Maybe a Change

~ Laura

I started writing freelance articles about a year and a half ago. I’m getting the hang of it. I figured out how to write a decent pitch letter. I know who should get the pitches. I know how to promote articles after they’ve been written. If I have an article, I feel very confident that I can get it published somewhere. I like writing these articles. It’s all good, except for the fact that I feel like I booked a ticket on the Titanic AFTER it hit the iceberg. I’m not really sure that this is a good time in history to start writing for traditional magazines and newspapers.

So, I’m taking a break from all that for a few months and working on a couple of websites that have been on the back burner. I have a theory that smart CAN work on the Internet, if it is done the right way. These projects are part of a grand experiment. I’ll give you a glimpse of the first effort in September. Right now, I’m working behind the scenes creating content.

Published by Laura

12 thoughts on “Maybe a Change”

  1. “I like writing these articles. It’s all good, except for the fact that I feel like I booked a ticket on the Titanic AFTER it hit the iceberg.”

    You haven’t made any moves as bad as Megan McArdle moving over to the Daily Beast.

    Have fun!

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  2. “Smart can work on the Internet, if done the right way.”
    Define “work.” (Please.)

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  6. Why do you think some of your posts get many thoughtful comments and spark discussion, while other posts get one or zero comments? I think solving that puzzle could help you market your writing and ideas in other places.

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  7. I have to say that based on what I’ve found on the internet, there is not a big market for smart. But who knows? The Atlantic blogs are sometimes good, especially TNC – I often feel smarter and, perhaps more importantly, better about humanity, after I read his stuff. He also reads interesting things and does interesting things (like go to Paris and study French, and talk about what it’s like to do that as an African-American adult male). I don’t know how he managed to develop and maintain his really interesting and apparently diverse “horde” of commenters, but that would be something to study. There are also a few specialized web sites – things out of my discipline (religious studies) that are frequented by a small number of academics and a few other people who are generally polite to one another. It’s always such a relief to come across one of those, since most things online on religion have commenters that are just mean and horrible.

    Slate and especially Salon have become increasingly trashy, sometimes even sleazy, and I enjoy them less and less. And that’s not because I won’t read trashy stuff about diet or sex or celebrities from time to time; I just don’t like to be overwhelmed by it. And the more friends I have on FB, the less I enjoy it.

    So yes, as MH says above, good luck storming the castle.

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    1. Salon has been sleazy for at least a decade. When was their pay-for-subscription thing where the double entre-ful slogan was that “It’s better when you pay for it”?

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  8. There is a very limited market for long form “smart” and the intellectual banter that’s found in the Crooked Timber/Atlantic type of blog/website. Honestly, there’s a limited audience for the kind of stuff that we find interesting here. But maybe there’s a market for the next level down of smart. In a shorter format. With a sharp visual. With a high level of predictability.

    I enjoy what I’m doing here and on other venues, but I want to try something totally different for a couple months and see what happens. It probably won’t be of interest to the 11D audience, but maybe I could reach a slightly less thoughtful group (who are more numerous) by rethinking the production of content.

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  9. Brain dump here…. Maybe this info will help someone else…

    Number of comments is not an indication of traffic or overall interest in a blog. If you look at the hot comment section, it’s really just a handful of people commenting. Traffic levels to this blog increase when I do a number of things:

    1. When I do Andrew Sullivan style blogging, numbers jump up. Andrew Sullivan-style blogging = a large number of short blog posts that point to the hot topics of the day. Sometimes, I’m in the mood for this kind of blogging and I’ll do it for fun, but I can’t do what Andrew Sullivan does full time. It’s very, very time consuming. Sullivan has a large number of interns helping him out. He’s not even having an easy time with it. I don’t think that he’s paying himself a salary this year. It involves sitting at a computer for 8 to 10 hours a day and I have other responsibilities. Can’t do it.

    2. Some of my posts that recieve no comments, like the home renovation projects, get lots of traffic, because people “like” them on Facebook. There are more people interested in the pictures of my kids and my back patio than people who are interested in health or education polilcy. The problem is that I’m not interested in writing ONLY about my wallpaper stripping efforts in the powder room, so I don’t want to do that.

    3. The demise of Google Reader may be the final nail in the blog coffin. Some have switched over to feedly or Newsblur, but not nearly the number that used google reader before. Other bloggers who used to funnel lots of traffic here are out-of-business. Unless you change your content every day and have an audience that shows up every day, your traffic numbers are going to plummet.

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    1. If someone could make it work, you could create a blog like the New Yorker in its heyday: a combination of pieces on upper-middle-class lifestyle, upper-middlebrow intellectual concerns, and “sensible” left/liberal politics. Goodness knows the New Yorker attracted plenty of readers, including many who thought its politics jejune (read Robert Warshaw for an evisceration of E.B. White), and sold lots of ads. If I knew how to create the blog equivalent (and sell that many ads), I certainly would.

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