Legal Insurrection is a conservative blog launched in 2008, and its creator came to speak in my Independent Media class.
William Jacobson is a Cornell law professor who said he was never really political until a dinner conversation he had with a friend the summer before the 2008 presidential elections. His friend, a liberal, said he had never heard a conservative talk about and explain their side so well, and suggested that Jacobson make a blog.
So Legal Insurrection was born. Like a lot of sites run by people who are not well-known writers, Jacobson's did not makes leaps and bounds out of the gate. He said most of his readers were family and friends.
In the beginning, he said the biggest upswing he got in viewership was due to him writing on other (more popular) sites. He wrote one particular piece on a political website that spread out pretty far and garnered a lot of attention. This got his name out to wider audiences and ultimately attracted a lot of attention back to his blog.
This tactic makes a lot of sense. A budding blogger can do freelance writing for another similar website to get their name and blog out to wider audience. Said freelancer may have to forgo payment to plug their own work but getting those big numbers can be really beneficial to the long-term success of the blog. Jacobson said that big numbers come from random, nice, successful people that link to little bloggers.
Legal Insurrection hit its one-millionth visit 11.5 months after it went live. During most of this time, the only contributor was Jacobson. The blog continued to grow and now has 11 other contributors, some paid, and nets in around $5,000 a month. What gets all that money? Advertising.
Legal Insurrection employs numerous different advertising strategies to make money. The site has no control over what ads appear on the pages, which may not be great for a blog with a political agenda but they make money nonetheless. The key component to making money off the advertising is page views.
To make a good amount of money off advertising, a site needs a lot of page views. Jacobson said one of the key components of keeping viewers coming back is to update regularly and often.
Updating with a new story once per day could be hugely beneficial because people can come back everyday with the fulfilled expectation that there is something new to see. If someone sees the site for the first time and comes back the next couple days to nothing new, they probably will be hard-pressed to keep coming back at all. People like to get into a rhythm with a website and not allowing for that will drive viewers away, even they like the content.
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Journalism Paid by Fans
Kickstarter and other crowdfunding sites have been a huge boom for independent producers in recent years. For filmmakers, novelists, comic book artists and more, crowdfunding has been a huge help in getting non-corporate-sponsored projects off the ground.
But I have yet to see crowdfunding have a big impact on journalism. In my independent media class I learned about Spot.us, a journalism-focused crowdfunding website that is currently on hiatus. It is a very cool idea but seems to be very selective in terms of who gets to receive funding. I do not think a website like that is what young journalists need; it could make journalists change and shape what they are writing about to make the criteria of the site.
I also learned about Beacon, which is a service that requires a patron to pay $5 a month to one writer hosted on Beacon. If you pay for one writer, then you get access to everything that is hosted on Beacon. This is another cool idea but it requires you to put your content behind a paywall. If a writer does not want to do that, it is not the best path to take. A key to getting a wide audience from the start is allowing your content to be accessed for free and easily shared, and Beacon would stifle that.
I recently wrote an article on VGJ Review about the journalism surrounding crowdfunding and put together this graphic showing the success of video game developers that have used Kickstarter to fund their projects.
Video games make up the largest portion of Kickstarter projects, and the money there looks very promising. I looked up journalism projects on Kickstarter and the selections are not very good. I think the problem is that campaigns have to reach their money goals to get any of that revenue.
The best site I have seen for funding journalism so far is Indiegogo. Projects do not need to reach their goal in order for the creator to get his or her money. If I wanted to get people to support my website, I would ask for money on Indiegogo. Because journalism is project that is continuous, unlike making a movie or a game, the funding needs to be different.
Funding would ideally be continuous. Because (most) people can already write without having to make any money from it, as I do, I think the idea would be to enable the person to spend more time writing. If I made a little money off Indiegogo, I could quit my school job and focus on my passion more without having to worry about my finances.
But again, just because you put an item up for crowdfunding does not mean it will make any money. The trick is to make "true fans," as described in the "1,000 True Fans" article on The Technium. These true fans will buy anything you create and try to get other people to check out your work. You may not need 1,000 to make money but it would sure help. According to the article, reaching 1,000 would make it possible to sustain yourself on that work alone.
Thanks to crowdfunding, I think that number can be set even lower, and hopefully it helps journalists get started on projects that they are passionate about.
