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November 2, 2005
Conference Notes 4
A big issue that was raised to Roger Simon in his keynote address as the recent conference in New York was whether PajamasMedia would provide liability insurance to its bloggers, or indemnify its advertisers. I wasn't sure how to take these: on the one hand, I thought they played rather well into conceptions more about bloggers as journalists or reporters -- and therefore having a possibility of getting things wrong and getting sued -- than of what I perceive to be more the reality: bloggers are opinion-makers, who observe the stories of journalists and then comment upon them.
But, to be honest, I'm not sure I've completely wrapped my head around the whole Pajamas concept. At first, I thought it was an ad network. Then I thought it was to be a portal for select blogs. But some of the things Roger mentioned made it sound an awful lot like a news organization -- there are going to be "editors" in Sydney, LA and Barcelona for 24-hour "coverage" of stories that bloggers will submit.
Perhaps we're all a little off on our terminology: the editors will be more like anchors, who will have the run of the portal during and 8 hour shift, and serve a role there similar to what Glenn Reynolds does now: pointing us toward interesting things on blogs everywhere. Roger also mentioned that Pajamas will give top billing to its corrections so that they'll be prominent and easier to see and note than in traditional newspapers. Finally, Roger mentioned that they are expecting video to be huge and are even discussing installing studios at their offices in LA. That strikes me as very much placing them in the "anchor" mold more than that of "editor." That's my take anyway.
So what to make of this all? Apparently, I'm not the only one who's not sure: Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine is also confused.
I never fully understood what Pajamas Media wanted to be and I understand it even less now that they are holding a gala, four-and-a-half-hour intro in New York at the Rainbow Room on Nov. 16 with Judy Miller as their keynote. Judy Miller? Judy Miller!Whatever it is, it's going to be interesting.Pajamas, as I understand it, wanted to be an ad network. I don’t see huge advertiser demand for a bunch of mostly conservative political bloggers. At one time, they wanted to be some sort of syndicate but I said nobody would buy content. It seems they now want to be some sort of blog central thing — antimatter to the Huffingtonpost’s matter, I suppose — but the difference is that most of her people don’t blog while most of these people already do blog so I don’t know why I need to see a collection of them.
I'm going to email a contact at Pajamas and see if he'd like to comment.
Posted by Chester at November 2, 2005 1:52 AM
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