kogan's DDR paying for itself and blah
May. 2nd, 2007 08:34 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
dubdobdee.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
poptimistsi. from 1983 to some time in the late 90s (when its management team bought it from its owner) the wire's (probably substantial) tab was picked up a sugar daddy who liked the idea of owning a fancy music mag -- basically everything i did there was tossing this guy's money down the drain (hurrah!)
ii. open question: w!re's current editorial team's mortages ride on the continued success of the mag -- does this tend to limit its freedom to play with any idea, any approach? i say yes
iii. the tale of the music papers, uk and us, is a complex hitched ride on an ad-fuelled gravy train -- the industry in the 60s needed to know "what's good?", as all around the "rules of the good" were apparently being broken by the kids, and magazines which discuss this is a way to research same, the trade-off being that you're paying for writers to say YOU SUCK (or to write stuff which is of marginal interest to you but keeps them happy and "working for you") -- in fact, "the kids" also, for the usual reasons of gang-formation, needed to know what was good and what wasn't, a self-doubt which extended from post-beatles music to post-vietnam politics, with these two constantly melting into one another
iv. does this gravy train even function now? the kids be downloadin -- hence written discussion of "what's good" is these days more like a salvage operation for i. what got lost, and therefore ii. old-skool consciences than anything trend-congealing -- what added value does writing bring? (i'm asking this feeling fairly strongly that e.g. simon reynolds's pitch for the importance of critical rumination is MISSING SOMETHING; which is why he sounds like grandad telling the kids to get off his lawn)
v. the closest thing i think currently exists to frank's dream is the us netroots -- the centre-leftish network of blogs and semi-online mags which are fighting to drag the democratic party out of its stasis and alienating dependency on big money (these taken, by the netroots, to be the same thing): they survive by a mix of reader donation -- there are constant fund-raising drives -- and ads (there's a politically simpatico group of liberal advertisers evolved, selling books, T-shirts, cmapaigns, TV shows etc). The money coming in pays the wages of the people running the sites (including, importantly, the fund-raisers and ad-managers). Daily Kos, which is the main hub for the netroots, gets half a million hits a day, sez kevin drum, with the next in line (atrios? hullaballoo? tpm? yglesias? drum himself?) getting closer to 150,000 pd or less. There's a fight on for who else can join this krew though -- some newcomers regard it as elitist and self-perpetuating, cynically operating a shut-out as its power within official dem circles grows. Atrios argues that if you write well, the readers will come (eventually). In the end, the fuel in this entire zone is liberal self-defence and self-definition, intensified by anti-bush anger -- old-fashioned politics in fact. As per net commonality, most readers probably freeload on the generosity of a few...
vi. if we took ilx etc as the DDR-feedzone, is there something in what DDR offers that's big enough and strong enough to coalesce into a drive (rather than a diversion)?