But I have yet to see crowdfunding have a big impact on journalism. In my independent media class I learned about Spot.us, a journalism-focused crowdfunding website that is currently on hiatus. It is a very cool idea but seems to be very selective in terms of who gets to receive funding. I do not think a website like that is what young journalists need; it could make journalists change and shape what they are writing about to make the criteria of the site.
I also learned about Beacon, which is a service that requires a patron to pay $5 a month to one writer hosted on Beacon. If you pay for one writer, then you get access to everything that is hosted on Beacon. This is another cool idea but it requires you to put your content behind a paywall. If a writer does not want to do that, it is not the best path to take. A key to getting a wide audience from the start is allowing your content to be accessed for free and easily shared, and Beacon would stifle that.
I recently wrote an article on VGJ Review about the journalism surrounding crowdfunding and put together this graphic showing the success of video game developers that have used Kickstarter to fund their projects.
The best site I have seen for funding journalism so far is Indiegogo. Projects do not need to reach their goal in order for the creator to get his or her money. If I wanted to get people to support my website, I would ask for money on Indiegogo. Because journalism is project that is continuous, unlike making a movie or a game, the funding needs to be different.
Funding would ideally be continuous. Because (most) people can already write without having to make any money from it, as I do, I think the idea would be to enable the person to spend more time writing. If I made a little money off Indiegogo, I could quit my school job and focus on my passion more without having to worry about my finances.
But again, just because you put an item up for crowdfunding does not mean it will make any money. The trick is to make "true fans," as described in the "1,000 True Fans" article on The Technium. These true fans will buy anything you create and try to get other people to check out your work. You may not need 1,000 to make money but it would sure help. According to the article, reaching 1,000 would make it possible to sustain yourself on that work alone.
Thanks to crowdfunding, I think that number can be set even lower, and hopefully it helps journalists get started on projects that they are passionate about.
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Blog Dreams
The readings for Tuesday's class gave me a ray of hope for the future of my writing career. Josh Marshall's speech gave a small insight into the importance of independent media and what it was like to see Talking Points Memo grow. It was inspiring to see how he made his passion grow and turn it into something that supports him.
But politics are such a hot topic, so it makes sense that a great writer and investigator who focuses on that field would become popular and successful. Politics affect everyone and stories about corruption will almost automatically reach a huge audience. My dreams lie in something much less accessible to the general public: video games.
And yet I was still inspired. The second reading from Business Week provided a list of successful blogs and how they made their money. TPM was on that list but what stuck out to me most was the slide about Kottke. Kottke is a very niche website that generates content around things that exist on the Internet. And that's also what I do.
I run VGJReview.com, and have been adding to it at least once a week for the past six weeks. I focus on journalism surrounding the video game industry, which would attract a relatively small audience. It is aimed toward people who care about video games and how people write about them. The concept does not exactly have the widest draw but it isn't something that is out there right now, I think it needs to be.
These readings gave me hope that my website could be successful. It's independent, niche and so far only run by me. I'm passionate about the subject and have fun writing about it, and I think that is a big part of what goes into the start of a successful project. If you can't believe in what you are doing, I don't believe you will easily find other people that would believe in it.
If I Can Haz Cheezburger can exist and be incredibly successful, I think VGJ Review could at least make me a little bit of money.
But politics are such a hot topic, so it makes sense that a great writer and investigator who focuses on that field would become popular and successful. Politics affect everyone and stories about corruption will almost automatically reach a huge audience. My dreams lie in something much less accessible to the general public: video games.
And yet I was still inspired. The second reading from Business Week provided a list of successful blogs and how they made their money. TPM was on that list but what stuck out to me most was the slide about Kottke. Kottke is a very niche website that generates content around things that exist on the Internet. And that's also what I do.
I run VGJReview.com, and have been adding to it at least once a week for the past six weeks. I focus on journalism surrounding the video game industry, which would attract a relatively small audience. It is aimed toward people who care about video games and how people write about them. The concept does not exactly have the widest draw but it isn't something that is out there right now, I think it needs to be.
These readings gave me hope that my website could be successful. It's independent, niche and so far only run by me. I'm passionate about the subject and have fun writing about it, and I think that is a big part of what goes into the start of a successful project. If you can't believe in what you are doing, I don't believe you will easily find other people that would believe in it.
If I Can Haz Cheezburger can exist and be incredibly successful, I think VGJ Review could at least make me a little bit of money.
