Journalist Bailout Program from TypePad

I found this via a Jay Rosen tweet: Six Apart, the company that owns the blogging platform TypePad, is offering a Journalist Bailout Program for the “recently-laid-off or fearful-of-layoffs journalist”. Here’s the gist of the program, in Six Apart’s own words:

• You get a free TypePad Pro blog account. That’s the real deal, the same service that powers big-name media blogs, and it even includes professional support so we answer any questions you have.
• You get enrolled in the Six Apart Media advertising program. These are real display ads, that pay a lot more than simple Google text ads, and you get to keep the revenue.
• We’ll promote your new site on Blogs.com. It’s a fast-growing directory of the best in blogs, and Blogs.com will be a very effective way for all of your peers in the Journalist Bailout Program to cross-promote and share traffic for your independent sites.
• Lots more. Getting started with Six Apart opens the door to lots more ways to succeed in the future. We can introduce you to our VIP program to help drive traffic to your site, help you connect your blog to your LinkedIn profile, make it easy to manage your site’s comments from an iPhone, and even show you how to automatically promote your posts to your Facebook friends.

Some observations/questions about the main points of the program:

• The free TypePad Pro account: I haven’t used TypePad, so I can’t comment on its quality, but from the list of features for the TypePad Pro account, I couldn’t really see anything that you can’t achieve with free blogging software like, say, WordPress, and a few relatively easily installed plugins/add-ons. Besides, a successful blog still comes down to content. The software behind the blog can only do so much for you, so I’m not sure why someone starting a blog would pick a platform that requires you to pay rather than a free one that would do all or almost all of the same thing. Yes, Six Apart is footing the bill for the account for this program, but I couldn’t find anything that tells me how long that’ll last, and my spider sense tells me it won’t be forever.
• The Six Apart advertising program: The description says that the display ads pay a lot more than Google text ads. True, but it also neglects to mention that Google AdSense also offers display ads in addition to text ads. So what does the Six Apart program offer that AdSense doesn’t? Also, the Six Apart program isn’t something exclusive. You can sign up for it as long as you have a site, not necessarily one with TypePad.
• Promotion on Blogs.com: Not surprisingly, Blogs.com, like TypePad, is owned by Six Apart. Also not surprisingly, anyone can submit their site for a listing on Blogs.com. There’s a big yellow button on the top right of the home page saying “submit your blog now”. So, like the advertising program, this feature also isn’t anything exclusive to the program.
• All the “Lots more” stuff seem like things that you can figure out if you just spend a little time with a reference guide.

(Help me fill in the blanks: Please leave a comment if you know the answer to the questions I raised about TypePad’s functionality and Six Apart’s advertising program compared to competing products)

This is pretty obviously an effort to increase content on and usage of Six Apart properties, marketed as a way to help journalists (it’s interesting to see someone trying to capitalize on the wave of downsizing in the industry). About the only thing it’s really giving away is the $15-a-month blogging software, and really, from the company’s perspective, that’s no big deal. If you get somebody started on your software, as long as it serves their needs, chances are that brand loyalty and the hassle of switching all their content to another platform would keep at least some of those users even when you start charging them. In return, you get more users, more content, likely better quality for that content since they are from people who are used to writing something substantial for a mass audience, more sites in your blogs directory, and more sites in your ad program.

Don’t get me wrong: The fact that the “bailout program” is just a marketing ploy and a rebundling of existing features doesn’t make it bad. If you are not all that familiar with the ways of the Web, this would be a way to get up and running a little more quickly. I see it as akin to the free bundle of features that Web-hosting services offer when you sign up, which typically includes things like Webmail, blogging software, addition to a list of search engines (none of which you have ever heard of), Zen Cart, photo album, calendar, etc. They are all open-source software/non-exclusive features that would be free regardless of which Web-hosting service you used and can be added piecemeal independent of the Web-hosting service. But it is quicker to push an “Install WordPress” button on your control panel than to download WordPress, figure out where to upload it, and how to set up a database for it on your Web-hosting account, and for most people, that quick install is good enough for their needs. So really, the only thing about the Six Apart program that gives me a little bit of pause is the fact that they charge for their blogging software. They are offering it to journalists for free now, but what’s the expiration date on that?

