Michael Duff of the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal is doing a bit of lionizing today. He laments the fall of Radar Online and the inconveniencing/disenfranchising of its talented writers. But more than anything else, he looks like a creepy guy who spends too much time on computers. Just like me.
All of this talk about good bloggers alternately as “rock stars” and “ahead of their time”, and the armchair quarterbacking of online journalism business models… listen, everyone. It’s a bunch of horse shit. Even if there was a successful business model, competitors like Denton would come along and run it into the ground. Newspapers, magazines and news agencies are already doing that by underselling professionally-prepared news and by relying on a volatile advertising market with very shaky underpinnings. It is ironic that, in an age where we are bombarded by more adversiting than ever, very little of it is effective and it is selling at an aggregate cheaper price to inept conglomerates. To say that the model is fucked up is an understatement. Everybody loses, too.
Even actual rock stars are hurting right now because of the business mistakes of the industry they rely upon. And so it is with bloggers, good, great, or horrible. Considered as an ambitious career, it’s a folly and a half. But also, considered as a path to fame: you won’t be 1/10th as famous as some guy who was once on a basic cable reality show (as the eighth member of a shared living situation, or something like that).
Fix all that first, and then we’ll discuss who is or isn’t “ahead of their time”.
