So far we have 100% approval from some of the 47 contributors who put their money where their mouths were. It's looking real good. If you want to contribute you still can. Step up to the plate and walk the walk.
Couple more things. We have received a couple of emails regarding ads on our site. Google sometimes feeds our site political ads - left, right and center. We have no control that we know of regarding those ads. If we have control we simply do not have the time to go through the system and do it. Just to be clear, we do not take any political position whatsoever. It's a political season, you are going to see a lot of these ads. We make literally sometimes a dollar a month off Google just to offset a portion of our server fees. Ignore the ads if you have a problem with them.
We will be having a new contributing author to the site, Dana. You will be seeing Dana's posts intermittently when the time and inspiration arises. Dana has been a recent and prolific contributor to DD in the comments section and we look forward to reading more on the front page.
We will finally get to ASU later today and tomorrow.
Without showing our hand too much, we have contacted all the contributors to the billboard campaign to get their approval and opinions on the Ad. We are looking at placing an ad in the DB and/or the LAT. The ad will be a decided on by us at DD with input from the contributors. So far, we are getting great feedback. We may go with a combination of the one-line quote and mini open letter to Dan Guerrero and Chancellor Block, then signed DumpDorrell.com. If you are a contributor please check your email and get back to us ASAP. We are looking to place the ad next week. If we beat ASU this week then we will probably hold off until after the Oregon game in terms of locking in the publish date. More later …
Quickly, we got some pretty decent rates to run ads in the DB, either the regular rate for a half page ad and/or a 1/4 page, which we can easily do, OR, run 5 ads with 2 half pagers, 2 1/4 pagers and 1 1/8th page for a little bit more (we would be getting a nice discount). We don’t want to print the rates publicly for obvious reasons. We have tentative approval for the ideas for ad copy we discussed here. We have not heard back from the LAT but we should get info tomorrow. We will be emailing the details to all the donors tomorrow for their approval.
Secondly, the recent back and forth on comments has been over the top. We are weeding out the main person(s) involved but if you are not one of them, just let what they say roll off … do not engage. There are trolls here just to enrage people to get some kicks. Just ignore them.
Thirdly, let us state again what our position is with regard to Karl Dorrell winning the Pac-10 since there has been some sniping about this. We at DD have long maintained, and said over a year ago publicly on ESPN, Fox and other outlets as well as on this site, that if Karl Dorrell wins the Pac-10 we will give him his due and shut down this site. That does not mean we think he is going to be successful long term or that we changed our minds on firing him. But if he wins the Pac-10 Dorrell will have finally met a huge goal set out for him 5 years ago when he was hired and will have earned the additional year. If after ‘08 he fails miserably again we will come back. Having said all that, remember this is all moot because he won’t win the Pac-10.
Editor’s note: We’ve received some pretty good arguments off-line for placing an ad in the LAT, so we are going to check into that too now.
A lot to get to tomorrow, but first we do some housekeeping. We did not get in touch with the Daily Bruin advertising because the only time one of our editors could call ended up being in the late afternoon just after 4 pm and wouldn’t you know the DB advertising section closes at 4 pm. So, it will have to wait until tomorrow. We don’t have any idea who the VIPs are that have influence with the AD but chances are some of the people who influence the VIPs read the Daily Bruin. We are not so sure about the LA Times sports section. Also, we KNOW that placing an ad in the DB reaches at least Bruin fans, still the most important secondary audience for many reasons but primarily due to their influence over our primary audience as we have said, whereas the same cannot be said for the LAT. So, we are going with the DB. Again, putting it in the paper makes it REAL. As for the copy itself we will wait to see what ad sizes and copy will be allowed. We will hit two main point centering around the main theme of excellence: 1) Time for Dorrell to go, and 2) We need a proven experienced winning coach.
