Just for Hussey: Christoper Hitchens on why Huckabee sucks.
The whole thing started out when I mention, in the comments, to Joe Bardi that no one cares what Hitchens thinks about anything these days.
I'm wondering what Creative Loafing is trying to do with the Short List. I have been linked in the SL posts and it doesn't generated a great deal of traffic for my site. My guess is most Political Whore readers don't bother to click the links. (Or no one cares what I have to say.)
Ben Eason wants Creative Loafing to make more revenue off the internet. Tampa CL seems too understaffed to attend to their blogs full-time. They are stuck on the print edition (with all those wonderful ads offering GFE companionship.) Nick Denton's Wonkette and The Washington Monthly found Ana Marie Cox and Kevin Drum from the blogosphere. Both had established audiences and were well-respected. Cox was an ex-freelance journalist and Drum a former CEO. Both have written on the internet since the 90s.
Creative Loafing isn't going to get or afford a Cox or Drum. What they can do is provide more punditry. If people want links they will go to Metafilter. CL needs to update their blogs more often, that is one of the reasons The Buzz is so successful. CL does not have the staff to compete with the St. Petersburg Times. They can find their niche covering topics not touched by the local newspapers.
The CL blogs need to find their own voice and what I say won't matter much to them. David Warner should ask himself does Hitchens links pay for the bandwidth cost?
CL has been cutting staff -- good, seasoned reporters kind of staff -- at other alternative media properties that they own. I'm not sure what their business model is, but if a media company doesn't want to pay respected journalists under the employ of papers they have acquired, then one has to wonder...
ReplyDeleteCL should stop the current POSE as an alternative news source and actually BE an alternative news source.
ReplyDeleteThe switchback on everything including ownership and the familial doubleplay is very telling.
Frankly, their writing staff doesn't turn out stuff as good as yours in some cases. SOME writers are downright laughable and so THEY MUST have a familial connection to be kept aboard. Besides the publicized ones.
In short, we might as well all just read the Tampa Trib with a few notable exceptions.
Tired.
AND what tas said.
Wow, feel the love.
ReplyDeletefor the record I have no relation to Ben Eason. :-)
But seriously, Michael makes some excellent points about the Short List and the idea of sending other people away from your website, points that I have made for some time now at the paper. That is one of the reasons I tanked the Morning Roundup and now don't even do Short List on my mornings to write them (M,W,F). Instead, I am writing one big story per day hoping to raise the top issue du jour, and then lots more posts. Other than during my hiatus at sea the week before Christmas, I think the PoHo blog count has been up quite a bit in terms of our posts and your (generically) comments.
Having said that, we do need to do a better job as an entire staff of feeding our blogs and working to make them more timely, compelling, etc.