After graduating from the University of Oregon in 1996 with a degree in Sports Marketing, Mark Sacks spent the better part of a decade working for two of the world’s biggest brands, Nike and Starbucks. In late 2004 Sacks detected what he calls “the brewing of a perfect storm.” With almost no knowledge of Internet technology, Sacks moved to Creative Artists Agency to work in new media and corporate consulting. He explains why technology is changing the face of entertainment and what marketers must do to keep up, detailing how he became a new media agent.

Up until two years ago, you’d spent your entire life studying and working in marketing. What led you to believe there was about to be a major change in the business?

I was at Nike during an incredible period of growth and transition for the company. I was responsible for our advertising, sponsorships and event marketing in the Southwest United States, with our primary focus on the NikeTown stores. The goal of these stores was to educate, inspire and entertain the costumer. We were using them as three-dimensional expressions of the Nike brand. They weren’t so much “stores” as Nike museums. It was the beginning of “retailtainment,” leveraging people’s passion for sports and entertainment to connect with them on a visceral level.

When I arrived at Starbucks, I was struck by the fact that while we were a coffee company, we were also providing a community gathering place where people could come together to connect and discover new things. Our customers gave us permission to be part of their entertainment discoveries because of the trust they had in our brand. Starbucks started with Hear Music, and now they have a 24-hour digital music channel on XM Satellite Radio, books, magazines and a partnership with Lionsgate [when they helped] market and distribute the film Akeelah and the Bee.

What became clear to me is presence is not the same at relevance. Just being in front of people stopped being meaningful. There was too much clutter, too much noise. Everything I was seeing and experiencing pointed to a perfect storm of change in the worlds of brand advertising and marketing, and across the media and entertainment landscapes.

How did you connect this “storm” with technology and entertainment?

By this time, it was becoming pretty evident to most people in the industry that technology would turn the existing business models on their heads. Technology was putting the consumer in the driver’s seat and giving people the power to choose when, where and how they consumed marketing and advertising messages.

The idea behind advertising used to be, 1) identify your target audience, 2) figure out when and where they are consuming entertainment, news or information and 3), interrupt their experience with your message.

Time-shifting and place-shifting are general ways to refer to the benefits of technologies like Tivo, iPods, Sling Box, Xbox, AppleTV, Moxi, MobiTV and GoTV. Collectively, these technologies and devices let consumers watch on-demand content when they want, where they want (cell phones) and even how they want (i.e. commercial-free).

Now, with people time-shifting and place-shifting and taking full advantage of ad-skip technologies, that model was broken. The message itself needed to be compelling enough that people would choose to watch it. As an advertiser or marketer, to be effective, you had to be able to turn your marketing into entertainment and entertainment into marketing.

What do you mean when you say technology is changing the face of entertainment?

When television is delivered as a digital signal over an Internet connection, the content itself can be manipulated. When television was delivered through antennas, each station was limited to one macro broadcast. What you watched was exactly the same as what your friend across town watched.

Now, with digital television delivered to set top boxes, the paradigm shifted. Content can be targeted based on geography, which is particularly important for advertisers. You and your friend can still watch the same program, but now the ads can be different, based on where in town each of you reside.

If advertising can be targeted to individual set top boxes, then why can’t programming? Television of tomorrow will programmed like your iPod and the ads you get will be very personal to you.

CAA reps some of the most famous, successful celebrities and artists in the world. Why would a Web site need an agent?

Along with actors and actresses, CAA represents writers, directors, producers and executives across music, TV, gaming, movies, theater, all forms of entertainment. We work very closely with production companies, movie studios and TV networks.

Whether it’s Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, Bon Jovi or Will Wright [a video game designer], we know our clients intimately, so we’re ideally suited to looking out for their interests, minimizing their risks and maximizing their upside for any endeavor they invest their time in.

