of Salem Communications Corporation, Townhall.com features Salem’s News/Talk radio hosts, Bill Bennett, Mike Gallagher, Hugh Hewitt, Michael Medved, and Dennis Prager, who are heard on over 300 stations nationwide. Of our five hosts, three are among the top 10 radio talk shows in the nation! For the first time, the grassroots media of talk radio, the internet, blogging and podcasting will be brought together in one place to activate conservative political participation. By providing daily news and opinion articles, sophisticated activism tools, a vibrant blog community, online radio shows and more, Townhall.com will arm conservatives with the tools and information necessary to have an impact in shaping the news.
Townhall.com has a broad audience: its readership is attributed to its Heritage Foundation beginnings, the fact that it is allied with several public policy member groups to increase awareness and traffic, and its celebrity columnists.
Townhall.com, which publishes daily, features more than 80 columns (both syndicated and exclusive) by writers such as Neal Boortz, William F. Buckley Jr., Ann Coulter, Larry Elder, Jonah Goldberg, Rebecca Hagelin, Paul Jacob, David Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Robert Novak, Thomas Sowell, Jacob Sullum, and Cal Thomas. It also publishes news from the Cybercast News Service.
Townhall.com columnists often appear as guest commentators on C-Span, MSNBC, CNN, and the FOX News Channel.
[edit] Purchase by Salem
In May of 2006, Salem Communications purchased Townhall.com. Salem named Chuck DeFeo as the site's new manager, and Hugh Hewitt as the site's "Executive Editor". The site, which was relaunched on July 4th of 2006, reflected Hewitt's ambition to create a clearinghouse for conservative New Media and activism; it kept the deep stable of conservative commentators and columnists, but added an ambitious slate of new features, including podcasts of Salem network and local talk shows, blogs run by Salem talk show hosts, links to send feedback to politicians and sign petitions, and a facility to allow any user to set up a blog on the Townhall.com server.
[edit] Critics and Parodies
Since the rise of blogging as a popular medium, Townhall and its columnists have been frequent targets of satire by liberal weblogs who, due to the large volume of content that Townhall publishes, typically present one- or two-sentence capsule versions of a large number of daily columns. Sadly, No features a weekly "Two-Minute Townhall" series, while numerous liberal weblogs feature sporadic "Clownhall" updates.
