Anyhow, I've been thinking a lot lately (especially between the spare time with my broken + new laptop) about how exactly one could create a blog, center the topics on political, economic, social, cultural, demographic, historic or any "interesting" topic, but primarily the first two, and somehow bring both a sizeable audience and perhaps make money (or even in the future, a living!), all as a BA/maybe future MA credentialing. How do you, essentially, become the next Nate Silver, except ya know, maybe not have as crappy of a site? :P (j/k j/k, it's not THAT bad).
Well, being part of the 'netroots' activist blogosphere, one interesting and repeated model would be one where you have a Front Page of solid contributors - the more money the blog makes, the more the paid contributors. But furthermore, you would have user-generated diaries and articles about whatever subject relevant to the site's focus (with some guidelines), with a Recommended Section elevated by users. Some (Dailykos) goes even further than that, with it's own Cartoon Section, different activist sections, an Elections wing (which is ran by Swingstateproject, who I guess made more $$$ with a bigger audience), etc. I probably wouldn't get that extensive, but I could imagine something perhaps like "Book Review" sections, "Salon Chatrooms" where you could discuss shit with (semi-)intelligent people, etc.
Typically it is said that running blogs can make money in four different ways. 1) Raise your own profile to sell products online, perhaps an e-book if you're creating the content. Well, this idea is a LITTLE optimistic, so I'm going to discount that for a bit. 2) Would be donations. Well, one would have to be really nice to people with $$ and run an awesome site? 3) Site clicks adding into money. Well you need quite a lot for this to generate anything, so I'd discount this almost entirely. And 4) Advertisements, the primary source of revenue for these blogs. So you ultimately would have to create an audience of people who would potentially be interested in things that certain advertisers may display - say, advertisers like upcoming Political Scientists or Economists wanting to spread their name out there and maybe sell some books, or whatever may sell to an overly intellectual crowd.
I'd reckon that there's a few hundred thousand English-speakers worldwide majoring in Political Science, Economics and International Relations programs. That would be the sort of audience you would wish to cultivate on a yearly basis. And of course there's tens of millions who already hold these kinds of degrees, or people with jobs in related fields who would lurk, comment, but not post, etc. So at the very least there are people out there that may be interested, the real trouble would be getting them interested.
Anyhow, this is just some food for thought on an ambitious idea for creating a highly intellectual and thought-provoking community on our favorite subjects - one with an actual audience. Personally I have trouble writing if I don't think anyone will listen :\ . So this is something that I think I'm going to start planning out. The hardest part is making the website with a user database, but otherwise, I think it'd be a really cool project.
What do you guys think?
I think, first of all, that you'd need a rather focused kind of analysis (after all, political stuff is all the rave nowadays)--part of why I think that Nate Silver's project (as well as other members of the technocratic-blogger set, most notably Klein) is that when you get down to it their politics are kind of all over the place, relying more on the abstract idea of 'respectability' than anything else. It also makes the place easier to go through during a news-crawl: when I'm spending a sunday (or hell, any day--unemployment has advantages like that) going through blogs and stuff I'm not trying to just read random news tidbits (I have news sites for that) and unless it's a major topic (like the Crimea or something like that) I'm not likely to go crawling for random opinions. What I like to do when I'm going through blogs is I find someone who I already agree with and who I know won't just go over the lowest-level basics, and who's writing on a topic I don't think much about. This is why I love stuff like the New Inquiry, besides the fact that it's well written: I know when I'm reading something about the economics of facebook or on the social impact of boy-bands or something I won't just be getting diatribes or intro-to-how-this-kinda-sucks, I'm getting well written analysis that will give me some kind of closure on a topic I'd like to think about but don't have the time for.
ReplyDeleteSo like, you have a set of writers with relatively similar opinions who are willing to build up from the analysis of others rather than repeating 101 style stuff, and then you have them write on a broad array of topics.
-Ethan
No doubt that it would have to bring something unique to the table that most sites dealing with Politics and Economics do not. As you said, Nate Silver and Ezra Klein mostly have an aura of credibility, and their level of analysis tends to be (relatively) light Analysis, the sorts you'd see on a WSJ, NYTimes or (as it obviously once was) the WaPo. I'm not really looking to do this since it's already done before by people with plenty more credentials than myself.
