ZNet

ZNet is a large, frequently updated website dedicated to providing news, opinion, and information from a radical and progressive perspective. ZNet is the online component of Z Communications, a leftist journalism and media analysis organization founded in 1987 by Michael Albert and Lydia Sergeant. Z Communications is based in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and also includes the print Z Magazine; Z Media Institute, an occasional training and educational institute for activists and media analysts; and Z Video, which produces videos and documentaries on various left, peace, globalization, and media topics. The ideological positions offered by ZNet (and the rest of Z Communications) encompass much of the left spectrum but tend toward socialist libertarianism and anarchism more than the Marxism offered by many other sites.

Albert and Sergeant, two of the cofounders of the progressive publisher South End Press, founded Z Communications as a way to further the dissemination of radical perspectives and analysis of issues facing the left in the 1980s. ZNet was the electronic outgrowth of Z Communications. First online in 1995, ZNet has grown to become one of the largest, most up-to-date, and best sources of information for activists and people interested in topics from a radical perspective. More than 200,000 e-mail addresses receive occasional free commentaries and updates from ZNet, and the site is used as a resource by many others.

ZNet features frequent contributions from many of the left's most popular and prominent commentators, including Noam Chomsky, Edward S. Herman, Paul Street, Tim Wise, Vandana Shiva, John Pilger, Norman Solomon, Robert Fisk, Barbara Ehrenreich, Howard Zinn, and many others.

ZNet is a massive site with links to thousands of current and archived articles. It is organized along three main lines: by geographical focus (containing links to articles on various countries and regions of interest, such as Iraq, the Middle East, and Venezuela); an interactive “sustainer” forum system (sustainers are those who sign up, for a nominal fee, to receive special daily commentaries and gain access to an interactive members' discussion area, which is frequented by Chomsky, among others); and by topic or theme (economics, gender, media, anarchism, and the like). New articles are featured prominently on the top page, which is updated daily.

ZNet also focuses on several special areas of concern. One is Albert's Parecon (Participatory Economics) concept, a new theoretical system of social organization derived from anarchist principles, independent of previously existing state-based models like capitalism and communism. Other popular areas include debates (both within the left and between the left and right) and The NewStandard, ZNet's online newspaper, one of its recent projects. ZNet also provides weblogs by some of its most popular contributors, along with publicly accessible commentary systems for user interaction. ZNet is also extensively translated into foreign languages, and international versions of the site exist, such as ZNet Germany.