In a meeting earlier, I made a throw-away remark about the publishing news being so bad between now and next spring that all our journalists will be scared stiff. I was joking. But judging by the news coming in (hat tip to Heidi from Computer Weekly for these), magazine after magazine is going away.
In the context of this, the offer Six Apart (which is going through its own rough patch) made to out-on-their-ear journos looks like a smarter move than people gave them credit for. If you're sitting on a redundancy payment, in a market where no-one's hiring, a free blog with a little bit of income might just be the right way to reskill..
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In the context of this, the offer Six Apart (which is going through its own rough patch) made to out-on-their-ear journos looks like a smarter move than people gave them credit for. If you're sitting on a redundancy payment, in a market where no-one's hiring, a free blog with a little bit of income might just be the right way to reskill..
What I hadn't fully expected was how gripping the stories from individual journalists have been. The mood of the emails we've gotten has ranged from hopeful to heartbreaking, from cynical to sincere. Overall, there's an optimism which indicates that having a starting point to do something proactive and positive will be a great first step for many journalists to take control of their careers in an industry that is going through enormous upheaval.Sometimes, the most horrible change can be a step in the right direction.
I sometimes find this sort of blogging evangelism a little hard to swallow.
How do you suppose these redundant journalists will make money from their blogs then? Google ads?
It might be a positive step in the sense of creating an online profile and keeping their hand in, but only an exceptional few stand much hope of making a paying career out of blogging alone.
For the rest, we are talking about beer money for semi-teetotallers.
Well, part of the offer is access to the Six Apart Media ad network (Disclosure: I am part of the network), which is somewhat more productive that just slapping AdSense on blogs.
But this isn't really about making money - it's about reskilling.
Chris Alden's piece on it is worth a read.