September 7, 2007 2:40 PM

Goodman, Scheer and Conason are back.

Starting this week, Working Assets resumed publishing the work of syndicated columnists Ellen Goodman, Joe Conason and Robert Scheer. And on September 13, we'll also add a new column from our very own David Sirota. These journalists will be incorporated into our blog where their work will help inform and inspire people to action through our online and offline channels for making change.

If you don't know Working Assets, we are a social change organization that makes it easy for progressives to make a big difference. People who subscribe to our mobile phone service powered by Sprint (along with our credit card and long distance service) generate millions of dollars each year for politically progressive nonprofits like Planned Parenthood and ACORN. And these members, along with hundreds of thousands of like-minded folks, use tools provided by Working Assets to do the work of a powerful citizen lobby -- volunteering, attending meetings and protests, and launching millions of emails, faxes, calls and letters to put pressure on politicians to do the right thing on the most pressing issues of the day.

Our longtime commitment to publishing progressive opinion springs from our activist mission. When Working Assets launched WorkingForChange.com in 1999, we saw the site as a progressive "portal" -- an easy-to-read, one-stop shop for progressive news and opinion that also included opportunities to take action.

However, over the years we discovered that while hundreds of thousands of people were coming to our site each month to read, the vast majority of them were not taking action through our community - by participating in our online activism campaigns, volunteering in our election protection efforts, donating money to progressive groups or signing up for our mobile phones.

In the progressive movement, money is tight. As stewards of more than $50 million over the past 20 years, Working Assets makes it our business to ensure that our members get the most change for their dollars.

The world has changed a lot since we launched. And the site has evolved with it. When we started, it was much harder to access independent media sources even online. But now progressive opinion and muckraking news are widely available through excellent sites like Mother Jones, AlterNet and Talking Points Memo.

In July, we stopped running most of the paid content that was previously featured on WorkingForChange.com. It costs money to subscribe to syndication services that allow us to run opinion columns in their entirety on our Web site. And it takes staff time to post them on the web. Moreover, a blog format created an open forum where readers could discuss the news and
strategies for change - a conversation that want to grow and continue to support.

So we had to ask ourselves, should we continue to use our resources to provide people with something which while worthwhile they can readily access elsewhere? Or should we focus on serving a more activist audience through a blog that includes some opinion, but focuses more narrowly on our political work and creates new funding for movement through expansion of our donation-linked services.

We decided on the latter.

Everyone will not agree with this decision, and if you are among those folks we respect your choice to go to AlterNet or other sites for aggregation of columnists. But we hope you will come back whenever you are looking to move further into activism, both online and on the ground.