deeply lucrative deal with Slate May 9, 2002 9:09 AM   Subscribe

"Mickey Kaus has inked an awe-inspiring and deeply lucrative deal with Slate." Is this the beginning of the end , the end of the beginning, simply irrelevant, or something else altogether?
posted by Voyageman to General Weblog-Related at 9:09 AM (23 comments total)

Might Metafilter someday appear inside ___________ (fill in favorite online/offline newspaper/magazine) ?
posted by Voyageman at 9:13 AM on May 9, 2002


Mad?

Hey, all kidding aside, go for it Mickey. I'd love it if I could blog for a living.
posted by jonmc at 9:22 AM on May 9, 2002


Oh, I like Mickey Kaus. I also like Andrew Sullivan and a lot of other professional journalists not too pompous to be afraid of "slumming it" on the Web.. I hope they get paid for what they do. People really should get paid for the work they do. And we, in turn, should pay for the pleasure of reading their work.

I realize this a writer's perspective, but it's only fair. Apart from MetaFilter, of course.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:46 AM on May 9, 2002


I'm still hoping to sell my weblog to Columbia Pictures. Hey if they'll do comic books, I can't lose!
posted by ZachsMind at 10:04 AM on May 9, 2002


Am I the only one that's never heard of Mickey Kaus?
posted by machaus at 10:21 AM on May 9, 2002


I just sold the rights to Tetris to Castle Rock.... :)
posted by mkelley at 10:26 AM on May 9, 2002


Jim Romenesko is the first person I can remember to really get paid to blog. He moved his media news blog to poynter.org a couple years back, though still does the obscure store for the hell of it.

It's no big deal, it just is. Now that there are blogs at a few major newspapers (like the guardian UK, san jose merc here in the bay area), perhaps others will be open to just picking up one they like and supporting them in-house.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:50 AM on May 9, 2002


by the way, meg wrote a great piece on the macromedia blogs that are getting play. I know Kaus writes for Slate occasionally, so this is a good match, but these Macromedia blogs are kind of sinister, in that they appear to be personal, instead of corporate.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:03 AM on May 9, 2002


the revolution still hasn't arrived. romenesko and kaus are professional journalists. (keep in mind that kaus has been writing for slate this whole time--now they're just paying him for his weblog as well.)

in 1999 I thought that by now a talented amateur--or several--would have been hired to do their weblog for a major media outlet. I'm still waiting.
posted by rebeccablood at 11:03 AM on May 9, 2002


"Am I the only one that's never heard of Mickey Kaus?"

Nope. Count me as a non-member of the Mickey Kaus Club, too.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 11:08 AM on May 9, 2002


Doed the WSJ's OpinionJournal.com qualify for "blog" status ? Would it qualify if it the same site had been put together by an amateur group instead of by the Journal?
posted by Voyageman at 11:26 AM on May 9, 2002


It seems like there's a number of in-house bloggers that aren't necessarily paid to blog, but do it as part of their job, like xBlog or maybe Tom Tomorrow. (or maybe that's just my impression)

If Amazon didn't keep their plans so close to the vest, it'd be a blast to do an amazon.com blog.

Miguel my friend - if you got paid by the word.... Zillionaire.
posted by kokogiak at 11:26 AM on May 9, 2002


Kogogiak - of course I get paid to blog. I have no other source of income except writing, although most of my income comes from royalties for my books and newspaper articles. Clix, a Portuguese company, pay me $8000 a month for a thrice-weekly column, plus answering everyone's questions, choosing about 11 daily links and checking into the chatline twice a week. They also have to sell a set amount of my books every month.

And this in Portugal, a relatively poor country. So if they can pay for content, why shouldn't others?

[Of course writing in English, as I do here, I should pay Matt per word]...
posted by MiguelCardoso at 11:57 AM on May 9, 2002


voyageman: Doed the WSJ's OpinionJournal.com qualify for "blog" status ?

I count it as a weblog (I even link it on my portal page): it's frequently updated, it links to the things it references, and it's maintained by a human being.

I don't count news aggregators as weblogs, and I don't count commentary that doesn't link out to things referenced (that's just a transplanted old-media column). but whether or not it's maintainer is paid, or done for a corporation isn't the criterion of what is and is not a weblog. in fact, getting paid to blog was one of the holy grails of the early weblog community....
posted by rebeccablood at 12:19 PM on May 9, 2002


i don't know that i would describe the macromedia blogs as "sinister" as much as "misguided". several of the macromedia folks have posted some good responses to meg's good points.
posted by judith at 1:16 PM on May 9, 2002


“in 1999 I thought that by now a talented amateur--or several--would have been hired to do their weblog for a major media outlet. ”

Keep waiting. A gadfly getting paid for his obession in the media business—let's just say Romensko and Walt Whitman were anomolies.
posted by raaka at 2:45 PM on May 9, 2002


Media People! Oliver Willis is waiting right now to be your blogging whore! No waiting. Small, unmarked bills ok. Large, marked ones are fine as well.
posted by owillis at 4:33 PM on May 9, 2002


Someone beat you to it, owillis.
posted by xiffix at 6:39 PM on May 9, 2002


Anyone wanna bankroll K5? I'd sell my soul, but, as the saying goes, no one's buying.
posted by rusty at 10:11 PM on May 9, 2002


I don't think the Macromedia folks were keeping their ties to the company secret, I think they assumed people knew they were MM employees.
posted by anildash at 11:10 AM on May 10, 2002


Mickey Kaus (who I've never heard of either) is very much like Slate; soon to figure out that you can't make any real bucks on the web, unless you're a pornographer.

Jesus Christ, that pop up flash ad on Slate is the biggest yet!

It's proof positive that they'll be out of business soon.

Oh yeah, good riddance! Slate never had any actual content anyway.
posted by mark13 at 11:30 AM on May 10, 2002


I guess the stuff I've been reading on Slate these last couple of years has been all in my mind, then.
posted by kindall at 12:31 PM on May 10, 2002


It's proof positive that they'll be out of business soon.

I would be willing to grant the falsehood that Slate hasn't had excellent content for years if it weren't the basis of the argument that, apparently, Slate will put Microsoft out of business. Say wha...?
posted by anildash at 12:44 PM on May 10, 2002


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