Wonkette Publicity Machine
Wonkette is everywhere again in the mainstream media. Yesterday, she is pictured and the headline subject in a totally unrelated story in the Lincoln Journal-Star.
Today, she’s the subject of a big piece in the Fashion section of the NYT, “First With the Scoop, if Not the Truth.” [RSS] Strangely, it focuses on her sensationalistic and admittedly unconcerned for the truth coverage of the Kerry non-intern non-sex non-scandal, which was actually broken by Matt Drudge. And they actually provided a hyperlink to her site, which NYT almost never does.
Not to overwhelm her with publicity, but I’ve also added her to the Blog Chicks Pix.
Wonkette’s financial backer and “publisher” Nick Denton has close ties to the Conde Naste magazine empire so it’s not surprising that he is able to garner so much attention for such an underserving blog. He was able to do the same thing for Gawker, another overrated site that the media trots out when they want to do a story on blogs.
I’m a huge fan of overrated sites.
Me thinks that pic belonged on this story
http://www.journalstar.com/articles/2004/04/17/local/10048270.txt
But Joe is right- it is the Nick Denton buzz machine.
Blogs are quickly turning into a business.
OTB was a business in 2003; it’s there on my tax returns. And what a sorry business it was, too–I lost a couple thousand bucks on it.
Aside from sites that can generate 50,000 visits or more a day, though, I don’t think blogs can be a business in the sense of being a full-time job, subsisting without outside income.
Wonkette is one of those blogs I don’t go to because I just don’t get it: there doesn’t seem to be any real nourishment there. I’ve only gone over there a handful of times, but when I did it seemed like a lot of fluff.
I’ve come to terms with the fact that blogging is a labor of love, and only a tiny handful of people will ever be able to support themselves by blogging.
But they aren’t going to force me to visit sites that don’t entertain or enlighten me.
I’m with you, Attila Girl. And although blogging is a loss on the bottom line (at least in my case), I counter that by doing site design for other bloggers. I guess that just adds misery to their bottom lines. (King=Parasite?)
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