ReplyDeleteThat's why I'd be focusing more on the Academic / Intellectual / Theoretical crowd: those who care a little less about what the latest jobs numbers mean, and more about (for your topic) what effect a trade deficit has on wage growth or employment.
Of course the major point about the site is that the content is largely user generated. If someone posts something extremely insightful, the other users put it to the recommended page, and if a site moderator were to choose, to put it onto the Front Page. That way, people come to the site not to read necessarily what I or anyone on the Front Page have to say, but to post deep thoughts on subjects that do not belong in most places (and will only be read by few), or to simply read and comment on others.
That means that you have to have a solid Front Page to begin with, and to bring an initial audience of "higher standards" so to speak to create the kind of community you would want.
I'll have to check out The New Inquiry, though.
Ethan's opinion is pretty sound. That's actually the selling point for my favorite blogs. They don't re-hash talking points and they don't apply Econ 101 analysis to new topics. They are relatively intelligent people that have opinions, but don't let them cloud their judgment.
ReplyDeleteAnd they put out some interesting, and relatively accessible, data-driven pieces.
I was sort of leaning towards some lower-level tidbits and things that maybe people don't know about, such as the LNG trade, CVS tobacco, or drugs in India....sounds like Kain wants to attack things at a higher level and go theoretical to get in the academic crowd. They would want a more "Theory of Everything" as opposed to a "Here's the New Jobs Number!"
Sort of the difference between "What the Theory of Relativity Means" and "cool new physics experiment shows this!"
I can see the merit in both. I think a blog does have to generate a certain bit of content just to stay relevant at all, but more insightful, theoretical posts would certainly be helpful.
Well, I'm not necessarily focused on theories (although people could post about them or whatnot), more like looking at the Ukrainian Crisis through a historical lens, look at past politics and election results, power-based coalitions, parties, its demographic bases, corruption, etc. Basically, if something were to be written on (or end up on) the Front Page or the Recommended section, it'd have to take a look at the Ukrainian Crisis beyond Yulia Tymoshenko being freed, Putin being an ebil dictator and the neo-Nazis are somehow running a stampede in the opposition (a Leftist-Russian position it seems). If you know what I mean. Definitely something much more than what one would watch on Fareed Zakaria, but not Academic Journals or Dissertations either. If you get my drift.
ReplyDeleteIn a sense, what this site would ALSO do is try to PULL those blog authors to start posting on a site like this, to reach a larger audience of people who would be interested in this kind of stuff.
LNG topic was interesting bro!
The other thing is that you can potentially do both if you're an insanely good writer. It's why when I was doing grad school I started off reading the Jacobin even if it was a bit left of my tastes, because they'd go from a single event or something you could recognize to a broader analysis and the method by which they drew you in was half of the point (though to be fair I think their blogging ability has gone down as of late). For instance Sunkara's discussion of House of Cards begins with the niggling feelings you have about the show's cynicism-as-realism and goes on to a systemic criticism of the way we see politics. Stuff like that is great and brings me back again and again.
ReplyDeleteMust check out this Jacobin....do you have any recommended pieces? Never seen an episode of House of Cards myself
ReplyDeleteThere's the article about conservativism's development towards support of mass incarceration which got a lot of play from the National Review (https://www.jacobinmag.com/2012/04/against-law-for-order/), there's their seminar on the Making of Global Capitalism (https://www.jacobinmag.com/2013/07/the-making-and-unmaking-of-global-capitalism/), and there's their great article that's on Lincoln the movie (but also more broadly about the way that the histiography of the Civil War and emancipation movement ignores the contributions of black people) (https://www.jacobinmag.com/2012/11/lincoln-against-the-radicals-2/).
ReplyDeleteThey don't have a paywall though so you can really check out anything not specifically on their magazine
Ahh no wonder, that article was written by Mike Konzcal, who gets a lot of play from DK and Krugman to now apparently the National Review.
ReplyDeleteJacobin looks very interesting, so I'll have to check that out more and more. Makes me feel like I need to hire professional web designers or something :X