We’re changing the way we’re examining things

Hi everyone!

It’s not often that I get to address all of you, our wonderful readers, personally. I promise that since you’ve allowed me to speak directly to you that it’s of great importance – I assure you, it is.

It really has to do with two things: 1) who are we today? and 2) what are doing tomorrow? We can answer these things by starting from the beginning.

At its inception, DisneyExaminer existed because my friend and I wanted to create another typical Disney fan site (for access to some of Disney’s special events). Our one-off stories and inconsistency somehow lead to thousands of readers and access to events, but that got me thinking of what could be.

I wanted the publication to mature, so we got off Tumblr (though our original Tumblr still exists and gets updated regularly!), moved to WordPress, designed a custom theme, and began thinking about an editorial calendar. Fast forward a few years and we had a full team, many more consistent readers, and some of the best online content out there. Our carefully crafted, thoughtful, engaging, and informative content brought us readers! Our new vision was made clear – we’d take a closer look at Disney through thoughtful content that you couldn’t find anywhere else.

But as time went on, our creative side outgrew our business side. By late last year, we had to reevaluate the way we did things.

We don’t have that many writers and editors anymore. You might have noticed that our content output has seen better days so far as quality and frequency. Things certainly haven’t been the same, but these past few months have been more reflective than saddening. Rather than worry over the change happening to our content, we’ve decided to embrace the change.

That reflection has really brought our thinking full circle as we begin to ask questions: who are we now? And what will we be doing next?

So let me answer those questions now!

DisneyExaminer is you.

I’ve said it in the past, but I’ve always thought DisneyExaminer was less of a brand and more of a people. DisneyExaminers as opposed to DisneyExaminer. In fact, I’ve always referred to our team as Team DisneyExaminer in hopes of reminding us that we, along with the readers who read, are the ones who make this publication.

But we’re making things official, saying that YOU, our readers, will now have an active role in participating in the growth of this publication! We’ve always been open for submissions but now more than ever we are ready to hear from you.

Whether that means writing stories, making videos, or helping with events, we’re eager to bring your ideas to life. Just email us at info (at) disneyexaminer.com and we’ll be in touch.

Together with our content chief (and my girlfriend!) Tami Orendain, I hope we can work with you to make DisneyExaminer even better in every aspect.

And that brings us to the next change:

DisneyExaminer will only publish stories that have depth. That means you might not see stories from us everyday, but the stories you will see will be better.

I think this is such a relevant topic right now. As our world is trying figure out what news is real and what’s not, I believe it is every publication’s obligation to make sure whatever content is published meets a high criteria – no matter the type of publication, even one that focuses on Disney news.

Despite our limited resources, we feel that we can take advantage of this publishing climate by not adding to the noise. Like I’ve already stated, we know our content is the only thing that brings people back wanting more. The moment we start publishing headlines instead of fully thought out stories, we’re doing a disservice to all of you – and we know you see that and have sounded off because of that.

I apologize on behalf of our team if we’ve ever posted something that went against our core values and your expectations. We’re going to correct that immediately.

Starting next week, we will clean up our editorial calendar for the rest of 2017 and only post stories that contain real, honest, good content. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ll only be posting long-form reads, the latest headlines, or op-eds. We’re simply going to take each news lead we have and try to explain and “expand” that lead to make a story that’s less of a clickbait-y, thoughtless, un-engaging, share-but-not-read headline and more of everything opposite of that.

And yes, while that may mean that you might not see feature stories from us everyday anymore, you can expect that each story we do publish is going to be more worthy of your time and thought.

We’ll still share the latest headlines and confirmed hits we have on Twitter, so be sure to follow us (@DisneyExaminer) and subscribe to our updates there for all that.

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All in all, I think the future of DisneyExaminer is going to be a more magical one than ever before! We’re already planning some amazing content with our partners at Disney and outside the company. I hope you’ll continue to join us on this nearly decade-long journey.

We are still DisneyExaminer. And we’ve just only begun taking a closer look at Disney.