How to Succeed in Political Blogging
There seems to be a new book out about how to succeed as a political blogger. Kevin Drum provides somewhat less than insightful guidance:
You have to enjoy writing. You really have to enjoy sitting down at a keyboard and typing words. If you don’t, then you might as well forget about it.
Of course, he realizes this isn’t so profound. But the broadness of his advice gets to the big problem here–such a book is absurd. Publishing a guide to political blogging in 2011 is akin to publishing a guide to succeeding in the oil business in 1897 and asking John D. Rockefeller to write a chapter. The game is up. As I’ve stated before, there’s virtually no way for new voices to rise out of the blogosphere in 2011. Without a very specific skill, good luck trying to find a readership outside of your friends. No one uses blogrolls anymore, everyone reads the same sites, and it’s quite rare for established bloggers to really push new bloggers. Maybe there is a rare exception that proves the rule.
I’m not really blaming anyone for this–it’s probably just the natural consolidation of a new media form. It’s the book that purports to be useful that irritates me.
If one really wanted to be successful and didn’t have the wherewithal (and probably the connections, including the undergraduate degree at an Ivy) to get an internship at one of the top progressive sites, your options are limited. I think you’d have to link the hell out of other people, probably try to pick some fights, be very active on Twitter, try to establish e-mail or twitter relationships with major bloggers, and hope to eventually be picked up by a bigger site. In other words, it’s really hard and probably not worth your time since you aren’t ever going to make money off it.
It’s not even about the money for me, Erik. It’s about being a fresh voice. I’m tired of getting second and third hand marching orders that I know were issued by the same handful of bloggers, many of whom are flat-out self-involved idiots (present companies definitely excepted).
Part of what I find so attractive about OWS is it’s not the same voices.
And that is why Yglesias likes to tell people how to think and act, you know, to be more effective.
This is partly why I view Netroots Nation as one gigantic circle jerk. You get these panels, and the audience is supposed to take notes on what gets discussed, but no one ever says, “Hey, let’s get some fresh blood up in here”.
You mean to tell me the evolution of progressive thought ended around 2004?
Blogroll Amnesty today, Blogroll Amnesty forever!
I miss Jon.
So say we all. (Missing Jon, I mean.)
To be clear, it’s not about the (very little) money for me either. But they two aren’t mutually exclusive because the blogosphere is so stagnant that the only way to get that fresh voice out there to be read is to somehow get on one of the bigger sites and that means spending an inordinate amount of time working toward that meaning that you have to start making a few quarters to make it remotely worth your time.
Point taken, and thanks for clarifying that.
I’m trying anyway!!
The Political Blog of Win
Yeah! Fresh voices like me!
The Political Blog of Pure Win
There is also zero quality control. Yglesias can write anything he wants and it doesn’t matter. When he writes something sensical he’ll get a link. Just like Drum or even this blog will hat tip McCardle if she happens to blog about something of note. At least this blog regularly points out that McCardle is full of sh*t most of the time.
Yglesias can write anything he wants and it doesn’t matter.
So, the blogosphere has become just like the pundit class it used to mock?
Is this at all surprising?
Yes to Joshua, no to John.
Yes, and there’s no more accountability for bloggers than for MSM pundits, probably less because the blogsophere tries to keep MSM pundits accountable. Greenwald is just about alone in his attempt to call out fellow bloggers.
So bloggers can be, and are, often wrong and don’t pay a price. On the contrary, given that many seek a seat in the mainstream, being wrong helps.
I’m still not sure what “accountability” is supposed to mean in these contexts, or who exactly is supposed to be the judge of rightness.
Charles Pierce
Pierce was a journalist when Ford was President.
yeah, he also gets paid by Esquire.
And Kevin Drum gets paid to be fart out his I-trust-Obama’s-wisdom-more-than-my-own posts by Mother Jones. Before that he got paid by the Washington Monthly. Most of the old-school bloggers aren’t “making it as bloggers” — they’re working for magazines and think tanks. Say what you will about Atrios and Digby, they’re actually “making it as bloggers.”
