Recently, dmsilev published a diary on dKos called Community and Collaboration where he discussed how the production of content on this site has become so rapid that it is time to begin looking at different ways to digest it all.
In a bit of Zeitgeist sychronicity, Meteor Blades published a piece this week highlighting a number of environmentally based diaries, added during the previous seven days, all prefaced by a beautiful paean (with pictures!) to a park near his house in Los Angeles. This was a lovely example of exactly what dmsilev was proposing.
More Below. (Hat tip to BeTheMedia, who has such a cool name I stole it for my title.)
We all know about ezines, small blogsites targeted at narrow audiences, things like The Budget Fashionista or Nuts and Boats. But the issue for these ventures is always How do you reach a bigger audience in order to be viable? The obvious answer is to become part of a website that aggregates these efforts. The higher the traffic of the parent site, the better the chance is for attracting readers to a specialty ezine.
I want to point out that what Meteor Blades is now engaged in is publishing an ezine focused on environmental issues, and he’s doing it within dKos, a high traffic portal . He is functioning as the editor by selecting the pieces. He has created a "brand", if you want to use marketing terminology.
A lot of people writing an environmental diary on dKos will now want to be part of that brand and will pay attention to what he likes and begin to cater to it. Meteor Blades has become an Editor With a Vision, and this idea can lead us to some interesting possibilities.
One of the commenters on Meteor Blades’s diary pointed out that there already existed a Yahoo group that mentioned all the worthy environmental diaries published on dKos. Obviously that’s a great resource for Meteor Blades and allows him to quickly go to diaries he might be interested in, but it is important to realize that it is different from the eco-rescue diary.
The members of the Yahoo site are self-selected and limited. In contrast, Meteor Blades’s diary is presented to everyone, and in that way, attracts others who might not usually read an environmentally oriented diary. This is the power of a brand and is a function of Meteor Blades’s status within the community.
Presently, Meteor Blades is simply rescuing diaries. But what if he became concerned about a particular environmental issue and began talking to other posters and asked them to write about this issue, with a agreement to include them in his compilation diary. His role as editor would then become much more focused in that he would not be just simply aggregating existing content, but rather helping to create it through a collaborative process.
Now, let’s consider another possibility. Say there is a dKos Editor With a Vision who recruits a group of people to act as reporters and go out and interview people and research and write up stories that are brought back and either compiled by or actually published within the editor’s brand.
In both of these cases we are getting a lot closer to what magazines and newspapers do, yet we are still working within the dKos framework.
An Editor With a Vision and a strong brand can leverage his or her effect by delegating tasks and writing duties to a staff. In exactly the same way that Meteor Blades will now, to some extent, be shaping future environmental diaries (whether consciously or unconsciously), an Editor With a Vision can publish more content that reinforces that vision.
This process would allow the creation of a whole slew of I. F. Stone Weeklies, (Isn't that an exciting thought!), all under the umbrella of the dKos portal. Markos has leveraged his impact on the world thru this site, and other individuals can begin to do the same on a smaller scale.
What’s in store for the rest of us? Well, editors need staff. Instead of being an individual diarist who is seldom read, you can become a reporter who interviews people, or attends demonstrations and brings back photos and descriptions, or researches some obscure public record. But your effort would be connected to the work of others and become an important piece in a larger puzzle that was presented by the editor.
One of the goals of the blogosphere is to Be The Media. What I am discussing is one method of helping that to come about. As the popularity of dKos grows and more non-users visit the site just to see what’s going on, the use of these branded compilation or collaborative diaries becomes more valuable.
A list can be added on the front page like the blogroll. This would allow easy access for casual viewers to a coherent presentation of progressive views on a given topic. That way, dKos could become a valuable resource to a larger portion of the general population.