Toward JFK Facts 2.0

As I recently completed writing a biography of CIA counterspy James Angleton, I am now giving renewed attention to JFK Facts: its look, its appeal, its functionality, its strengths, its weaknesses, and its mission.

As the editor of JFK Facts, I welcome your thoughts and help.

The State of the Site

The site continues to attract thousands of readers a month and influence discussion of the JFK assassination story.

The site debunked Bill O’Reilly’s JFK humbug and Donald Trump’s dumb smear of Senator Ted Cruz’s father. I now regularly receive calls from TV producers interested in covering the scheduled JFK disclosures of October 2017.

With timely assists from Ramon Herrera, Jeffrey Sundberg, and Rex Bradford, JFK Facts has put the October 2016 story on the national news agenda.

I have pointed to 7 key CIA documents still being withheld, a story that Politico picked up on. Ramon and Jeffrey compiled a spreadsheet of information about all of the still-secret JFK documents in the government’s possession–something the National Archives itself failed to do. Rex incorporated the data in the invaluable JFK Database Explorer.

Such information and infrastructure will help drive media discussion of the JFK story from now through October 2017.

Nonetheless, Im feeling as flat as this graph.

JFK Facts readership
From Google Analytics: JFK Facts readership, year to date, August 2016.

More than 1,2 million people have visited the site since its founding in November 2012 but readership is now in dropping for the first time in forty months A year ago JFK Facts averaged almost 50,000 viewers per month. Now that figure is about 32,000 per month.

Some of the decline may be due to summer vacation and some to my relative neglect of the site while I was writing my Angleton book. Perhaps the Gods of Google tweaked an algorithm.

Whatever the causes, they need to be addressed.

What to Do?

So I’m thinking about how to upgrade the site: to create JFK Facts 2.0. The goal is a site that is more attractive, more informative, more useful, and more accessible to people interested in the JFK story–a site that helps promotes–and achieve–full JFK disclosure in 2017.

I have some ideas. I want to incorporate more contributors. I’d like to expand the range of coverage. I’d like to improve our social media presence, and I’d like focus the conversation so as compel full disclosure in 2017. I have instincts but no certainty about how to achieve these goals.

So I want to hear from you , the readers. What would make JFK Facts a better site?

This is a “blue sky” exercise. Any and all aspects of JFK Facts are open to rethinking:  design, functionality, audio, video, comments, contributors, SEO, you name it.

I’m especially interested in the views of people who design, run or work for Web sites for a living.

Leave your thought in comments below. Or send me an email at Editor@jfkfacts.org, I want to hear from you.

 

 

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