That’s a needlessly narrow notion of what it means to ‘make it as a blogger’. For almost all values of X, it seems to me that finding someone to pay you a wage sufficient to make a living to do X counts as making it at X.
Well, I suppose you’re correct, although for people hoping to learn how to make it as bloggers, “get hired by the Washington Post” isn’t very helpful.
Moreover, I know I’m an idiot romantic in this sense, but I think blogging should be an alternative to the mainstream. For white not-all-that liberal males, blogging just became a way — an easy way, w/o having to do much reporting or thinking — to enter the establishment. I suppose it’s good that the Washington Post has Greg Sargent to balance Chris Cilizza, but in 2003 I hoped for a little more.
Drum was a high-profile blogger in his own right, which is why Washington Monthly and Mother Jones hired him.
Well, sure. That’s the way it works, and these days just about the only way to “make it as a blogger,” get enough attention as an independent blogger so that some establishment entity scoops you up.
That depends on what you mean by “make it.” If you mean “make enough money to have a middle class lifestyle just on your blogging,” then yes, that’s pretty much the best way to do it. Other than that it’s not a necessity to get an audience, it’s just very hard to differentiate your voice from the cacophony of others in such a way that makes people give a crap what you have to say.
What it boils down to is: 1. Go back in time to 2002. 2. Graduate from an elite school around that time. 3. Land internships at well known outlets.
We could borrow Barack Obama’s magic time machine, the one he planted his birth certificate with and the one he used to destroy the American economy under the Bush administration!
You forgot the “Endorse Iraq War because all your classmates at Harvard protesting it are dirty hippies” part.
Don’t forget whining about the “A” list bloggers. Oh, wait…
As I’ve stated before, there’s virtually no way for new voices to rise out of the blogosphere in 2011.
Sady Doyle/ Tigerbeatdown. (2010?) Also, there isn’t a blogosphere. There are a bunch of blogospheres, and they don’t really overlap very much, which is where the feeling of stagnation comes from.
Yeah, that’s a good point. There are new music blogs, mommyblogs, fashion Tumblrs, etc., which are still finding an audience. Erik’s point could perhaps be restated that the doors of political blogging are mostly closed, because the A-list was set by the warbloggers and people responding to the warbloggers, but there’s more to the medium than just people on Atrios or Instapundit’s blogroll.
Right–I am only talking about political blogging on the left. Anything else, I have no idea. But that’s what the book is about too, or political blogging left and right anyway.
Thank you for writing this.
Now, whenever one of my friends or family members asks me why don’t I just start a blog, I can link them to this.
If it were that easy, everybody would be doing it, and making money at it.
It’s like those ‘work-from-home’ job ads you see everywhere. Yes, maybe you CAN find one that’s legitimate and make some decent salary, but 99.9% of them aren’t, and you won’t, and never will.
It has always seemed to me that the best way to get some notice is to start guest blogging at a bigger name blog. Does LGM or Crooked Timber count? At the latter, for example, they’re really slowed down over the years on the posting rate and they do bring in new voices from time to time. I’m not sure what their criteria are, but it seems like that would be the best path to developing a following and then branching out to your own site. This assumes that the barrier to entry for guest blogging is not also absurdly high, but why would it be?
Skippy the Bush Kangaroo makes a continued effort to post links to new blogs.
I guess that makes him the exception that proves the rule. He is also a good read, you all should stop by & click the through links to new blogs too.
How do you make a small fortune in political blogging?
Start with a large fortune.
While I agree about not getting into blogging for the money, it was ever thus. You guys certainly didn’t expect this blog to turn into paid employment in any way, nor did any of the other “big” bloggers that date back to the “good old days” of personal/political blogging.
The death of the personal political blog is greatly exaggerated. “link the hell out of other people, probably try to pick some fights, be very active on Twitter, try to establish e-mail or twitter relationships with major bloggers, and hope to eventually be picked up by a bigger site” That, too, was ever thus. I defy you to find one currently big blogger (other than Arianna Huffington or possibly Kos, neither of whom are really bloggers in the personal sense anyway, though I guess Kos was once upon a time) who didn’t stumble upon and benefit from these steps. (Except for Twitter, which wasn’t around ten years ago.)