The same principles that guide us in representing individuals apply when we’re representing companies. Whether you’re talking about established brands like Coca-Cola, Sprint and Harley Davidson or new media companies like Joost.com or iMeem.com, we’re keeping the big picture and their long term objectives in mind and making sure their good work is famous.

As far as New Media, we represent content creators like YoungHollywood.com, content distributors such as Joost, and social networks like iMeem.com. It makes sense for them to come to us, and for us to represent them, because executives in my building are on the phone every single day with Les Moonves, Sumner Redstone and all the other presidents and network heads. Eventually, these Web sites will do deals with these people. We can help them obtain and maintain the right contacts. They benefit from our access.

What are you working on right now?

I’m excited about TV 2.0 and mobile 2.0. The changes going on in these two spaces will change so much of how we experience news, information, entertainment and even each other. When you combine the interactivity of Web services we’re getting on the Internet right now, with the trend toward on-demand and anywhere viewing, you start to get a sense of how significant and meaningful these changes will be.

What’s a typical day like for you?

The last thing I do every night before leaving the office is establish a game plan for the next day with my assistant. Then, the next morning, as soon as I’m in the car, we start making calls. Often, I have a breakfast meeting before getting to the office, so we’ll try to make as many time-sensitive calls as we can before those meetings even start. [My assistant] keeps the ball rolling while I’m in that meeting and then, as soon as breakfast is over, we get back on the phone and pick up where we left off. The rest of the day pretty much goes the same way.

How many hours a day do you spend on the phone?

More than I’d like to admit. I probably make and take no fewer than 60 or 70 calls a day. So much of our business is based on relationships and early access to information, it’s critical that networking be a part of every day’s agenda.

The assistants help with “rolling calls.” As I’m wrapping up a discussion, they’ll get my next client on the line so I can move on to the next piece of the business. I also get between 150 and 200 emails a day. I’m happiest when I leave the office and there’s no more than a screen’s worth of emails in my inbox. I try to get to fewer than 10, but it always seems to fill back up by the time I hit the Blackberry before dinner.

Our new media clients are so passionate. The work they’re doing is revolutionary. I want to be right there by their side all day, because I really believe in what they’re doing.

How long does it take for someone to become a client of yours?

It really depends on the agent or team who will be signing the client. Some signings take weeks and some take years. More than anything else, trust has got to be established and expectations must be consistent for everyone involved. I like to work with someone for awhile before signing them. I can’t work with a person unless I trust them. The client needs to know my working style. When I ask for something, I expect them to deliver. I don’t have time to waste with people who aren’t getting their stuff done. [Potential clients] usually have been emailing with me for 6 months to a year, even over three years.

What are the benefits of high-tech entertainment?

The definition of community is so different than it was 3 years go. MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube. There are 80,000 new blogs a day! People are relating, helping, changing each others lives and they’ve never met each other. Services like Wikipedia have democratized information and made it accessible to everyone. The web is facilitating interactivity-on-demand and personalization. Customers want to get services when they want, where they want them, how they want them. Technology has leveled the playing field. You can be a millionaire or a guy in a garage. Over the last couple of years, I’ve learned if I can think it, it can happen.

You’re dealing with so many new, cutting edge companies and Web sites. Is it challenging to be on top of everything all the time?

The greatest challenge for me is, and always has been achieving a sustainable work/life balance. There’s way more to do that I just can’t possibly get to. When you’re working at a place like [CAA], opportunities and access abound. There really aren’t any doors we can’t open. It’s tough to know when to say, “No.”

Honestly, I would do more in a day if I could. Our new media clients are so passionate. The work they’re doing is revolutionary. I want to be right there by their side all day, because I really believe in what they’re doing.

Were you computer-focused before you came to CAA?

No. In fact, being interested in technology is really new for me. Two years ago most of the new media companies we’re working with and that are defining what will be possible tomorrow, didn’t even exist. What got me in the door [at CAA] was I understood the importance of marketing.

