4 ms·

I'm not Sullivan's biggest fan, but... if Sullivan can't make it as a blogger, who can? Sullivan has a wealthy, educated audience that should be catnip to adve

I'm not Sullivan's biggest fan, but... if Sullivan can't make it as a blogger, who can? Sullivan has a wealthy, educated audience that should be catnip to advertisers -- particularly with his particularly distinct influence among gay and politically liberal niches. He's possibly the most well-known blogger today and his Dish audience piggybacks from his previous work with The Atlantic. And while it's not easy to run a website, the capital required is minimal compared to virtually any other form of publication. If he can't make it, can anyone? Much less a publication with heavier administrative and staff costs like virtually every newspaper or magazine.

Steko 12y ago
He made it he just got burnt out and wanted to write longform pieces (err books) rather than blog all his waking hours.
scarmig 12y ago
The emerging model is having a blog function as a loss leader to a different--often ideological, professional, or business--project. The occasional personal blog isn't dead or dying, but the number of eyeballs reading them will be an increasingly small proportion of the total.
glesica 12y ago
Do wealthy, educated people click on ads online? I'm not wealthy, but I'm educated, and I don't even see ads online, let alone click on them (Adblock). Most of the other educated people I know are the same way (the non-technical among them may not even realize there still are ads online).
jerf 12y ago
It's realistic to me that individual bloggers can't live on advertising. The well-known corrosive effects of ads are too big to deny. I'd particularly cite the need it creates to pump out tons of "views" to tons of "eyeballs" which is corrosive to any sort of quality that might let one stand apart from a crowd of others doing the same thing. (And please note how I phrased that, it's very important. I'm not saying they can't have quality in some snobbish sense, I mean it leaves them unable to cultivate any unusual quality that might let them dominate some micro-niche under such constraints.) But I've got at least one guy in my Patreon lineup that I'm essentially sponsoring to write his blog. In that particular case it's not political, but there's no particular reason why that couldn't work. But I would say at least speaking for myself that for politics, I would expect to either see some very original, quality thinking, or some sort of substantial research being done if I'm going to be paying for it. Party-line punditry's supply already verges on the infinite. (Not a crack at Sullivan. I never read his blog, I have no opinion about the writing I've never read. Just an observation from the other political blogs I read.)
prawn 12y ago
"if Sullivan can't make it as a blogger, who can?" How didn't he make it work? He made it work, but he wants to try something different. I don't think his decision says anything about blogging that it doesn't say about many other go-it-your-own-way ventures like writing physical books, recording music, gigging, crafting, etc.
firebones 12y ago
On the one hand, we're lamenting the death of our nostalgic remembrance of blogging's heyday. On the other, we're conflating blogging with indie commercial media businesses. Blogging isn't dead, but indie commercial media businesses may be in their death throes. Why do we fret? Is it because the listicle is such a mindworm that it has made us forget what we liked about the indie voice? That we can't help ourselves? There was this saying, "interesting news finds me", meaning that a properly tuned social network and media diet is a good filter for what you should ingest, better than trying to be omnivorous and a slave to fear of missing out (FOMO). Over time, it's become closer to "interesting people find me" as more of my intake comes from the people I follow (and the ones I mute). But there are great opportunities for us to create better filters, for better routing mechanisms to our short attention spans. I just don't know whether there will ever be a commercial motivation to create it, or whether there'll be enough of a market willing to give up their FOMO and outsource their self-discipline to consume it...

Steko 12y ago

He made it he just got burnt out and wanted to write longform pieces (err books) rather than blog all his waking hours.

scarmig 12y ago

The emerging model is having a blog function as a loss leader to a different--often ideological, professional, or business--project. The occasional personal blog isn't dead or dying, but the number of eyeballs reading them will be an increasingly small proportion of the total.

glesica 12y ago

Do wealthy, educated people click on ads online? I'm not wealthy, but I'm educated, and I don't even see ads online, let alone click on them (Adblock). Most of the other educated people I know are the same way (the non-technical among them may not even realize there still are ads online).

jerf 12y ago

It's realistic to me that individual bloggers can't live on advertising. The well-known corrosive effects of ads are too big to deny. I'd particularly cite the need it creates to pump out tons of "views" to tons of "eyeballs" which is corrosive to any sort of quality that might let one stand apart from a crowd of others doing the same thing. (And please note how I phrased that, it's very important. I'm not saying they can't have quality in some snobbish sense, I mean it leaves them unable to cultivate any unusual quality that might let them dominate some micro-niche under such constraints.) But I've got at least one guy in my Patreon lineup that I'm essentially sponsoring to write his blog. In that particular case it's not political, but there's no particular reason why that couldn't work. But I would say at least speaking for myself that for politics, I would expect to either see some very original, quality thinking, or some sort of substantial research being done if I'm going to be paying for it. Party-line punditry's supply already verges on the infinite. (Not a crack at Sullivan. I never read his blog, I have no opinion about the writing I've never read. Just an observation from the other political blogs I read.)

prawn 12y ago

"if Sullivan can't make it as a blogger, who can?" How didn't he make it work? He made it work, but he wants to try something different. I don't think his decision says anything about blogging that it doesn't say about many other go-it-your-own-way ventures like writing physical books, recording music, gigging, crafting, etc.

firebones 12y ago

On the one hand, we're lamenting the death of our nostalgic remembrance of blogging's heyday. On the other, we're conflating blogging with indie commercial media businesses. Blogging isn't dead, but indie commercial media businesses may be in their death throes. Why do we fret? Is it because the listicle is such a mindworm that it has made us forget what we liked about the indie voice? That we can't help ourselves? There was this saying, "interesting news finds me", meaning that a properly tuned social network and media diet is a good filter for what you should ingest, better than trying to be omnivorous and a slave to fear of missing out (FOMO). Over time, it's become closer to "interesting people find me" as more of my intake comes from the people I follow (and the ones I mute). But there are great opportunities for us to create better filters, for better routing mechanisms to our short attention spans. I just don't know whether there will ever be a commercial motivation to create it, or whether there'll be enough of a market willing to give up their FOMO and outsource their self-discipline to consume it...