Do Syndicated Columnists Have a Future? 49
DrMrLordX writes "With declining circulation numbers looming over the heads of major newspaper publishers, what fate awaits syndicated columnists? I am not syndicated, but I do write for a local independent paper with the ultimate goal of becoming successful (financially and otherwise) as a columnist. Every time I contemplate the possibility of seeking syndication, bleak future newspaper circulation forecasts make me question my own motives. Is it even possible to break into the editorial world with a shrinking reader base? Would it be better to get into socio-political blogging and rely on ad/referral revenues?"
Credibility (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Credibility (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Credibility (Score:5, Insightful)
Many people felt that the vote for the Constitution was fishy, because they knew nothing about the Constitution they were supposed to vote for. The blog was an answer to that problem, so people liked it.
This proves that if you can bring something new and interesting to your readers, they will follow you, no matter who you are. You dont get credibility by working in a well-known newspaper, you get credibility by writing interesting/insightful articles.
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Lastly, your point that "You dont get credibility by working in a well-
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Then I guess you read Richard Cohen. [washingtonpost.com] He gets paid to write that stuff.
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That's the problem: for every good blog there are ten thousand abysmal ones. The value in traditional media is seperating the wheat from the chaff.
Also many blogs are one-trick ponies, writing about the same thing every day. In a newspaper there is a variety of columns on different topics. Newspapers may be on the ropes but they aren't dead yet.
Although for the record I haven't bought a newspaper in years, they're of very
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The answer is ... (Score:3, Funny)
One question... (Score:3, Funny)
Why does it make you question your motives? Are you suspecting yourself of harboring self-destructive tendencies?
--MarkusQ
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Fine, if that was your intention (Score:2)
Fine, if that was your intention. However, if you meant that it made you question your goals you may want to be more careful how you word things. After all, the whole point of being a writer is to communicate your ideas with words.
--MarkusQ
In a word, no (Score:5, Insightful)
I honestly don't see how the economic value of punditry is going to end up at anywhere other than $0 in the very near future; supply is skyrocketing, demand is constrained by the amount of time people have to consume things (punditry is ultimately competing for entertainment time). Paid columnists are the only exception, and I daresay the demand for that is sinking much faster than the supply is also sinking.
Even if there are a few superstars who get paid something (maybe not even a lot), in the future the way those superstars will be discovered is after they spend time working for nothing to prove they have the goods. Imagine something like the way sports works; you do a lot of unpaid work before you get one of the precious few multi-million dollar slots. It'll be like that, except without the multi-million dollar contracts.
If you love writing... write! But don't expect to make any money as a columnist, and expect to lose your job sooner rather than later. Maybe you should just write as a hobby and find another way to make money; being a good writer can get your foot in a lot of doors and make you stand out in a world of people who write like idiots.
If you go forward with this, I think you need to go in with an awareness that you are basically playing the lottery; even if you're very, very good, it's still going to take a healthy dollop of luck to "make it".
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As far as blogs in general replacing syndication- it'll never happen. As long as there is still a print media, there will be syndication. It'll take upwards of 40 years for the newspaper to fade into obscurity, and by then something else will have replaced the blog on th
Re:In a word, no (Score:5, Insightful)
Plus the system tends to self organize. How many crappy blog posts have you read in the past week? There may be millions of crap blogs, but you already never see them. By and large you only see what rises to the top. The current behavior of the system is not that of a system with no filtering. It's just the filtering doesn't look like what you are used to.
I see every reason to believe that we may pay for skilled people to pull even higher-quality signals out of the noise. I also see every reason to believe that is not going to take the form of an anointed (by journalism degree) priesthood that fully controls massive print infrastructures and dictates what stories are and are not valid, and what slants on the stories are and are not valid. Centralizing the filtering functions is as stupid as trying to centralize the economy.
The fact that journalism-as-we-know is a really, really, unspeakably, incredibly bad filter is only going to accelerate this process. Journalism talks a pretty talk about verifying sources and getting multiple angles and being "fair" but I see absolutely no reason beyond the pretty rhetoric to believe it is doing any of those things. Rather, it is a money-making enterprise that specializes in producing advertising space. If you can explain to me where the journalistic principles actually fit into that, with actual evidence, I'm all ears. Or explain to me how it isn't primarily a money-making enterprise.
(Note I don't really have a problem with it being a money-making enterprise. I have a problem when it presents itself as anything else.)
But even if we pay for filtering, we're only going to be paying for the filtering; the actual "signal" will be a commodity, because there will still be so damn much of it. Getting back to the original question: Is there a future in providing signal? Almost (but not quite) certainly not.
