We are not using our website. An effective website gives people a reason to make a habit of visiting it and this is accomplished by posting content. News and political websites post several times a day. Other sites post several new items each day. We should strive for three posting a week. I can't produce that much original material devoted to Mencken but there is a trove we can draw on. This is ST's collection of Mencken's oeuvre.

The first Free Lance piece appeared Monday, May 8, 1911 and the last on Saturday, October 10, 1915. Mencken produced a column averaging 1,140 words a day, six days a week, Monday through Saturday (though he did miss this schedule 180 times). There are 1,221 columns. If we post one a day, we are good for almost three-and-a-half years. I would add value by proofing ST's text files (he used OCR), marking the articles for web display (HTML), including the Evening Sun's headline for the day of the column to give a historical context, and annotate and amplify the long forgotten individuals and events mentioned or alluded to in the pieces.

There are several ways to post the items and I mention a few that come immediately to mind:

(1) Publish an article a day on its anniversary date. Note that a Monday date in 1911 falls on a Friday in 2014.

(2) Ignore the published date and post three articles a week (Monday, Wednesday and Friday).

(3) Post the articles in full.

(4) Post the articles abridged by removing the material of least interest to a modern audience.

Though the Free Lance columns are in the public domain, we should ask ST's permission to use his material. I know he wants to be paid for his efforts but the Free Lance columns are not a revenue source. Perhaps we could offer him a small honorarium and the promise that selections from the material posted on the Society's website with my value added contributions could be assembled in a book "The Best of the Free Lance" (the only thing I would want is secondary credit).

Friday, May 8, 2015, would be a good starting day as that would give me five months to produce a body of ready-to-go postings. I want to be ahead of things by a few months at least.

The expenses to the Society would be the cost of photocopies of the columns (the Pratt has the Evening Sun on microfilm) and perhaps a modest stipend for me.