There a lot of TV shows out now that highlight the role and experience of assistants at big companies. Ari and Lloyd’s relationship from Entourage comes to mind. How important is your assistant?
Important.

Could you survive for a week without him?
Yes. But it would not be pleasant.

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Four Things to Know If You Want to be an Agent:
1) You’re going to start as an assistant.
“You’ll learn what the business is really all about, how relationships are cultivated and how to gain access to information,” Sacks says. “Then, if you’re doing a great job, you’ll get promoted to the mailroom.”

2) The mailroom is where meaningful professional relationships develop and solidify.

“People bond over the shared experience and they gain an even deeper understanding of the business and the agency while they’re there,” Sacks says.

3) Don’t believe everything you see on TV: Agents should remain realistic.

“Be honest when it comes to work,” Sacks say. “Always under promise and over deliver.”

4) It’s easier to drink the Kool Aid when you and your company share similar values.

“When you’re at the right company, it ends up feeling like family,” Sacks says. “The work I do is very meaningful to me. We only have so much time in life and I’ve figure out I want to make my part count.”

Stephanie Burton is a New York-based freelancer.

Born of founder Ben Lerer and his buddies’ need for better date spots, retail guidance, and watering holes, Thrillist launched in 2005 as a daily newsletter committed to keeping New York’s 20-something men in the know. Each day’s installment boasted (and still contains) one key tidbit on the best outlet or location offering an interesting product or an unusual experience. In under two years, the e-newsletter has begun influencing countless more men with the launch of versions in Los Angeles, “Nation” (so guys stuck in the middle stand a chance at matching their coolhunting coastal counterparts), and most recently San Francisco. We sat down with Lerer to discuss the highs and lows of expansion, and how tough it is to find his patented “Thrillist guy” in Chi-town.

Describe your exact role at Thrillist these days: What’s your day-to-day like, versus what it was like when you first launched?
I guess it’s probably changed a lot. Personally, I used to have a daily deliverable. There were certain things I was responsible for doing on a daily basis, whether that was ad sales, accounts that I worked, people that I worked with, or in editorial. There was a time when I obsessed over every line of every piece that went out. Now that we’ve been growing, my role has changed a little bit because I’m not as obsessed with all the little details. Although I’d like to be, it doesn’t make sense. I’ve broken the company into four divisions, with technology and content and marketing and sales. My role now is just kind of making sure that the people who run each of the divisions are happy and having fun and we’re still kicking butt.

Who’s obsessing over all your editorial these days?
Adam, who’s my partner from the beginning. He’s the editor-in-chief now. It’s funny: he’s kind of grown into an editor because when we started, neither of us had any experience in editorial, and now he’s gotten really good at it — more than really good. Now he has really become the direction of the voice, and he’s the top editor at the end of the day. Most of the editors choose topics and make sure that we stay consistent between the cities, voice-wise. Then we have an executive editor named David Blend who was our New York editor for the first two years, [who] really came in and taught Adam how to take what was in Adam’s mind and put it on paper. [David] has been kind of a driving force on the editorial side and someone we kind of love desperately, and who has been incredible from the beginning. Each of the editions has one editor, so when we launched San Francisco we had brought in a guy Patrick Heig — he’s our everything in San Francisco. He’s the guy who runs the show out there, picks all the topics, who hires the freelancers, who works with the tipsters, who works with the PR companies, and he’s become the face of Thrillist in San Francisco. We have the same thing in L.A., same thing with New York with Steve [Bryant], and the same thing for our national edition, with a guy named Ben Robinson, who is also somewhat new — he’s kind of our national editor. He’s based in New York as well.

