When Guido met Georgina
A merry Mrs Recess Monkey frogmarched Guido across the New Statesman party on Monday night towards someone who looked vaguely familiar. "Guido, this is Georgina". Ahaaa, we were all smiles. The Guardian online editor said she didn't get the "cut my grass for free" crack until after the phone call. She also claimed to have missed seeing the news about Guido getting more traffic than the whole of Comment is Free. Of course...
She generously blandished offers of money towards Guido and seemed to misunderstand, perhaps deliberately, or perhaps because she wasn't sure if Guido was teasing. No really, Guido has no interest in writing for Comment is Free, it is, like Open Democracy, a conglomeration of variable quality writing from various perspectives. CiF has no personality - successful newspapers have personality, the best blogs have personality - people want to know what they are getting. The smorgasbord approach doesn't seem to work very well. Why do bloggers need a single corporate platform anyway? For readers a click to another page or another site is seamless - so being on a shared platform is of no advantage to the writers, in fact it means they are subject to editorial whims. If you have your own blog you are free to write what you want, if you blog for a newspaper you submit yourself to editorial veto. That seems a retrograde step.
Blogging collectives only really work for the readers when the editorial line has some focus - Samizdata or Harry's Place forinstance take a line and have a community of writers with broadly similar views (Samizdatistas think private gun ownership is good and want to liberate Iraq through firepower. Over at Harry's place they think gun ownership is bad and want to socialise Iraq through firepower.) Good writers who are unable to follow a line are far better off doing their own thing. Guido is forever grateful to Samizdata's Perry De Havilland "losing" article submissions in his spam folder, it led directly to the creation of this blog.
So unless you particularly need £75, give the CiF a miss, write for yourself, do your own thing. Remember, you can make the news now, the technology is available to you and it is beyond their control.
She generously blandished offers of money towards Guido and seemed to misunderstand, perhaps deliberately, or perhaps because she wasn't sure if Guido was teasing. No really, Guido has no interest in writing for Comment is Free, it is, like Open Democracy, a conglomeration of variable quality writing from various perspectives. CiF has no personality - successful newspapers have personality, the best blogs have personality - people want to know what they are getting. The smorgasbord approach doesn't seem to work very well. Why do bloggers need a single corporate platform anyway? For readers a click to another page or another site is seamless - so being on a shared platform is of no advantage to the writers, in fact it means they are subject to editorial whims. If you have your own blog you are free to write what you want, if you blog for a newspaper you submit yourself to editorial veto. That seems a retrograde step.
Blogging collectives only really work for the readers when the editorial line has some focus - Samizdata or Harry's Place forinstance take a line and have a community of writers with broadly similar views (Samizdatistas think private gun ownership is good and want to liberate Iraq through firepower. Over at Harry's place they think gun ownership is bad and want to socialise Iraq through firepower.) Good writers who are unable to follow a line are far better off doing their own thing. Guido is forever grateful to Samizdata's Perry De Havilland "losing" article submissions in his spam folder, it led directly to the creation of this blog.
So unless you particularly need £75, give the CiF a miss, write for yourself, do your own thing. Remember, you can make the news now, the technology is available to you and it is beyond their control.
15 comments:
you're rambling, incoherent and deluded,
she didn't fancy you, the guardian aren't going to give you any cash, and in a few hours time you will wake up in a pool of drool to find baby Fawkes ripping your hair out with the intention of flogging it on ebay to victoria Beckham.
Ah well , mustn't grumble.
I know it's maybe not the place for those sort of articles (or maybe it is, if Perry 'lost' them?), but is there any likelihood of them ever being posted for viewing? I'd be interested... If there isn't a gossip angle, maybe a link to a separate platform hosting them?pt
" it is beyond their control"
Ah, but for how much longer. I noticed the Daily Wail did a chatroom murder special yesterday. Together with the fairly regularly placed internet paedo scarestories this will eventually lead to 'calls for more control over the internet', which will lead to... (well, you can guess the rest, look at China and Google)
I think you're being a little unfair to Georgina, Guido. After all, with CiF she does give us the opportunity to go and poke sticks through the bars of the lefties' cages.
RM
thank you for your "missionary" zeal Mr Fawkes. dare I say it, it's kinda energising!.....with best wishes.
"So unless you particularly need £75"
Is that what they will pay you for writing a bit of dross on their site..?
Where do I sign up..?
I think the point of writing for CiF is also that you get guaranteed readers. Not every blogger has Guido's extravagant number of hits...
£75? Is that what you get for an article on CiF? That is enough of a disincentive on its own.
What brilliant advice Guido, and it's precisely what I'm doing.
So I shall shamlessly plug my blog if you'll kindly allow it:
Vote Franco
With my technie hat on you've got a bad link to Harry's Place!
You must've got drunk old boy. I seem to remember trying to 'frog march' you over to Ms Henry, before you told me I was being a drunken fool and wandering in the other direction. Recess Monkey's phonecall five minutes later was much more productive...
but is Georgina worthy of the "totty" accolade?
Enquiring readers would like to know.
As far as I know, you only get the £75 if enough people read your CiF article to warrant it being put on the main Guardian website.
Otherwise, you get nil, nada, zilch, nowt.
I guess the £75 is compensation for the shame of being published on the same site as Polly Toynbee
£75 quid is rather poor... my guess is thats less than £100 per 1000 words.
"amizdatistas think private gun ownership is good and want to liberate Iraq through firepower. Over at Harry's place they think gun ownership is bad and want to socialise Iraq through firepower."
LOL. Brilliant!
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