While my hosts here at Patheos.com aren’t participating in the SOPA/PIPA blackout initiative, I will refrain from posting news today until 8pm (PST), January 18th, in solidarity with this cause. Here’s some information on why.

What is SOPA?

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA, H.R. 3261) is on the surface a bill that attempts to curb online piracy. Sadly, the proposed way it goes about doing this would devastate the online economy and the overall freedom of the web. It would particularly affect sites with heavy user generated content. Sites like Youtube, Reddit, Twitter, and others may cease to exist in their current form if this bill is passed.

What is PIPA?

The Protect IP Act (PIPA, S. 968) is SOPA’s twin in the Senate. Under current DMCA law, if a user uploads a copyrighted movie to sites like Youtube, the site isn’t held accountable so long as they provide a way to report user infringement. The user who uploaded the movie is held accountable for their actions, not the site. PIPA would change that - it would place the blame on the site itself, and would also provide a way for copyright holders to seize the site’s domain in extreme circumstances.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation laid out four excellent points as to why the bills are not only dangerous, but are also not effective for what they are trying to accomplish:

• The blacklist bills are expensive. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that PIPA alone would cost the taxpayers at least $47 million over 5 years, and could cost the private sector many times more. Those costs would be carried mostly by the tech industry, hampering growth and innovation.
• The blacklist bills silence legitimate speech. Rightsholders, ISPs, or the government could shut down sites with accusations of infringement, and without real due process.
• The blacklist bills are bad for the architecture of the Internet. But don’t take our word for it: see the open letters that dozens of the Internet’s concerned creators have submitted to Congress about the impact the bills would have on the security of the web.
• The blacklist bills won’t stop online piracy. The tools these bills would grant rightsholders are like chainsaws in an operating room: they do a lot of damage, and they aren’t very effective in the first place. The filtering methods might dissuade casual users, but they would be trivial for dedicated and technically savvy users to circumvent.

The Wild Hunt supports a free Internet, and so should you! More on this here, and here.

“Neither Pagan nor Mahamedan nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the Commonwealth because of his religion.” - Thomas Jefferson, quoting John Locke

Hail to the pen and muse of Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence! Hail to those who’ve honored the true spirit of our founding documents, who defended us with arms, who challenged us with nonviolence, and reminded us of our true nature through art and rebellion.

Happy Independence Day! Also, happy belated Canada Day to my neighbors up north.

When thinking about The Wild Hunt, the question I always ask myself is “What’s next?” How can I build on what I’ve done so far, and expand it to new audiences? How can I make my work sustainable? How can I bring the most good to the many communities I report on and for? After months of talks, consultations, and soul-searching, I’ve decided on a new path for this site – one that I think is exciting, and that opens up new realms of possibilities for the future of Pagan media. Starting tomorrow, The Wild Hunt will be transitioning over to the religious dialog and news site, Patheos.com. This move will obviously raise many questions and concerns, so I’d like to address them now, and share my thinking on why I’ve gone in this new direction.

Why Patheos?

Patheos.com has become a premiere website for religious news, dialog, and information. Unlike many religious news outlets, Patheos’s commitment to modern Pagans has been there from the very beginning, and has only grown over time. They have collaborated on our projects, and entered into a mutual content-sharing deal with the Pagan Newswire Collective, the first mainstream media outlet to do so. Under the leadership of Star Foster the Patheos Pagan Portal has become a first-rate source for intelligent and thought-provoking Pagan content, featuring contributions from writers like Eric Scott, P. Sufenas Virius Lupus, T. Thorn Coyle, Steven T. Abell and many others. Patheos’s commitment to featuring voices from all corners of modern Paganism has been truly impressive. It was Patheos who helped get me onto the Washington Post’s On Faith panel.

In addition to their commitment to Pagan voices, Patheos has an ambitious vision for its future, one that as Pagan journalist I want to be a part of. Informing our own communities is only the first step towards building a robust Pagan media. One of the next steps is making our voices heard by mainstream news outlets. I think that being a part of Patheos at this time will help achieve that goal. One immediate benefit will be that posts on The Wild Hunt will soon appear in Google News search results, which is a small but important step towards bringing Pagan issues to a wider audience. I feel confident at this stage that being a part of Patheos will benefit our community in ways we can’t envision now.

What does this mean for me?

For the majority of Wild Hunt readers, the shift will be seamless. The new site will initially have the same design as the old site (though I may do an upgrade to something a bit more modern in the near future). Permanent redirects will ensure that links to The Wild Hunt will continue to work as they always did. Updates will continue to show up at social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. We are improving the Comments function. Finally, the site will become far more reliable and stable in regards to performance and stability.