So, Patrick in San Francisco. How did you find him?
There’s a magazine in San Francisco called Todo Monthly. It’s a kind of hipster magazine that comes in the back of taxis — it’s a little hand-held kind of book — and he was a writer there for a few years. Adam went to high school with a guy named Michael Moskowitz, a great guy out in San Francisco who’s the founder and the publisher of Todo. Michael said, ‘I’ve got this guy Patrick, writing for me for years, and I don’t have a full-time thing for him and frankly I don’t think he wants to write full-time for me, but I think Thrillist is the kind of thing he could wrap his head around forever.’ He is as natural a fit as I could ever find, that I could ever imagine for any job in the history of the world. Everything about him: He looks the part, sounds the part, he sounds like a Thrillist guy. Hanging out with him, he’s what Thrillist is all about. We’re really lucky to have him.

That prototypical Thrillist guy: What does he look like, sound like?
I think the idea is you’re young, you’re hungry, you’re hard-working, you’re pretty smart. You work hard, you play hard. You, sometimes you have to wear your suit, and get all dressed up, but you probably prefer to be sleeping on the sofa watching football. A guy you went to college with or you went to grad school with.

How did you pick San Francisco as the next market for Thrillist? After launching New York, national, then L.A. editions?
We went national second, not necessarily because we thought that national was the next strongest market for us, but because we were kind of scared of letting the voice out. National we could run from New York and keep a very close hand in what was going on, and make sure that the consistency was there.

So it was strategic?
Exactly, as far as training an editor, and just getting the voice, being able to replicate the voice, when it wasn’t just David writing and Adam editing. Now that the structure was going to change, [it was] trying to find just how to train the person, how to recruit the right person for the job, and how to develop a network of contacts that, if we were doing it in L.A. first, would have been a little bit out of our league. We went to L.A. second, kind of blindly. We just said, “Why not L.A.?” It seems like the natural move, since L.A. and New York are the two biggest cities.

San Francisco was a little bit more strategic: One reason is that Adam is from San Francisco, so it was not as far from home in some ways as it might seem. Also, it’s a city where we saw that there was a real hole, media-wise, for anything like what we were doing. Daily Candy is obviously out there doing their thing, they’ve had a lot of success there. There are a lot of people working in technology and media out there, with Apple and Google. We thought that in New York, we’re really strong with that community — same goes for L.A. — and we thought that that kind of a guy would be into what we’re doing. Also, we’re out on the West Coast a lot. For business purposes, it’s a short trip. It’s easy. So Chicago is next.

When do you expect to launch in Chicago?
We don’t know. We’re ready from a technical standpoint and we’re ready from an advertising standpoint. I think [with] content, we just want to make sure we get San Francisco very comfortably on its feet before we take the leap [to Chicago].

Do you have an editor yet for Chicago?
We don’t quite have our editor, we’re looking around. In the past, we’ve hired people when a job opportunity presented itself: We need a new salesperson, we need a new this, we need a new that, and we’ve hired not necessarily the first person we’ve found, but one of the first people that had the right kind of experience on paper. This is the experience of starting a company when you’re a little kid: [When hiring] you have to know deep down if it’s the right guy or it’s not the right guy. We’ve met a lot of cool, confident people in Chicago, but we want to wait until we find the guy who [is] so Thrillist, they just live and breathe it, and they’re someone who we are really proud to have representing the brand.

Does the challenge of finding your Chicago guy have anything to do with the Chicago market itself?
I would never have said yes until I started to talk to people: Yes. There must be something in the water there. I don’t know exactly why we’re having so much trouble finding a really good Chicago guy, but it could be there’s something bizarre in Chicago and it could also be that we’re getting better at knowing what we want and we’re being more particular: The skill set needs to be more exact, and it needs to be a better fit. In the past we’d just shoehorn people into jobs that weren’t necessarily perfect. Now, we’re able to be a little more deliberate in everything we do and I think [hiring in] Chicago is maybe the first time that we’ve really been quite so careful.

We didn’t interview 60 people in San Francisco — we interviewed five and we met Patrick and it was great. We’ve interviewed a lot of people in Chicago, and we haven’t found a perfect fit. Although we’ve met with tons of really talented, really funny, really interesting people, no one has been Thrillist.

