A few weeks back, Nathan Webster launched a site under the WOTN umbrella. We call it our outreach program. I set up the site and it has a War On Terror News url, but the site and the content are his. He has a nice start on readership and is doing great with posting new content on a regular basis from his embedded tours with Troops in Iraq from 2007 to 2009.
More to the point of this success story is that his goal to publish a limited run of his work in a quality book, is now funded. It is a pictorial history of the surge to success period in Iraq and hopefully this run will turn into a publisher seeing the value of his work towards the history of Iraq and the Troops that made it possible. This is an initial success but there is still time (about a week and a half) if you'd like to secure a copy of the book that may never get onto bookstore shelves. It's your choice and there are examples of his work on his site, but a pledge in these last couple of weeks comes with no risk of a broken heart. Before, the risk was only a broken heart but no risk of lost money. (Don't blame me if he says something you don't like. There is no editorial review of his posts. Those are his words and his articles, alone.)
And this is not a WOTN success story, but a Nathan Webster success story. All we've done is give him a little publicity and a place to tell his part of the story that is Iraq. He did all the real work. He embedded. He took the pictures and he wrote the stories that went with the pictures. He set up the kickstarter account and it was his friends and the Troops that pledged the money to get the book published, along with the money he put up.
So what's my angle? I'm not getting any commissions on this project. But I do get the joy of seeing a Veteran and Embedded Photo Journalist that is doing it right, succeed in telling his story, or rather the Soldiers of whom he captured in pictures, securing Freedom for us and for Iraqis. It costs me nothing but I do get the warm fuzzy at seeing him succeed, and knowing that this part of history is one step closer to being available to the world, and that in the short term it is available to interested parties as a potentially exclusive piece of history, with his autograph gracing it.
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