Back in February, I was obliged to change servers, because The Wild Hunt was generating so much traffic that it was crashing other people’s sites, and threatening to create excessive downtime for readers. Generous individuals made that move possible, but many of us are still experiencing significant sluggishness and database timeouts when trying to visit the site. The Wild Hunt will soon outgrow affordable hosting options. Simply put, to keep The Wild Hunt sustainable and running on all cylinders, we need extra help.

What about remaining non-commercial? What about the donation model?

From the beginning, The Wild Hunt aspired to run as an independent: non-profit, not beholden or dependent, and as Andrew Sullivan says: “of no party or clique.” This would be hard to do while relying on, say, contributions from Pagan publishers or umbrella organizations. In my years as a journalist for our community, I have been able to report on hard stories, including stories that some of my friends would have probably preferred I ignored. The Wild Hunt has been accused of being not sufficiently on the Left or Right at various times, indicating that I personally have succeeded somewhat in separating my personal views from “the work.” I’ve tried to err on the side of a generally “pro-Pagan” stance, instead of getting caught up in partisan squabbling or single-issue myopias.

However, despite the generous individuals and organizations who have supported The Wild Hunt through the past few years, it has rapidly become clear that our trajectory wasn’t sustainable. The Wild Hunt has simply outgrown its original freebie structure. It’s time for Pagan news to hit the major leagues.

Yes, there will now be (hopefully unobtrusive) sidebar ads on the site, as there are for other Patheos pages. You can see an example of what that might look like, here. There will be no pop-ups, pop-unders, banners, or other flash-based nonsense. All you, as a reader, will do is continue to visit, read, link, comment and discuss, as you’ve always done.

Who owns The Wild Hunt?

Short answer: I, your editor, do. Long answer: The deal I’ve struck with Patheos allows them to host The Wild Hunt’s content, and grants them rights to distribute and republish it, without infringing on The Wild Hunt’s intellectual property ownership in any way. If The Wild Hunt should leave Patheos, we will retain ownership, while sharing republishing and distribution rights. If something horribly dramatic happens – which I don’t expect – The Wild Hunt is free to relocate.

Closing thoughts

This is a big step, one that I think is a good one. I hope that you, dear reader, understand and support the reasons for this move, and wil continue to be a part of the Wild Hunt community. See you tomorrow – at Patheos!

For a short period today this site was down, the account suspended by our hosts at A Small Orange. The suspension wasn’t because I had done anything wrong, or because ASO (or anyone else) had nefarious intentions, but because The Wild Hunt is just getting too large to operate comfortably on the shared server hosting model most smaller sites run on. The ever-growing stream of traffic triggered an automatic shut-down so that we wouldn’t also bring several other sites down. I was lucky, because someone inside A Small Orange (Jen, who used to run Drak.net) called me personally, helped get the site back up, and suggested options to help keep it up.

Unfortunately, those options aren’t cheap. The Wild Hunt is now at a point where dedicated server space is needed to avoid future shut-downs. That means a very substantial chunk of change had to leave my reserves today, about triple what I normally pay per year to host this site. That cost may inflate if the account level I’m moving to isn’t sufficient. I have no qualms about doing this, I think what I do here is important, and from the conversations I have with individuals at festivals and conventions, so do many of you. However, it does raise questions about support and sustainability, and I’d like to briefly discuss them with you.

The Wild Hunt isn’t the first web site to run into these issues, several years ago The Witches’ Voice ran into very similar problems and luckily found the community ready to step up, producing waves of sponsors that keep things running to this day. What my experience today taught me is that The Wild Hunt is at the cusp of a wave of Pagan media that will soon get large enough to need support beyond what their personal incomes can provide. It is part of the reason why I started a yearly pledge drive, to build an infrastructure of support that can grow into a model other sites and services can someday emulate. Though this process is just beginning, I’m encouraged that so many of you are willing to fiscally support Pagan media services, and I’m given great hope that we can collectively build a new media foundation that endures.

The money donated to The Wild Hunt not only pays for this site, it also helps defray costs when I travel to events like PantheaCon (which will be generating several stories for this site), and makes my life dedicated to Pagan journalism somewhat sustainable. However, as costs rise, so will support if I’m going to keep The Wild Hunt open, ad-free, and independent. So If you missed out on donating during the Winter Pledge Drive, or would like to chip in towards my new hosting bill, now’s the time.