We’re only as good as our next piece of content.

You’ve said before that expansion was a possibility when the number of subscribers hit a certain threshold. What did it take, subscriber-wise, to be able to move forward with new editions?
I think it’s less about that now than maybe it was. I don’t even know what the number was, but the idea was about proving the concept in the city before it. We didn’t want to launch the Nation until we knew that New York had worked. We didn’t want to launch L.A. until Nation had steam behind it — we felt like it was really cooking, people were liking it, the product was working. Same goes for San Francisco.

Now we’ve been able to replicate success in several cities because we’re finding the local people there. It’s not about us, it’s about them once we get to the city. We have a nice model and a nice voice, but ultimately it’s about finding the right editor who really just gets it, and understands the city and what people want in the city. I think now we know we’re going to be successful in San Francisco. We know it’s going to work there because we have a great editor, and I think the voice works for the city and we’re finding cool stuff. San Francisco is just an awesome city with a lot going on. There’s just so much cool stuff to discover, and it’s kind of wide open for us.

So, would your direct competitors be San Francisco Magazine and the aly-weeklies?

Those, or city guides. Absolutely.

We never like to think in terms in competition. All that competition is going to do is bog us down and get us worried. It’s a waste of time for me to think about it — we just have to focus on doing the best job that we can do, and not getting caught up in the little details of other people trying to eat our lunch, because it’s just going to drive us crazy.

Describe why this approach works in an online format versus a print format? You guys are daily, and very granular about what you’re choosing; it’s interesting that there seems to be an opportunity online where there isn’t in print.

First of all, everyone is online right now that we’re going after, so it’s a natural fit. The cost to start something up online is so much less than the cost to get something started up in print, so we never even conceived of print early on. Maybe in kind of a pipe dream, but it was never a realistic opportunity, so online was the only place, and I think that it works.

I think the success of Thrillist is based on email, not just online. It’s a habit. Email is a personal thing, it’s a habit, and getting invited into someone’s email box is such a great way to communicate with somebody that I think a lot of Web sites don’t necessarily see. If you’re a Web site you have to remind people — you have to use more marketing to remind people to come back and check you out. With us, if somebody finds us once and decides it’s really interesting, we’re going to come and remind them that we’re around every day. If we remind them often enough, and they don’t like what we’re doing, they will very quickly remove us from their life, which is fine with us, it keeps our list tight, and it keeps it with the people who are signed up for Thrillist are the people who want Thrillist.

What have you covered that has engendered major reader response, positive or negative?

Just very recently in San Francisco, we wrote about a woman who takes old clothing that you have — old jerseys or old t-shirts, things that are no longer wearable — and makes new clothing out of your old stuff. [She] kind of brings it back to life and makes hoodies out of it, and makes new t-shirts, and other cool things. It was a really interesting one for us because, typically, we move the needle so much more for people as our list grows. As we’re in a city longer, we have more people reading, so when we write about things more people respond. But, this was our first or second piece in San Francisco, and we had 4,000-5,000 people reading that day. We ended up really changing this woman’s business in one day.

We did it and she got a lot of pick-up from other places, and that kind of viral effect really took hold, and now the woman can’t fill the orders she’s been getting. It kind of changed her business from what she told us, which is really exciting because it was very early in the edition. We did move the needle in the first week — it was good for Patrick, it kind of got him really energized, so that’s a recent success.

This is an embarrassing one: We wrote about this shirt that looks like you’re wearing tattoos. It’s like half-see-through, a really silly, funny shirt that I saw someone wearing out one night. I thought it was really funny, and I showed it to the editors, and we thought it was really funny. We didn’t actually recommend it as something that you want to go out and buy, it was more of a Halloween costume, but we featured it on Thrillist Nation, and we got skewered by everyone from Gawker to Vh1 online to Best Week Ever, just ripping on the shirt and us for writing about it. I completely understand where they’re coming from, because there is that inherent recommendation [in covering it], there is the endorsement there, but sometimes we’re writing about something that we think is funny rather than really cool.