For sure, which is why my “advice” if it can be called that is probably worthless too. Because those steps are extremely unlikely to work in 2011.
I’m going to speak on this from a different perspective: acting.
There’s a well-trod path to stardom in acting that suggests if you take classes and audition like hell, get a great headshot and put together a massive CV of regional theatre and television, you too can make it in Hollywood.
And yet, the same 20-50 actors get cast consistently, and of those, probably 19 had an uncle or parent in some aspect of the business.
I’ll never be a star, mostly because I didn’t hit the genetic Hollywood lottery, but also because at my age, I don’t have the werewithal to live on someone else’s couch and sacrifice my comfort. I’m too old to be poor again.
actor212,
Me, too.
I tried the same things you mention – classes, parts in regional theatre. And I loved what I was doing.
But I lived upstate NY, and in order to have any chance at making a living at acting, you’ve got to be in the city pretty much all day. And I had a job upstate which I wasn’t willing to sacrifice in order to run around NY williy-nilly, hoping for the audition that would give me my ‘big break.’
And so, it didn’t happen.
When I get a job, depending on the hours, I’ll try auditioning for local theatre companies.
I still love acting and the theatre, I just know that I’ll never be able to support myself doing that alone. Acting will remain a hobby.
Ditto here. When I can be arsed to go out and audition, I’ll still take a role where I can.
I had such a great reputation in the area back in the 90′s that I didn’t have to audition for years.
Local producers/directors would call me to see if I’d be interested in doing their projects.
Ah, those were the days…
Woodstock?
A handful of shows.
Mostly Poughkeepsie and New Paltz!
Wow. I haven’t been in Pghkeep since I did some DJing on PDH….
But what do you mean by “work”? I think this argument is a version of “get off my lawn”. I’ve seen unknown people start good blogs that turned into reasonable media-type jobs (the PostBourgie crew, e.g.). Some of them were already journalists, some of them were merely aspiring, and some of them have started to become fairly significant members of the chattering classes based in part on their collective blog.
I mean, if the argument is that “start a blog–>?–>profit!!” is silly advice, sure it is. But I don’t see why blogging isn’t a legitimate way for a writer, whether or not he/she already has a paid writing job, to find an audience today just like it was back then.
I think the only difference is that some of us (me for example) weren’t thinking at all of writing careers and sort of ended up stumbling into the possibility. Some folks took it and are doing well now; some folks (me again) didn’t for various reasons. It’s unlikely that people writing blogs these days, especially political/public affairs type blogs, don’t realize that “writing career jump-started by a blog” isn’t a possibility. But I think that’s the only significant difference. The rest of it is just a question of tools (twitter vs. feedreader or whatever).
I wonder how much of this is false dichotomy. That is, I don’t think this is really any different than it ever was, but rather there was one brief, anomalous period where media outlets decided to jump in on this blogging thing and, to that end, hired some of the medium’s first movers who also had the sort of formal educational pedigree associated with those media outlets. Now “making it in blogging” by this standard isn’t any different than getting a media job in the more “traditional” sense.
If you want to develop an audience on your own, I guess the best thing to do is write a lot, promote yourself well, and be patient. The last two are probably where most people fall off.
Angry Black Lady.
Yeah, the backlash against the traditional sphere’s insufficient adoration of Obama has created an opening for a few pro-Obama bloggers, although I’m not sure any of them are good enough to outlast his presidency.
She’s a very good writer who was almost unheard of a few years ago. Now she posts at Balloon Juice and has a paid gig at The Grio.
Not sure what your point is.
I think it depends on what you mean by “political.” There have been lots of very political financial blogs that have sprung up and/or gained considerable traction in the past few years because of the economic crisis. I’m thinking of Rortybomb, Naked Capitalism, The Big Picture, etc.
The best advice is “write because you like writing,” and “write about what you know and care about because you’ll be a lot better at it.”
If something happens that gains you a large audience because your expertise is valuable to broad discussions, that’s gravy; but in the absence of being able to foresee what people will be interested in a year or two from now, it’s something to do if you enjoy it.