We received an email response from the editor of the Daily Bruin, Saba Riazati. You might recall that we emailed Saba on Friday after we received word from the group whose ad got killed (see the killed ad below) that they were told by Daily Bruin staff that DD ads were banned. We asked Saba whether the Daily Bruin had a policy of prohibiting ads from DumpDorrell.com. Saba has informed us that there is no policy prohibiting DumpDorrell.com from placing an ad in the newspaper. Saba then referred us to a staffer to work with and we will contact the staffer on Monday morning and go from there.
DD and BruinsNation readers demanded that we move on the billboard idea. We think raising over $2,000 is a great effort, especially considering that we’ve had 2 horrible losses since we initiated the campaign leaving many people to believe that it’s obvious that Dorrell will be fired and no billboard is needed. That might be a reason for the stall in donations. We believe that Dorrell’s firing is not yet a lock and we cannot take this for granted. In fact, now more than ever is the time to apply pressure. We need to make it so REAL that it read more
Editor’s Note: The ChipIn team updated our ChipIn widget to include the donations made prior to us installing the widget to log donations. The current total is now the correct total. If you make a contribution and do not see an update within 10 minutes clear your browser cache and reload the page to see the updated total.
Our billboard collection has stalled the last couple of days at $1,959 from 42 contributors. If we lose to Arizona we expect to have that number shoot up. If we don’t make our goal of $11,000 it has been suggested by many that we ask contributors if putting an ad in the Daily Bruin would be a substitute they would agree to. Obviously with the recent story of the Fire Dorrell ad we know that the Daily Bruin is open to publishing an ad in the paper. If you don’t already know the Daily Bruin killed the ad at the last minute because they realized that the site promoted in the copy was an adult site. We knew that days before but we never saw the ad copy so we did not know the URL of the site was contained in it (if in fact it was). The editors could have removed the URL reference and still run the ad, and why they didn’t is a mystery.
Anyhow, if this scenario plays out read more
Not a bad start for the 1st 24 hours: $1,590 from 33 contributors as of 7 pm PDT (details on contributing here). We still have 2 weeks to get this done but lets keep the momentum going. Thanks to all the contributors big and small, who have put their $ where their mouth is. We have had $5 donations and $250 donations. Everything counts. LSU had 400+ people donate over $11,000 in 10 days. We are ahead of that schedule. Let’s keep it up … get the word out … tell your friends and challenge your friends to match, especially those vocal about wanting a new coach and a great football program. Do not think that Dorrell getting fired is a done deal … we need to keep the pressure and this is THE biggest way we can do it. Make a contribution. Go Bruins!!
The ChipIn widget below and to the side is working and taking donations through PayPal, but it is not updating the donation tally for some reason. We haven’t heard back from ChipIn as to why but hopefully it will be fixed tomorrow. As of 10:30 pm we have a total of $1,132.36 donated, or just over 10%, by 24 contributors. Let’s keep it going. This is up to you all. If you want to get a new coach you have to help make it happen. This is entirely up to you the fans.
Click on the Chip In button and you will be taken to PayPal’s site. Add a dollar amount and you can figure out the rest. Here are the full details and instructions for making donations.
Update: Donations will be used for a newspaper ad instead. The donation counter now includes all donations made prior to initiation of the counter, therefore, it correctly lists total donations. If you made a donation and do not see an update on the total below or to the right clear your browser cache after 10 minutes or so and reload the page. Due to an error in processing a t-shirt request we erroneous reported below the initial donations amount (prior to adding the counter). The correct amount donated was $630 from 10 donors.
Now it’s time to act. We all know we won’t win the Pac-10 even though we still can so now is the time to let Dan Guerrero and all the VIP boosters know that we demand change. VIP boosters that have Dan Guerrero’s ear and Dan Guerrero himself need to KNOW that we want change! You all wanted us to get the billboard idea going so we are doing it now for you. A Dump Dorrell billboard makes our views loud and clear to the decision makers. We are now taking donations for the billboard idea that we have discussed here and that has been discussed and voted on at BruinsNation.com. If we don't raise enough funds then we will give all the money back to the donors. Details follow. read more
