A picture tells 1,000 words. Here is Charley blogging the Deval Patrick victory celebration. My computer is to the left.
Note that we are seated on the floor, behind the media platform, looking in, as it were, from the outside. A perfect metaphor. Last week we had 42,000 unique visitors. We’ve had 33,000-35,000 uniques every week this month. Last year at this time we were excited if we had more than 5,000 unique visitors in a week.
If this rate of growth keep up, our circulation will start closing in on the top 200 newspapers in the country.
I wonder how long the bloggers, metaphorically speaking, will be typing on the floor behind the media platform.
Please share widely!
Behind the risers.
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I’ve been there.
It’s my understanding that good journalism — not necessarily the sort found behind every story actually published, but the stuff that earns the press the title of “The Fourth Estate” and makes free elections meaningful — requires way more than a part-time investment.
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I think blogs have immense value in helping important stories come to light, in analysis, and in synthesizing the big picture. But I can’t see how you could possibly function without the raw material of stories published in traditional newspapers, produced by traditional means.
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Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo is an example of a blog that holds itself up to traditional journalistic standards — multiple sources, etc. — and I’d be comfortable calling some of what they publish “original reporting”. But that’s a big-time blog, and they pay the (not huge) salaries of what, three people? If all the attention in the country can only pay for (say) a thousand professional reporters, we’re in very serious trouble.
It’s just a matter of jockeying for position, getting there early. I left to go say hi to some folks, wander around a bit.
That bloggers form an official union or organization, have national and regional summits, and the FCC creates a unique license or credential to recognize their role in society.
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You could call them journalists, but it’s not quite, is it?
nor do you want to be. Their standards of ethics on reporting (while perhaps ignored) are pretty lofty. No more rumor mills, speculation, or uncited claims. You certainly don’t want anything to do with the FCC.
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No, far better to lay low and stay marginalized. It will keep you hungary, keep you moving, and keep you striving for new thoughts, angles, and ideas. The moment you start getting treated like regular media, you’ll start to behave like them.
Soon you will have a readership that rivals the Cape Cod Times (56,000 daily readers compared to your 42,000 weekly readers). But I assume the CC Times generates several million dollars in revenues to pay for their vast operations. It’s my understanding that you folks generate a profit from your advertising that amounts to beer money.
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This is not meant to be a shot at you guys, but to point out a major flaw in the model of the emerging new media. Even assuming there is no distribution/circulation costs and production/printing costs, we still need reporters and editors. And with all due respect to citizen journalists, very need trained professionals. So there will still be high overhead in collecting and writing the news, but it is not yet determined if the revenues can support it.
I’m more concerned about your backs. I say, for all your hard work, we all chip in and get you guys a couple of these:
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Whaddya say, any takers?
We could have used some of those on election day. We had a bit of a standoff with uh, supporters of other campaigns, shall we say, trying to poach our location.
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We didn’t even dare leave for lunch. We stood up (and stared ’em down) for about 10 hours.
Or, we could just go down to DC and collect some of those sticks the Bush administration folks will have to be removing from you know wheres if they want to get anything done next year.