The endgame is that "blogging" and "the current media" will eventually merge until you can't tell the two apart anymore. We're already starting to see that, really. It's only a matter of time before CNN simply runs a "blog post" with light editing; already there have been stories that amount to little more than covering a blog post or set of blog posts, with the only difference being that CNN is about a week late to the party, they tend to "forget" to link to the primary sources, and they get all angsty about the bloggers.
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That is part of why I don't believe the "blogs sweep away the old media" scenario, but rather in a melding. The best will survive and get better. Other media outlets will almost certainly further evolve into outlets that give people what they want, without regard for truth, for advertising purposes. We can already see the beginnings of that
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Yeah, I just resubscribed to the Economist. For one thing, their articles already are at the quality of the best blog posts around.
For another, they're one of the few formerly solely print magazines that actually figured out how to make a profit. I don't understand why more newspapers haven't tried some variation of their biz model. So many continue indefinite downward spirals rather than address the problem.
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I do agree with most of what you're saying (you're right on with the current filtering effectiveness bit), but I think there are some sources of media that manage not to want to be profitable still.
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This is simply a ridiculous assertion, especially when comparing traditional media to blogs. In all forms of traditional media there is an editor. The vast majority of blogs have no editor, and even if they do, they don't have the same incentive to verify facts and tell the truth as traditional print does
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Blogging itself doesn't matter. What matters is the internet. Every form of information distribution will be absorbed by the iInternet, and soon. Newspapers, TV, radio, books, magazines, telephones, everything.
That's what the internet does. As soon as you plug something into the internet, it becomes part of the internet. And you can't remain unconnected and compete.
Blogging has made a lot of
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The supply of "good" pundits is rising at a far lower rate than the supply of pundits in total.
I'll give you that.
Probably at a rate of O(n*log(n)) as opposed to O(n^4), or similar.
But not this one, besides abusing Big O notation, you also managed to pull functions out of your ass. What does n represent? Time? The number of current pundits? Blogs that exist? Some other useless input?
This is a huge problem, as the noise is going to overwhelm the signal.
How could the noise overwhelm the signal? The Internet is mostly crap (notice I didn't say 99%). However, there will always be places like Google to rank valuable content, or /. to aggregate valuable content. Gems will be found. Why would you suppose t
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Re:In a word, no (Score:4, Interesting)
Does seem to work (Score:1)
If you filter out the crapflood of comments that follows one of his submissions here, you can tell the subject matter provokes us.
I personally wouldn't be surprised if he (above others) did become a real journalist, he does have a knack for it.
(there are worse crimes than link whoring to make some pennies)
Revenue streams (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, hats and t-shirts!
Just a thought.
Why not both? (Score:4, Insightful)
Use both. The more you write, the better you'll be. You can always use a pen name for the blog if you're really concerned about getting labeled as an amateur by the big rags. Keep up with the local media, work up to a major market. Hell, why not take three paths and toss in a YouTube presence. Since a large part of your field is luck, having three tickets to the big game gives you an advantage, especially when the dead tree rags start to 'get' the electronic age. You'll be ahead of the pack.
By the by, don't get in the field for the money -- it's like being a teacher. No money, but the job satisfaction goes a long way. Good luck/break a leg and all that.
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The more you write, the better you'll be.
I submit, as a rebuttal to your argument, one Roland Piquepaille.
Yeah, why not (Score:2)
Words, Journalists Use (Score:2)
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Newspapers (Score:3, Insightful)
Should a syndicate feel that a columnist's views are no longer needed by the syndicate, the columnist will do what every one else can do: start a blog, and perhaps use his or her last column as an advertisement for the blog.
Short plug for an awesome political columnist: Charley Reese [wikipedia.org]. Don't mind his political affiliations—his views aren't unique to any single party.
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Alas, you are right that his views aren't unique to any single party.
Regular papers are dying (Score:2)
Changing Formats (Score:1)
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In both cases, the papers weren't daily. My local paper is a weekly publication, and my college paper was bi-monthly. There doesn't have to be a daily edition, but the ability to get a story up within a day or two, while it's still current, beats ou
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Now that I've graduated, the idea has faded a bit, and I know it wouldn't be f
I'm syndicated, but on the Internet only (Score:2)
Yes, I hope you have a syndicated future (Score:2, Insightful)
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What matters is whether you are any good. You also have to be prepared to work for years before you have any real success - whether you are on paper or online.
Newspapers as they are now are in a death spiral; the online model just works better for news, but newspapers have no particular adv
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Well, good and depressing point. I disagree in part though. The structure of the organization and an editor tend to add value. Otherwise there is precious little in the way of thoughts and the send button. The culture of posting comments in response to blogs is also different than that