vi. in particular, can the immanent politics of the music -- i myself wd just say "of music" -- be brought back to the surface in a way that attracts rather than repels? (youtube posting has been a telling phenom in the netroots recently: "the music", cheerfully argued over, is certainly taken as a shared taste and pleasure) (also of note: atrios, i think korrektly, refers to the anti-war netroots as the "dirty fucking hippies", reclaiming as a proud self-labeling the terms of dismissal directed at anti-war commentary by the MSM liberal establishment)
vii. academia -- as frank notes wrt classical music depts -- is hugely on the defensive, as regards old-skool humanities/liberal arts ideology and "pure" research
viii. the early 70s and 80s saw a number potential new cross-disciplinary fields emerge (eg women's studies, af-am studies, queer theory, post-colonial studies, cult stud, media studies, film studies, critical theory...): this coincided (in the uk) with a huge drive to expand tertiary education -- the effects of this are complex, as, since the 80s, there have also been intense budget-tightening and rationalisation drives, in particular as regards budget oversight and measurable success... more students means more money; more departments means (in principle) more students; but also -- realistically -- more modes of potential value that can't be reduced to tabulated figures
ix. the effect of this, as aelxt noted, is a tendency for departments to reward projects which are good for the growth of the department, rather than projects which deliberately hunt in interstitial zones
x. meanwhile the academy's publishing departments are hungry for BOOKS WHICH SELL, ideally BOOKS OF QUALITY WHICH SELL
xi. 9 and 10 are a good example of the contradictory drives of commodification btw, marx-fans
xii. it seems to me that the DDR, to establish itself on-line, needs to be able to pay a wage for AT LEAST three people -- frank, as presiding spirit, provocateur, interlocutor, MC etc; the person structuring the fund-raising systems; the internet systems admin
xiii. (but i actually think it wd need an "editorial board" of more than just frank, to provide dimensionality and/or respite)
xiv. one potential route to funding no one has so far mentioned is SUBSCRIPTION -- the goodwill gathering in advance of THOSE WHO WOULD LIKE TO SEE THIS SUCCEED (and are willing to see it thrash about a bit till it finds its rhythm)
ii. open question: w!re's current editorial team's mortages ride on the continued success of the mag -- does this tend to limit its freedom to play with any idea, any approach? i say yes
iii. the tale of the music papers, uk and us, is a complex hitched ride on an ad-fuelled gravy train -- the industry in the 60s needed to know "what's good?", as all around the "rules of the good" were apparently being broken by the kids, and magazines which discuss this is a way to research same, the trade-off being that you're paying for writers to say YOU SUCK (or to write stuff which is of marginal interest to you but keeps them happy and "working for you") -- in fact, "the kids" also, for the usual reasons of gang-formation, needed to know what was good and what wasn't, a self-doubt which extended from post-beatles music to post-vietnam politics, with these two constantly melting into one another
iv. does this gravy train even function now? the kids be downloadin -- hence written discussion of "what's good" is these days more like a salvage operation for i. what got lost, and therefore ii. old-skool consciences than anything trend-congealing -- what added value does writing bring? (i'm asking this feeling fairly strongly that e.g. simon reynolds's pitch for the importance of critical rumination is MISSING SOMETHING; which is why he sounds like grandad telling the kids to get off his lawn)
v. the closest thing i think currently exists to frank's dream is the us netroots -- the centre-leftish network of blogs and semi-online mags which are fighting to drag the democratic party out of its stasis and alienating dependency on big money (these taken, by the netroots, to be the same thing): they survive by a mix of reader donation -- there are constant fund-raising drives -- and ads (there's a politically simpatico group of liberal advertisers evolved, selling books, T-shirts, cmapaigns, TV shows etc). The money coming in pays the wages of the people running the sites (including, importantly, the fund-raisers and ad-managers). Daily Kos, which is the main hub for the netroots, gets half a million hits a day, sez kevin drum, with the next in line (atrios? hullaballoo? tpm? yglesias? drum himself?) getting closer to 150,000 pd or less. There's a fight on for who else can join this krew though -- some newcomers regard it as elitist and self-perpetuating, cynically operating a shut-out as its power within official dem circles grows. Atrios argues that if you write well, the readers will come (eventually). In the end, the fuel in this entire zone is liberal self-defence and self-definition, intensified by anti-bush anger -- old-fashioned politics in fact. As per net commonality, most readers probably freeload on the generosity of a few...
vi. if we took ilx etc as the DDR-feedzone, is there something in what DDR offers that's big enough and strong enough to coalesce into a drive (rather than a diversion)?