I would be happy if my blog could just get a small audience. You know maybe a couple of dozen people. But, after seven years it still seems to have the same six readers.
I’m not going to disagree entirely here, but the process is much more random than that. If we consider LGM a “big” political blog, for example, my route here might be instructive:
My point being: obviously, I planned none of that except for the initial decision to write a blog about my dissertation and ended up here. There may’ve been a time when it was easier to become like Matt if you’re Ivy and well-connected, but most people got to where they are like Kevin and I did: we started tiny blogs and random shit happened and now we’re here.
Yes, but much of this happened some years ago. I would only argue that even this circuitous route would be much more difficult were you starting from point 1 in 2011 than 2002.
Actually (and I say this not to slight SEK), it seems that without step 4, he would remain somewhat unknown. And that post would go viral no matter when it was written.
The lesson is clear: more people need to break and enter random places for illicit sex. Progress demands it.
Erik: Point taken. I often forgot how long I’ve been blogging here, actually.
Malaclypse: But no one would’ve read that post if I hadn’t commented on Crooked Timber and then, later, the Valve; come to Holbo’s attention; had him ask me to contribute; and if he hadn’t linked to it at Crooked Timber, etc. My point was simply to note that there’s a little too much causality in Kevin’s statement and Erik’s post for my taste. There wasn’t ever a direct road to acquiring a readership, or anything resembling a real career path in blogging of any variety, political or otherwise.
Also, I note with sadness that I’ve probably already written the funniest thing I’ll ever write and I’m barely even old.
I remain convinced that people at Boing Boing read everything, and that that post would have gone viral no matter how obscure you were.
As a similar example: cluck, cluck, motherfucker.
That blog has been popular for years.
I dunno. Stuff that doesn’t fit into their pet obsessions (social activism, digital rights, steampunk, cute gadgets, etc.) tend to fall off the radar pretty quickly.
Word.
There’s some interesting cultural stuff going on here. It reminds me of something in a nearby and often overlapping field, sf fandom. I remember a couple of years ago when one of Dreamwidth/Livejournal’s prominent female fans of color asked her readers to chime in with their experiences growing up with Star Trek and other sf. They did, literally by the thousands, from all over the world. And at the same moment, on some other sf blogs, I was seeing discussion about the perennial concern, the slow graying of Hugo Award voters and what might possibly get anyone new interested in sf and fantasy.
One significant issue is that the primarily male center-to-left political blogosphere has a hard time taking places like LiveJournal and Dreamwidth seriously. That right there cuts out a lot of women blogging, and also a lot of people of color, and a lot of LGBT people, to take three meta-communities I belong to or keep in touch with, as may be.
I know there’s also a fairly widespread frustration among people in those communities and others about spending years trying to get issues that they’re involved with taken seriously and finally just giving up and going to look for network, commentary, etc., elsewhere. It’s not that they’re not posting, and it’s also not that they’re not getting a lot of readership in some cases. (Cultural commentary like Go Make Me a Sandwich, for instance, is doing fine even though it’ll never come up in places like this unless someone like me or maybe Dr. Science mentions it.) It’s just that their readership runs through different lines of connection.
But what about the diarists on Daily Kos who can and do break in to the front page? I think I recall Kos hiring one or two of them. Of course, you could argue that Kos is now a microcosm of the blogosphere, and that within Kos, it’s still virtually impossible to be successful, but people do make it there.
Do they share in the ad revenue? I’m betting probably not, or at least to a far lesser extent than any of the older front pagers do
In other words, it’s really hard and probably not worth your time since you aren’t ever going to make money off it.
But isn’t that basically what Kevin said too? Forget making money, do it as an amateur or don’t bother?
I keep hearing the blog-o-sphere is daid, daid, daid because the masses are all jerking off inside the walled Facebook garden.
Yet another party where my invitation must have gotten “lost”
I think it was sent to Belgium by mistake.
Fat Belgian bastards!
I just got my first comment and my first view from this website. So I’m still a believer that a great blog can get views and monetize! Screw this article!!
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