Pleased to Have a Real Job

With the demise of ESPN's Grantland website (formerly produced by Bill Simmons, who ESPN fired for being a bit too truthful about the NFL), a home for in-depth, long-term sports journalism, you can read an excellent post at Mere Orthodoxy here explaining the changing economics of writing and publishing in the age of Internet 2.0 (what I would call the age of the duopoly, Facebook and Twitter).

I had been told when I started blogging that the statistics Google gives me for my readership (page views) would be understated. Why? Because those who read my bog via its links posted on Facebook or Twitter wouldn't be counted. Not knowing the precise number of readers of any particular post doesn't bother me because I'm not looking to make any money from my blog. For other folks, however, writing is how they make their living.

Of course, making a living from writing has always been iffy. Yet for the Golden Age of print media and the era of Internet 1.0, many writers could find a niche. But no longer. Quoting (with some difficulty) from the Mere-O post:

The chief issue is that there isn’t really a clear business product with writing. Writing itself is something that people are generally reluctant to pay for—and that was true even before the internet was around. Writing businesses have almost always required some other means of funding themselves, whether that was advertising revenue, a wealthy patron, or promoting other events that generate much of the company’s revenue. - See more at: http://mereorthodoxy.com/on-the-demise-of-grantland/#sthash.RdUW9owt.dpuf

So what's a budding writer to do? This time transcribing from the linked post:

For writers who have some other marketable skill, there is opportunity to do wonderfully bold and creative work that is joyfully indifferent to the opinion of suits and haircuts at the NFL or Disney or Dove. And for those who can reliably make a living without needing to sell out to Twitter or Facebook, it is still actually not all that difficult to set up your own site and get to work building an audience.

I never imagined that I could garner advertising revenue from this blog. Even "bold and creative" is doubtful. I do hope, however, that those who read it find it interesting and at least occasionally stimulating.

The chief issue is that there isn’t really a clear business product with writing. Writing itself is something that people are generally reluctant to pay for—and that was true even before the internet was around. Writing businesses have almost always required some other means of funding themselves, whether that was advertising revenue, a wealthy patron, or promoting other events that generate much of the company’s revenue. - See more at: http://mereorthodoxy.com/on-the-demise-of-grantland/#sthash.RdUW9owt.dpuf

The chief issue is that there isn’t really a clear business product with writing. Writing itself is something that people are generally reluctant to pay for—and that was true even before the internet was around. Writing businesses have almost always required some other means of funding themselves, whether that was advertising revenue, a wealthy patron, or promoting other events that generate much of the company’s revenue. - See more at: http://mereorthodoxy.com/on-the-demise-of-grantland/#sthash.RdUW9owt.dpuf

The chief issue is that there isn’t really a clear business product with writing. Writing itself is something that people are generally reluctant to pay for—and that was true even before the internet was around. Writing businesses have almost always required some other means of funding themselves, whether that was advertising revenue, a wealthy patron, or promoting other events that generate much of the company’s revenue. - See more at: http://mereorthodoxy.com/on-the-demise-of-grantland/#sthash.RdUW9owt.dpuf