Press Release
By George Miller, 12-31-25
| We have suspended publication of Citizens Journal California (CJF), after nearly four years, over 4000 articles and event listings, by numerous reporters, columnists, public service announcements and press releases. We thank our loyal readers (6,000+ this month– third highest ever), advertisers, supporters, donors and especially our reporters, columnists and other content creators, without which this would have been impossible. We thank Carol Miller for being Chief Accountant and Associate Editor. We created CJF because there was no other visible Conservative, real news publication in the county and we felt it was needed. There were only hard left publications to be had. So, we have at least partially filled that gap. We believe that there are now alternatives that were not available in 2022 when we started, so we can stand down. We recommend that you patronize- read/advertise in the Community Press Nassau Foundation publications, the Yulee News and Callahan & Hilliard News. Truthfully, we had just moderate success and barely squeaked by, not having enough funds or people to provide the full offering we had envisioned. But we were there covering two important election seasons, ably addressed many controversial issues and shone the light of publicity on things that sorely needed it. Then several important things happened to change our course: 1. Yulee News started out, with the advantage of their own printing plant, mailing house and a lot more money. Eventually, they were able to leverage what was little more than supermarket flyers into a fledgling newspaper, which has continued to grow and expand almost countywide. The editorial direction is Conservative. 2. The News Leader, which seemed incurably left wing, had big changes. The Publisher retired or was asked to retire. The new Publisher led to the Liberal Editor leaving. The new Editor led to the most liberal reporters leaving. They were replaced with more balanced writers and new content was brought in. Significant improvement. 3. Your publisher suffered multiple injuries and six surgeries, which slowed him down somewhat. Some key people left the area. 4. A group of supporters met back in May to review progress and decide upon a course of action. We concluded that although the content looked good, we were unsatisfied with readership/revenue growth and scope of offerings. A smaller number of us agreed to continue CJF until the end of the year to see what happens. Considering all of the above and the “background” section, below), we decided to shut CJF down on December 31, which is now. The web site, mail service and everything else will be offline soon. Background When we first moved to Florida from California in June, 2021, it was to get away from what California had become. The crime, overcrowding, “sanctuary cities,” taxes, high cost of living, insane laws/regulations/courts and insufferable “Progressive” theology were just too much. We had tried to change it, becoming involved in politics, civic organizations, started and ran a tea party, even co-founded a newspaper, also of the Citizens Journalism genre, that grew to 336,000 readers over the 8 1/2 years I was the publisher. After turning that publication over to the new owners, we headed east to Florida, for more freedom, lower costs and people more like us. It was not easy to leave friends, the beautiful weather and geography of our adopted state for 41 years. In the process of getting established here and beginning to burrow into the community, we soon noticed that the local entrenched newspaper of record was extremely biased, much like so-called mainstream corporate media back in California. We saw no other news publication that wasn’t left of center. So we did some preliminary inquiries to scope out interest in getting one started. No one else we encountered was doing that, so we proposed to 22 people who would listen to an approach to developing one. Only 8-10 of those people were both interested and thought it could be done. We were only able to raise 15% of the capital that the business plan called for. That further shrunk the team and potential scope of the project. We decided to move ahead anyway and see if we could bootstrap it. This effort started in early April. 2022. By April 14, we had a rudimentary web site up and running and started to publish articles. July 4 was our formal opening. It continued to grow and improve. We were able to attract dozens of reporters, writers and other content creators who put out a smorgasbord of useful material. But, for reasons and conditions described above, we decided to suspend publication after nearly 4 years, then shut down. But we’re not going away and will continue to be involved in the community and state. Many of our writers/content creators, supporters, and donors live here and are/have been already active. Happy new year to y’all- see ya around! Regards, George Miller. Publisher [email protected] Note that our corporate email, mailing address and web site will soon be shut down |