You can either make a one-time donation:

Or commit to making a small monthly donation:

In addition, if you are a part of a Pagan organization, and would like to become an underwriter of this site, joining groups like CUUPs, Solar Cross, The Brotherhood of the Phoenix, and others, please contact me for details.

As much as the events of this day have been surprising, the silver lining to it is that it was caused by a Pagan news site experiencing ongoing growth and success. That in of itself points to a bright future. I hope you’ll join me in helping to build one that’s sustainable.

As we start to head into December, religion reporters are starting to craft their lists of the top news stories for this past year. Of Sacred and Secular’s Joshunda Sanders has posted a top ten list already, and Kevin Eckstrom of the Religion News Service found 2010 to be a year when older stories were “resurrected”.

“The Roman Catholic Church wasn’t the only institution battling a sense of deja vu, as some of the most controversial religion stories from the past 20 years returned to the headlines. A 1994-style fight over health care reform not only pitted Republicans against Democrats, but also Catholic bishops against Catholic nuns. Lingering questions about President Obama’s Christian faith morphed into a belief among one in five Americans that he’s actually a Muslim. Nearly 10 years after 9/11, Islamophobia returned with a vengeance as a Florida pastor threatened to torch a pile of Qurans, and Tennessee officials debated whether Islam is actually a religion. This time, the resurrected stories were more pointed, the debates more polarizing. Old stories found new life online, and voices that once would have been dismissed as extreme were amplified by the Internet, Facebook and Twitter.”

Eckstrom quotes religion and media scholar Diane Winston that “new media has had the effect of keeping certain news stories alive, bringing them back from the dead and propelling them into the news.” Looking at my own Pagan-centric picks for top stories of 2009, I can already see some continuity with the list I’m putting together for this year, and I think few will deny that new media had a big amplifying and extending effect on several religious stories this past year (take Christine O’Donnell, please).

While most religion reporters will be focusing on the Pope, the Park 51 building, or atheist Christopher Hitchen’s battle with cancer, I’d like to get your input and feedback on what you thought the biggest religion stories were from a Pagan perspective. What events do you feel shaped us this year? What stories do you think will end up having repercussions for years to come? Your feedback can help me put me own list together, and maybe I’ll highlight some of your recommendations at the end of December.

Whether this is a day of thanksgiving or mourning (or even “unthanksgiving”) for you and yours, may you find contentment, happiness, and peace. The Wild Hunt will be taking the rest of the day off to cook and spend time with loved ones. I’d like to give thanks to everyone who reads, comments, and supports this blog. All of you give me something to be thankful for.

Regular posting will resume tomorrow.

Today’s the last day of the Wild Hunt’s second annual Winter Pledge Drive. I’d like to again give my deepest thanks and gratitude to all of my readers for showing that they value Pagan journalism and are willing to support a non-commercial donation-centered model. One thing I’ve learned from this drive is that the Wild Hunt community is becoming an increasingly global one, with donations coming in not only from across the United States, but from Canada, England, Scotland, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, and several other locales. As we move into the future, my hope is to partner The Wild Hunt with other initiatives like the Pagan Newswire Collective and bring an increasingly global perspective, encouraging the flowering of Pagan journalism in any country, state, or city in which we live and gather.

I’d also like to take a moment and give special thanks to the three new Pagan organizations that have chosen to provide underwriting support of The Wild Hunt this year. They are BBI Media, publishers of Sage Woman and Witches & Pagans, Mill Creek Seminary, a resource for professional Pagan religious information, training, services, and counseling, and The Brotherhood of the Phoenix, a neo-pagan order for Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender men who love men. Their listings will be appearing soon on our Affiliates page, along with our other supporting organizations.

As I’ve said before, The Wild Hunt isn’t just some guy and his blog, it’s a community of people. A community of support, debate, and information-gathering that is nurturing a long-term investment in the future of Pagan news. My goal is to not only make Pagan journalism my full-time job, but to eventually make it possible for other people to follow in my footsteps. All of you have helped to make that future possible.

There will be future pledge drives, and this blog will try to develop over time a robust non-commercial funding method that can be adopted and emulated by other Pagan media outlets. Thanks to you, the The Wild Hunt will always remain open, reader-supported, and non-commercial. Thank you.

It’s still not too late to donate! If you’ve been meaning to participate in the Winter Pledge Drive now’s your chance! You can either make a one-time donation, or you can commit to a monthly subscription fee. In addition, you’ll be able to access donation-information year-round at this site.

Thank you again for supporting The Wild Hunt!