Ultimately, if you are a journalist looking to strike out on your own as a blogger, the bundle of seemingly not-so-special features offered by this program can be a way to go. Just realize that it’s hardly the only way to go, and that you can get all of the features it offers for the same low price — free — elsewhere. Now, as for making money off your blog, I think this line from Six Apart’s own description sums it up pretty well:

While we can’t promise it’s going to replace having a full-time writing gig, it gets you up and running with your own site that you can start to benefit from.

UPDATE:

Anil Dash, VP of Six Apart, blogs more about the program. Sounds like they’ve gotten some good responses. Anil also left a comment below.

Random Musings on the Discussions About Journalism

Some random mental masturbation about the on-going discussions about the future of journalism:

• Why is it that the people involved in developing the Web 2.0 applications/Web sites that are transforming the media landscape tend to sound a lot more optimistic about the future and value of newspapers than people who are actually working in or talking about newspapers? (Examples here, here, here). I mean, after all, if Web 2.0 is sweeping away old media, shouldn’t the people who are leading the way be saying “Ours is the new way” more than anyone else? Do they really believe what they are saying, or is it just a case of them being gracious winners?
• So much of the discussion about future forms of journalism talks about the big, “glamorous” aspects — the investigative reporting, the political news, etc. I agree that they are the most important functions of journalism. Yet, if the model of journalism done mostly by big news organizations collapses, those won’t be the things that will be lost, because they are of such visibility and significance that somehow, someway, somebody is going to keep doing them.

  What will be lost, however, are the less glamorous, but almost as important, stuff in the daily offering from the local newspaper — stories about upcoming local festivals, high school sports, features about people in the community, etc. People are interested in these things, but if you ask them for a list of things they would pay an independent journalist to write about, these probably won’t be at the top of the list. “Want to read about” doesn’t equal “will pay for”. I mean, we have sites like Politico and FactCheck, but how many DumpvilleGirlsSoccer.coms do we have? And if you don’t think people are interested in Dumpville girls’ soccer, then you’ve obviously never sat by a phone on a newspaper sports desk during the high school spring sports season.

• There seems to be so much disdain for journalists and what they represent (establishment, old-school, bias, spin, etc.), so why the heck is everybody grasping for a title with “journalist” in it? Why does someone have to be a “citizen journalist” or “i-reporter” instead of just a guy who took a picture of a political rally and sent it to his friends or tweeted about seeing a traffic accident outside his house? Oh right, because “journalist” sounds a lot more legitimate than “guy passing along news on twitter”, just as “sanitation engineer” sounds a lot nicer than “janitor”, which sounds a lot nicer than “crapper cleaner-upper”. All this talk about democratization of journalism and other high-minded ideals, and yet here we are, spewing out terms that exist basically to inflate someone’s ego and attribute more importance to an action than it really warrants. Throw in the irony of associating oneself with those one scorns by adopting their title, and you’ve a pot bubbling over with hypocrisy and base human qualities like arrogance and the lust for recognition (ok, maybe that’s going a bit overboard, but you get my point).
• The common wisdom going around seems to be that it’s a good thing that journalism is shifting away from a model of monopolies to a model where everyone is a player. Part of me believes that, but then, part of me thinks, “Are monopolies really that bad?” I mean, Google has basically become a monopoly in its field (OK, you can kind of count Yahoo! too, but that’s still basically only two players).

  I like the idea that everybody has the means to publish and participate in journalism, but is that benefit also creating a new media landscape where journalistic work becomes devalued by the glut of information available and what revenue there is becomes so fragmented that few would be able to muster together enough support to do this full-time or to pursue the large-scale reporting projects that monopolies would have the clout to do? Yes, we could possibly replace the clout of monopolies with the combined clout of networks, but for that to happen, you must first build a network of some size and then get a significant number of the members in that network to collaborate on the same project, which are not necessarily easy tasks, especially if you have to do that on every decent-size project. There are so many moving parts that need to work in unison to make it happen.

