Ted is too busy right now playing with PHP -- though playing might not be the right word, given the look on his face -- to blog this, so I will:
John Battelle's Federated Media Publishing is off to the races -- it's even hiring. The operation obviously deserves more than this cursory nod, but:
When I was still at The San Francisco Examiner -- pre-1996 -- I was invited to speak at a science writers' conference at Stanford. The subject, as I remember it, was on how the World Wide Web might change things for writers and publications. A question arose as to whether the Web might provide new self-publishing opportunities for writers. My private experience with the Web at that point consisted of posting a few pages I created in primitive HTML on several topics of interest (the Web hardly ever forgets: the site is still up). I had already happened upon some neat resources from avid individuals out there, but the notion of a simple personal website having any commercial life seemed remote. My take on the future, as it looked then, was, "The world's never been short of opportunities to become poor doing something you love." The line got a gratifyingly big laugh. But I meant what I said; that's the way the Web looked to me then.
Federated Media looks like a step toward achieving the impossible dream -- the ability of lone-wolf Web publishers to make a living, or maybe even a little more, doing something they love. Battelle's effort isn't the first to try to get into the business of serving as business agent for content creators on one side and as ad rep on the other (admittedly, that's a rough take on what they're about). But it's coming forward at a time when the self-publishing sphere has matured; independent online publishers now command an audience that advertisers are looking for ways to reach.
All that having been said, Federated doesn't appear to be working with just anyone, to start. Its first cluster of publishers is a who's who of the most successful and influential blogging/independent publishing operations out there, including BoingBoing, Metafilter, TechCrunch, Om Malik's Broadband Blog, and Battelle's own Searchblog. OK -- that's just smart business. The reality is that if you want to be your own boss in this new publishing world -- if you hope to pay the bills by the sweat of your blog -- you'll need to respond to the market. Neither Federated nor anyone else is going to help you make a killing on your inspired navel-gazing or tip on how to spin cathair into yarn.
One more thing I like about Federated: Its statement on editorial values: "In addition to establishing a devoted following, each blog in the FM fold subscribes to a core set of values: Strong point of view, factual accuracy, engagement with the community, responsibility, integrity and transparency."
That's actually something old media could learn from.
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