Do you still have a book project in the works?

We don’t have a book project in the works. We’ve been approached. Right now I just don’t know what our book would be about and I think that that’s a bad way to start a project. We started Thrillist because we wanted something like Thrillist to exist. We were frustrated that there were a bunch of crappy city guides. Trying to diversify Thrillist into a book when we don’t have a passion to write a book about something would be a mistake and would just be kind of greedy of us, in trying to extend the brand and to create like some Thrillist guide to something that we don’t think would really deliver value to people. At the end of the day, that’s what Thrillist is about, it’s a service; we want to provide value. We want people to be able to walk away and feel like they got something out of reading Thrillist. Unless there was something we naturally thought would be a good idea, and we really wanted to do, we wouldn’t do a book.

Any other projects in the works?

Not really. We’ve kind of had our heads down. We’re trying to do one thing really, really well. The expansion we’re looking at is geographic expansion first and foremost: As much as we want to keep growing to new markets, we really want to focus a lot of our attention to making sure that what we currently have is great, because we’re only as good as our next piece of content. We want to make sure that what we send out to our current readers on New York and San Francisco and L.A. and Nation is great.

Have you gone through any fallow period, maybe transitions between editors, when interest waned?

I can’t necessarily pinpoint it with any user metrics. Growth has never slowed — growth has only gotten faster and faster as we’ve grown, and the response has only gotten bigger and bigger. The only time where we’ve ever been able to pinpoint anything like that is internally, when we’re reading.

The company is a pretty good focus group. There are 13 of us, and we’re all in the demo: we’re all between 25-35 and living in New York or L.A. or San Francisco and we’re young guys. Aside from the editorial staff, if we think the content is taking a little bit of a step back, we let the editorial guys know.

We recently made a big transition, where our Nation editor left, and we had a new Nation editor come in, and our New York editor left to become the executive editor, and we got a new New York editor, and we launched San Francisco. So our staff went up with three new people. It was a really big change because it takes a long time to get the voice, to get familiar with the format, the deadlines and the way that everyone works. So it was tough — It was about a month and a half ago or two months ago where everyone was working many, many more hours a day than ever before. Now we’ve kind of settled back in to a good system and everyone is happy again, but we’re always trying to improve and we always find — once a week, in at least one edition — there’s a piece that afterwards people in the office are like, “That stunk.” We try not to let it get us down when we don’t print the best thing we’ve ever printed. In general, I think four to five days we’re sending out really, really great stuff. You don’t need to hit a homerun every day, you just can’t strike out.

Do you ever worry that you might enter a market and saturate it — hit the bottom of the barrel as far as new things to cover?

I’m definitely nervous about it. I don’t think we’re ever going to run out of stuff in New York or L.A., or San Francisco. I worry that there are other cities around the country that may not be able to sustain it. I’m not sure if we can do five days a week in Seattle or Atlanta. We’re not necessarily married to a daily model in every market we’re in if there’s not enough stuff. In New York, I think there are five great things a week, whether we find them every week is another story. Sometimes we don’t find all five things — we do our best to — but I think there’s always going to be enough content. A friend of mine is a big restaurant foodie guy, starting a food Web site. He was telling me that he’s trying to pinpoint the top 1,000 restaurants in New York, and he has a theory that there are never more than 1,000 great restaurants in New York City. I was saying, what about when a new place opens? He was like, “I guarantee you a place that was in your top 1,000, a place closes.” There is so much turnover in everything.