  Think about China’s Olympic preparations. One reason it was able to build impressive facilities and put on a grand show — and do it so quickly — was because, as an authoritarian government, it didn’t need to go through propositions and referendums to ask its citizens for permission to spend money for this project. You can debate the pros and cons of the style of government, but you can’t argue with the result of the project.

• Does good journalism equal good business? If you are giving people what they want, does it follow that you will find enough revenue to support your operation? I would like to think so, but I lean more toward the belief that quality of the work and sustainability of the work are two separate things and not necessarily in a directly proportional relationship. Does “good journalism” = “what people want to read”? I think so. Does “good journalism” = “what people are most interested in reading”? I don’t know. Does “good journalism” = “a big enough interest for people for you to generate enough revenue”? Or for that matter, does “what people want to read” = “what people are willing to pay for”? Better yet, ask yourself this: When’s the last time you sent money to somebody for developing a good freeware application?
• There’s a lot of talk among journalists and media critics about “objectivity” being a false ideal and that perhaps it’s preferable to have biased information sources who make their biases clear. Yet, every time I see readers weigh in on the issue of bias in the media, their complaints are always about not enough objectivity. Is this a case of the practitioners out-thinking themselves and misleading themselves in terms of what it is that their audience want? Personally, I don’t buy the “clear bias” argument. Allow me to illustrate:

Person A: I firmly believe that 2 + 2 = 4.

Person B: I firmly believe that 2 + 2 = 7.

Person A: I know I’m right and person B is wrong. Here’s why. (proceeds to present pages upon pages of evidence, math theories, and long-winded formulas and convoluted equations).

Person B: I know I’m right and person A is wrong. Here’s why. (proceeds to present pages upon pages of evidence, math theories, and long-winded formulas and convoluted equations).

Person A: Person B’s argument is flawed. Here’s why. (more equations and theories).

Person B: No, person A’s argument is flawed. Here’s why. (more equations and theories).

Person A: Here are five people who agree with me.

Person B: Here are five people who agree with me.

. . .

So, if you didn’t know what 2 + 2 equals and don’t have a firm grasp on advanced theoretical mathematics, based on what you were just presented with, how would you decide? Is information presented in this fashion useful in helping you figure out what 2 + 2 is?

Stuff Journalists Like

Just found this site today. It’s only about a month old, but the content is looking promising. A few of the additions I would suggest:

• Writing a vaguely dirty headline and being able to justify it
• Cursing the morons in advertising
• Prep football Fridays
• Seeing one of their co-workers on TV at some press conference, barely visible on the edge of the screen as he/she joins the throng of reporters crowding around the interviewee
• Being able to walk into the press room to pick up inserts
• Reading and critiquing papers from another city while vacationing in that city
• When every column of MLB boxscores breaks perfectly
• Answering phone calls from parents of athletes in high school/rec leagues asking for coverage
• Answering phone calls to tell people what channel the game is on, and then what the score is
• Answering phone calls to settle bar bets
• Answering phone calls that start, or end, with “Tell (insert columnist name here) that he’s a (insert expletives here)”

I’m sure more will come to me later.

Election Night Pizza Limit

Just saw this item on Poynter about the News & Observer’s (later-rescinded) limit on election-night pizza for its staff:

From: “Susan Spring”
Date: November 3, 2008 11:46:07 AM EST
To: [Raleigh News & Observer staff]
Subject: Pizza etiquette

I want to remind you that pizza will be provided tomorrow night ONLY for those working on elections. Please be polite. If you are working elections, you may have up to TWO slices. Thank you in advance for being considerate.

Susan Spring
Director of Newsroom Operations
The News & Observer
(919) 829-4860

A message from executive editor John Drescher a few hours later:

There will be no two-slice limit Tuesday night (although if Susan Spring chases you with a knife in her hand, you are on your own). And anyone who is here can partake.

Budget must be real tight these days. I hope those extra slices don’t put them over budget at the end of the year.