Comment Nothing new, IMHO. (Score 4, Insightful) 95
That works out to five articles a day. Most journalists spend days or weeks on one article, doing research and interviews, if needed. A person banging out five a day won't have time to do anything else (kiss the marriage goodbye, if applicable).
I don't see how a person can do five a day, and have some semblance of quality content, unless they are very knowledgeable and can produce fresh articles every time, in which case they could most likely get a position with one of the print publications. The people being hired are 'bloggers, and most 'bloggers are not professional journalists. I know, I 'blog :) A very small percentage of 'bloggers are what I would consider professional, IMHO.
Another aspect is the pay. A person submits 150 articles a month, for $1000.00. That works out to $6.66 an article. What is the salary for a writer over at the Post, or Times? At that pay rate, dinner will either be beans and rice, or rice and beans, every night.
Most topics of discussion are news driven. I can check the referring search terms in Chatmag, and tell what's hot by the number of hits to a particular term. Keeping up with the hot topics is not an easy task, and in some cases, it takes some guesswork to determine what will be hot in order to provide links to those discussions. They can pay for articles, but will they be something people want to see, or just take up server HD space?
According to Alexa, news.netscape.com has 1% of total viewers to Netscape.com Still a large amount of eyeballs on pages, but will it work in the long run, I doubt it.
This whole thing is another example of Web 2.0 mania. What is it they are trying to do? Create an article and open it for discussion. That is being done now, in hundreds of thousands of discussion forums. The format is slightly changed, rather than posting a topic and commenting, a short article is created, and discussed. There is little difference between the two, and in the end produces the same result. Nothing new has been invented.
I don't see how a person can do five a day, and have some semblance of quality content, unless they are very knowledgeable and can produce fresh articles every time, in which case they could most likely get a position with one of the print publications. The people being hired are 'bloggers, and most 'bloggers are not professional journalists. I know, I 'blog
Another aspect is the pay. A person submits 150 articles a month, for $1000.00. That works out to $6.66 an article. What is the salary for a writer over at the Post, or Times? At that pay rate, dinner will either be beans and rice, or rice and beans, every night.
Most topics of discussion are news driven. I can check the referring search terms in Chatmag, and tell what's hot by the number of hits to a particular term. Keeping up with the hot topics is not an easy task, and in some cases, it takes some guesswork to determine what will be hot in order to provide links to those discussions. They can pay for articles, but will they be something people want to see, or just take up server HD space?
According to Alexa, news.netscape.com has 1% of total viewers to Netscape.com Still a large amount of eyeballs on pages, but will it work in the long run, I doubt it.
This whole thing is another example of Web 2.0 mania. What is it they are trying to do? Create an article and open it for discussion. That is being done now, in hundreds of thousands of discussion forums. The format is slightly changed, rather than posting a topic and commenting, a short article is created, and discussed. There is little difference between the two, and in the end produces the same result. Nothing new has been invented.