vi. in particular, can the immanent politics of the music -- i myself wd just say "of music" -- be brought back to the surface in a way that attracts rather than repels? (youtube posting has been a telling phenom in the netroots recently: "the music", cheerfully argued over, is certainly taken as a shared taste and pleasure) (also of note: atrios, i think korrektly, refers to the anti-war netroots as the "dirty fucking hippies", reclaiming as a proud self-labeling the terms of dismissal directed at anti-war commentary by the MSM liberal establishment)
vii. academia -- as frank notes wrt classical music depts -- is hugely on the defensive, as regards old-skool humanities/liberal arts ideology and "pure" research
viii. the early 70s and 80s saw a number potential new cross-disciplinary fields emerge (eg women's studies, af-am studies, queer theory, post-colonial studies, cult stud, media studies, film studies, critical theory...): this coincided (in the uk) with a huge drive to expand tertiary education -- the effects of this are complex, as, since the 80s, there have also been intense budget-tightening and rationalisation drives, in particular as regards budget oversight and measurable success... more students means more money; more departments means (in principle) more students; but also -- realistically -- more modes of potential value that can't be reduced to tabulated figures
ix. the effect of this, as aelxt noted, is a tendency for departments to reward projects which are good for the growth of the department, rather than projects which deliberately hunt in interstitial zones
x. meanwhile the academy's publishing departments are hungry for BOOKS WHICH SELL, ideally BOOKS OF QUALITY WHICH SELL
xi. 9 and 10 are a good example of the contradictory drives of commodification btw, marx-fans
xii. it seems to me that the DDR, to establish itself on-line, needs to be able to pay a wage for AT LEAST three people -- frank, as presiding spirit, provocateur, interlocutor, MC etc; the person structuring the fund-raising systems; the internet systems admin
xiii. (but i actually think it wd need an "editorial board" of more than just frank, to provide dimensionality and/or respite)
xiv. one potential route to funding no one has so far mentioned is SUBSCRIPTION -- the goodwill gathering in advance of THOSE WHO WOULD LIKE TO SEE THIS SUCCEED (and are willing to see it thrash about a bit till it finds its rhythm)
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no subject
Date: 2007-05-02 10:40 am (UTC)One question: Is US Netroots any good? How good? Btw, if you eliminate the explicit politics and add foundation support and donors' names sometimes being announced (e.g., a bit of advertising) and some govt. funding through the Corporation For Public Broadcasting, there's a similar far-more-successful donor-based system that supports radio-TV stations (TV network called PBS, radio network called NPR). (Frank Kogan aficionados will find the previous sentence amusing.) There are or were other donor-supported radio stations (Pacifica network being the most important, I think, though I have no idea if it still exists; avowedly leftist and countercultural). ilX paid for its server through donations. (Strangely, I have no idea where Paper Thin Walls, which pays me 50 bucks a review and now hosts ilX on its server, gets its money. The reviews/news site was supposed to attract people to an online store, but ten months in I don't see a store.)
I think all politically minded magazines (the Nation, the New Republic, and such) in the U.S. survive with the aid of donations; some even raise money by sponsoring cruises.
I'm still more intrigued by the question of What rather than How (which may explain why I'm always short of money).
no subject
Date: 2007-05-02 11:40 am (UTC)Would you care to put a figure on that?
One fairly laughable (no offence) aspect of the DDR discussion so far is that ppl are carefully avoiding doing a cost-benefit analysis of it.
(P.S. the above two sentences are not necessarily connected. Do not let taking umbrage at the second overshadow the important question in the first. I am trying to be helpful as well as inject some realism.)
no subject
Date: 2007-05-02 11:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-02 11:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-02 11:59 am (UTC)I think you really do know what you want already - or at least Frank does.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-02 12:11 pm (UTC)(i am thinking out loud so as to work out what i DO want -- since this is my FIRST ACTUAL POST on this topic i think the "spend all yr time" remark is a bit daft)
no subject
Date: 2007-05-02 12:51 pm (UTC)I don't know what outcomes the collective "you" wants. And I don't count myself as part of it. I comment here as a potential investor, no more.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-02 02:05 pm (UTC)1. Collect Underpants
2. ?
3. Profit!
no subject
Date: 2007-05-02 12:23 pm (UTC)