FWIW, I'd like to offer some objective criticism on PJM based upon at least some experience in old journalism. I didn't sign on because I saw a lack of on the ground talent, or journalism experience when it comes to covering news - and that is a direction in which I personally hope to go with my blogging. The effort had placed advertising and content under one banner. IMO, a very bad move.
Those two sides of the house are always in conflict - their purposes are almost opposite one another. Journalism strives for objective observation and a clear conveyance of information. Advertising is, by design, slanted and can even be misleading. Conjoining the two without a clear barrier will result in your content being questioned - even when it is objective and spot on. It allows the journalist's motivation to always be questioned, which is precisely the issue with the MSM right now. This is a rectifiable issue for PJM by splitting the house. The two efforts require different web sites or blogs, anyway.
That doesn't even get into the internal conflicts created by a single shop model. Editors and ad managers do serious battle in real life everyday for good reason. You aren't going to avoid that by having them combined, you will likely make it worse and not even be able to present an objective face to the world. Inside and out, no one will know if they are talking to an editor or an advertising guy. It makes a big difference.
Advertising is about customer service, selling, impressing prospective advertisers, etc. The journalism side is about conveying objective information clearly, cleanly and intuitively - surrounded by advertising, sure - but there needs to be some demarcation PJM doesn't currently display.
If those sides separate, PJM should get busy pitching bloggers for their network solely on the advertising play - forget about the content for that initiative. It is apples and oranges. Develop a sale-able proposition for someone to be in your network based only on ad revenue and market and sell the hell out of it. That in and of itself is a major undertaking. Believe me, I manage a sales force everyday.
The content website could build itself if you only allow it to flow intuitively. It is the blogosphere - but I would start graphically with the US for an example. Take a graphical representation of the US and start slotting links to blogs into the states. There will eventually be a bifurcation as you cultivate newsy blogs, as opposed to simply diaries, ranters, etc. You could have no end of fun indexing them, actually. By cross indexing, political, news, arts, animals, etc - you could wind up with such a wonderful interface, you'd get hundreds of thousands of clicks a day just in the navigation - each page carrying ads that the ad side sold - in bulk, of course.
Eventually, you would in essence own a map of the blogosphere when you were done - though obviously it would remain dynamic as blogs come and go. But all you are really building is a link tree - the blogs would stand on their own.
The ad targeting ability of that alone would be incredibly valuable for your enterprise. Ultimately, you could provide both a map of the country's blogs and eventually blogging news sources within each state. That's where someone with real old school journalism experience could help.
Their job would be to identify, evaluate, recruit and even train bloggers who have a sincere desire to report news from their area. Forget about their being on the main page. As each hierarchical level of your interface would be bookmark-able, readers will build their own local, regional and national interface to the news. The graphical interface would allow the reader to intuitively dig down to what they want to regularly find and bookmark it. Also, as local news percolated up when it had broader interest or ramifications, it would be elevated to a main page and be local at the same time. Those would be editorial decisions an editor would have to make daily, hourly, what have you.
It will build overtime - it isn't a one hit deal - but the revenue from your advertising network and your capitol would fund the effort over time. A gross over simplification? Perhaps. But then I'm knocking this out in about 15 minutes. However, if someone put the time and effort into those two distinct initiatives over time, ultimately they would change the world of information precisely in the manner which technology allows - and most likely make a boat load of money in the process.
The most successful, longest lasting and ultimately most profitable business ventures always grow organically from the ground up. That's how the blogosphere came into being. Right now it appears that PJM is trying to re-build the thing from the top down. I wouldn't attempt to do that for all the money in the world - and I wouldn't bet on it working, either.
I've finally finished reading everything pro and con about the whole PM/OSM debacle, including this:
http://dennisthepeasant.typepad.com/dennis_the_peasant/2005/11/the_certain_thi.html
I think you were very wise not to jump on board the PM/OSM train, Dan. IMHO, it's just one big cluster ****. Nobody needs that kind of ****ing action. (pun intended) What person in his/her right mind WANTS to be controlled to even a small degree in exchange for extra hits and a few bucks? A few bucks if you're lucky, that is. For me (and obviously for you, too), it just wouldn't be worth it.
Posted by: MarlboroGal | Tuesday, November 29, 2005 at 02:37 PM