Featured WordPress Publisher: The 19th
Welcome to another post in our series that features innovative WordPress publishers. This publisher is a new project: The 19th launched in August.
The name of the site comes from the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This amendment was passed in 1920 and gave women the right to vote.
The 19th has a clear goal: “to empower those we serve — particularly women, people of color, and those historically underserved by American media — with the information, resources and community they need to be equal participants in our democracy.“
It's great to see an ambitious publisher like this on WordPress and using Gutenberg. The site was built by Upstatement, an agency in Boston.
High profile stories
For a new site, The 19th already has some great scoops.
They got Meghan Markle's first US media appearance after stepping back from the British royal family.
They also had Kamala Harris' first interview as nominee for Vice-President.
Creative commons license
One thing about the 19th that's particularly interesting for WordPress users is their open-source approach.
Their work is “Free-to-consume and free-to-republish”. They use a Creative Commons license. If you follow their guidelines, you're free to re-use all their content. Every post as a “share box” like this:
eCommerce integration
The 19th is supported by memberships, philanthropy and corporate underwriting.
So they have raised money from people such as Craig Newmark from Craiglist, but they also have monthly memberships.
The site uses Fundraise Up for their membership payments.
Other WordPress tools
The 19th uses Yoast for their search engine optimization. They use Parsely for content analytics, loading it via this WordPress plugin. Parsely is a streamlined version of Google Analytics that is designed just for publishers.
The 19th is an excellent example of how writers can use WordPress to launch quickly, affordably, and control their future.
Josh Lewis
Thank you for writing this inspiring example of how we can utilize various WP plugins for great causes. The 19th is visually fantastic while loading extremely fast (which is often compromised with visual editors). Beautiful example of intelligent design while being a legitimate up-to-date service. Content rights is another important consideration when founding a community of passionate users. It’s nice to see emphasis on the message being out there rather than being focused on ownership.
Steve Burge
Thanks Josh. Yes, the site is superbly done. I ended up taking a close look at the other projects done by Upstatement. They are good.