Quit the day job to blog? Not so fast, says USC football blogger

March 4, 2006 by

When Scott Schmidt graduated from University of Southern California in 1996 with a Master’s degree in Public Administration, he never imagined he would become a big-time blogger starting a new business geared toward supporting new media.

In fact, he did not even know what a blog was.

“There just weren’t that many blogs” back when he started blogging as Boi from Troy in 2003, he said.

“Where else could a gay, Republican football fan say whatever they wanted and see it get picked up by national media? Now that there’s 17 million blogs … it’s really hard to start something these days and get it noticed,” Schmidt said.

Though his blog is Technorati’s No. 2 rated USC blog, Schmidt says that he could never think of supporting himself as a full-time blogger.

“I’d need eight to 10 times the traffic I normally get,” he said of quitting his day job, “but more and more people are starting to look at it as a business.”

“I get one dollar for every thousand views of a particular ad, but a site that isn’t a blog will get $10. It would be a lot easier to think of it as a business if blogs could make that kind of money.”

Helping new bloggers get their foot in the door and helping more established bloggers become more successful is what Schmidt’s new business RSC Partners, Inc. is all about.

“Until now, it’s kind of been like the wild, wild west out there,” Schmidt said. “Now there’s starting to be more discussion about ethics and the future of the medium. Bloggers just don’t get the respect that the mainstream media gets,” he added.

Schmidt cannot even get the USC Sports Information Department to give him access to the football team for his stories anymore, since they’re exclusively for “those associated with ‘national media outlets.’”

According to Schmidt, this is a big mistake, especially as blogs grow more and more influential in this new era.

“They’re missing out on a lot of opportunities, there’s a whole lot of people out there that never get a chance [to get the information they want to],” said Schmidt.

Schmidt’s company is out to harness the influence of new media, primarily blogs, to help individuals and companies leverage blog-power to supplement their public relations.

“Public relations people today just don’t get it,” said Schmidt. “They don’t include any links in their e-mails. A blogger gets their credibility from their sources – in what they link to. If [PR people] don’t understand that, then they can’t get the rest.”

Schmidt expects to see a lot of segmentation in the blogosphere in the coming months and years and anticipates changes in his own life as well.

“It used to be kind of a hobby,” Schmidt said of his blog, “but now that I’ve gone out on my own it’s become kind of a chore. My content may shift; I have considered bringing on other like-minded people, but they’re hard to find. I’m trying hard to keep it alive.”

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Golden State: LA Times veteran cuts loose in the blogosphere

November 11, 2005 by

Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik officially carved out a space for himself in the blogosphere last week with the launch of Golden State, a blog he said is sponsored by the paper, but independent in its content.

While Hiltzik writes a California-centered business column for the Times, the subject matter of his blog will be nearly unlimited, he said.

“It’s a very personal blog,” he said. “It can be about whatever I feel – music, politics, literature.”

Hiltzik got his first taste of blogging this summer as a guest blogger at the Washington Monthly website – known as Political Animal – and said that he thought it was a great opportunity when the Times approached him about starting a blog of his own.

“There is great value in it,” he said. “There are a lot of opportunities to do things I can’t do in my columns.”

Recently, the Los Angeles Times has become especially interested in breaking into the blogosphere, Hiltzik said. So far, though, he is the only columnist at the paper to have a blog. Unlike much of the Times’ content, the blogs do no not require registration.

“I look at it as an experiment,” Hiltzik said.

“Can a company that derives economic value from its reputation for literacy, judiciousness and taste comfortably lend its imprimatur to an unfiltered online diary? Blogs are by nature almost impossible to censor,” he wrote in his inaugural post.

It is also an experiment in the future of a blogosphere that is growing astronomically, he said.

“Life is too short and even broadband too slow for most readers to check out thousands of blogs in the hope of tripping randomly over a few that they find consistently interesting and amusing,” he wrote.

Hiltzik hypothesized that, eventually, economics is going to require the evolution of blogging into something much more like the “mainstream media.”

“The audience is looking for guidance,” he said, citing record labels and movie studios as examples of companies that exist to help talent find an audience and an audience, in turn, find a particular talent.

In fact, Hiltzik admits, Golden State may be one such example of this brand-name blogging. “A blog published by the LA Times adds a sense of what [the blog] will be like.”

But he insisted that his blog will not be a mouthpiece of the Times.

“I really wanted to reflect the culture of blogs. … I am completely free,” said Hiltzik, who works on the blog alone. “The understanding we have is that there are no limits. [The Times seems] to appreciate the variety.”

The main difference between writing his column for the paper and writing for the blog, Hiltzik said, is the speed. “There don’t need to be more than a few moments between having a thought and seeing it published,” he said.

“The informality [of a blog] is great,” he added. “Even my column has to conform to certain standards.”

Filed Under: Sites

Religion news site a useful teaching tool for USC prof

October 4, 2005 by

“No one is asking the right questions about religion; everyone tiptoes around the subject because they are afraid of offending someone,” said Diane Winston, Knight Chair in Media and Religion at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and a contributing writer to The Revealer, an online review of religion in the news.

The Revealer, published by New York University’s Center for Religion and Media, was designed as a forum to critique the media’s relationship with religion and is mostly utilized by journalists, students and academics. Since its debut two years ago, the site has steadily gathered a base of loyal readers and contributors, Winston said.

The review is open-ended in nature, with articles critiquing pop culture, such as the movie The Da Vinci Code and the media’s reception of Christian pop singer Amy Grant’s new television show. But it tackles more serious issues as well, like the lack of coverage about religion’s role in Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath.

Winston became involved with the publication when she was with the Pew Charitable Trusts.

“This is something that was sorely needed,” she said. “It is important for journalists to be knowledgeable about what they report. … When it comes to religion, everyone just accepts what they are told.”

Winston has encouraged her students to submit to The Revealer and other such online publications because she said they provide an opportunity to be more self-critical than in conventional journalism, where there is no real dialogue between journalist and audience.

“It’s also great for the students to see their work published,” she added.

But Winston said the site’s benefits extend beyond the world of academia, and she believes the site and media review forums like it are wonderful teaching tools for all journalists.

“It is a great way to explore your own biases and see where they come out in your writing,” she said.

Filed Under: People