Thursday, March 6, 2014
I.F. Stone
The I.F. Stone's documentary from 1973 gives a very detailed look into the life of Izzy Stone during the last couple years of his weekly. He created a newspaper that was "radical in viewpoint but conservative in format." His works became so popular, I think, because it was so professionally produced and looked very good. If you put quality content in poor packaging it probably will not sell very well.
The documentary paints Stone as an incredibly intelligent man with an incredible drive to work. In the beginning he produced the paper almost single-handedly. I think the culminating image to his nature was that of him walking down the street and placing all of the mail into the street postbox. He could handle things himself, he handled them well, and it was probably best done without intervention.
I think one of the greatest things he did was stand up against Joseph McCarthy before Edward R. Murrow ever took up the microphone against him. While Murrow had CBS to back him up, little Izzy Stone fought all by himself. So many people were negatively affected by the witch hunt McCarthy had brought to the United States and Stone dared to go against the crusade immediately. He faced being labeled a communist but contended with the government anyway.
His views were progressive, yet he criticized all parties when they required criticism. He was very inclusive and pro-equality as Peter Flint points out in his New York Times obituary. ''Once you put ifs and buts in the Bill of Rights, nobody's civil liberties will be secure.''
Stone certainly had his opinions and he voiced them strongly without holding back. Opinions can sometimes go against the "pure nature" of journalism that we learn about in classes. At Ithaca College I have learned that true objectivity is impossible, but I do still think that striving for it in terms of content is beneficial.
I do not think that the documentary showed enough of Izzy Stone's faults. Like so many documentaries I have seen that focus on a single person, they always seem to show the greatest side of the person and ignore the negatives. We did not watch the entire film but I can't imagine the pieces we missed had a lot of critique. Everyone appeared to love Stone and everything that he touched.
Stone's own nature was to question things, the opening line of the documentary being his own:
"There are certain basic assumptions you must make. The first is that every government is quite capable of lying"
So why not question Stone himself? He did a lot of thorough investigative pieces that certainly benefited society at large but he was clearly very opinionated. I would like to see more analysis on how his personal interests went into his work and how they affected what topics he wrote about in his weekly.
From what I understand though, Stone feels like he belongs among the top journalists of U.S. history. His tenacity, ethics and quality of writing stand as one uniquely in the history of journalism. It is amazing that so many youth at the time could trust the words of an older newsman, but he did it.
The documentary paints Stone as an incredibly intelligent man with an incredible drive to work. In the beginning he produced the paper almost single-handedly. I think the culminating image to his nature was that of him walking down the street and placing all of the mail into the street postbox. He could handle things himself, he handled them well, and it was probably best done without intervention.
I think one of the greatest things he did was stand up against Joseph McCarthy before Edward R. Murrow ever took up the microphone against him. While Murrow had CBS to back him up, little Izzy Stone fought all by himself. So many people were negatively affected by the witch hunt McCarthy had brought to the United States and Stone dared to go against the crusade immediately. He faced being labeled a communist but contended with the government anyway.
His views were progressive, yet he criticized all parties when they required criticism. He was very inclusive and pro-equality as Peter Flint points out in his New York Times obituary. ''Once you put ifs and buts in the Bill of Rights, nobody's civil liberties will be secure.''
Stone certainly had his opinions and he voiced them strongly without holding back. Opinions can sometimes go against the "pure nature" of journalism that we learn about in classes. At Ithaca College I have learned that true objectivity is impossible, but I do still think that striving for it in terms of content is beneficial.
I do not think that the documentary showed enough of Izzy Stone's faults. Like so many documentaries I have seen that focus on a single person, they always seem to show the greatest side of the person and ignore the negatives. We did not watch the entire film but I can't imagine the pieces we missed had a lot of critique. Everyone appeared to love Stone and everything that he touched.
Stone's own nature was to question things, the opening line of the documentary being his own:
"There are certain basic assumptions you must make. The first is that every government is quite capable of lying"
So why not question Stone himself? He did a lot of thorough investigative pieces that certainly benefited society at large but he was clearly very opinionated. I would like to see more analysis on how his personal interests went into his work and how they affected what topics he wrote about in his weekly.
From what I understand though, Stone feels like he belongs among the top journalists of U.S. history. His tenacity, ethics and quality of writing stand as one uniquely in the history of journalism. It is amazing that so many youth at the time could trust the words of an older newsman, but he did it.
x
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)