There’s always new stuff popping up [in our current markets], and we’ll have a neverending supply of content. I don’t think the well can run dry, but in other markets, there may never be enough. So we need to be very careful before we make a commitment to a city that there’s enough. When we launch a new city, we actually launch four days a week rather than five, to give ourselves that day of rest, and that day to be sure that we don’t put that pressure on ourselves early on. We want to be sure that there’s a solid four, that everyone’s happy, and that there’s almost more that we want to cover. We want to get the contacts in place and the freelancers and tipsters, so that there’s too much, that there’s not enough days in a week, and when we get there, we know it’s time to go to five.

What would you say is the most challenging aspect of growing Thrillist?

Entering new markets, I think the most challenging aspect of any of this stuff is a) hiring the right person, and b) just for us, emotionally staying strong and staying focused and looking at this from a long-term perspective. We’re growing this thing and we’re really trying to do the best stuff and not letting one day of content that we’re not in love with make us sad throughout the next day. Just staying focused on doing as good a job as we can, and knowing that we can’t be perfect.

Have you ever had to let anyone go?
We have. There have been a few people that didn’t work out for various reasons. It’s not fun. It’s an awful, awful, awful thing, and everyone who has worked for Thrillist we brought in because we obviously thought that they were great. There aren’t any who left that we’re on bad terms with, I don’t think, but sometimes someone’s not quite right.

It’s really very sad and unpleasant. It’s something that we really don’t want to do, which could be part of the reason we’re so careful with who we hire.

How do you cope with that from the standpoint of a relatively young professional who is responsible for this larger organization, including the morale and the direction of the group?
I rely on the investors a lot to give me advice and help to lead me through those situations and handle them in the most professional way possible.

I haven’t had that many jobs. I’ve never been fired from a job before. So, just going through the process of the way you’re supposed to do it and the way you’re supposed to be sensitive: asking [the investors] about the potential questions people ask, the worries any employer has for somebody who’s not going to be there anymore, from a security standpoint to an emotional standpoint, for the person and for the morale of the team.

We really do try to have a team aspect all the time so it’s not at all out of the ordinary after something like that happens, we have a team meeting when everyone can talk about how they feel. The culture of the company is so much of what we’re about and what we do. Letting somebody go can really shake that, so we’re really careful that everyone understands why decisions get made.

Are there any things that have changed in your day-to-day role that you’ve had to let go that you’ve been sorry to part, work-wise?

I loved reading the pieces, but at the same time, it’s stressful. It’s a big time commitment and it’s tough.
Other than that, I don’t really miss any specific thing. I miss the idea of having daily responsibilities and feeling worthwhile. Today, I feel like I didn’t get anything done. There are so many days now where I feel like I didn’t get anything done because I don’t have anything to show for the stuff that I’m doing necessarily. I miss that a little bit, coming home, being like, “I did something great today,” rather than, “We did something great today.” But, I can definitely settle for “We did something great today.”

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Tips on taking your venture into new markets:
1) Have realistic expectations.
Sometimes things don’t go as planned, and sometimes you look back and wish something had turned out differently. “You don’t need to hit a home-run every day,” Lerer says. “You just can’t strike out.”
2) Play with the model.
“We’re not necessarily married to a daily model in every market we’re in if there’s not enough stuff.”
3) Lean on the experts.
Lerer says sometimes, he needs a little guidance. “I rely on the investors a lot to give me advice and help to lead me through those situations and handle them in the most professional way possible.”
4) Appreciate team successes.
With the expansion of the business to new editions, Lerer’s had to trade individual responsibilities for ones benefiting his organization. “I miss that a little bit, coming home, being like, ‘I did something great today,’ rather than, ‘We did something great today. But, I can definitely settle for ‘We did something great today.'”

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[Rebecca L. Fox is mediabistro.com’s managing editor.]

Imagine you started a brand new magazine last January. A year later, you’ve managed to attract 30,000 subscribers, and at least 200,000 people are picking up individual copies at the newsstand, with many hundreds of thousands more paging through your publication at the checkout line. Not only that, the magazine is already in the black. And all without mentioning a certain pantiless pop star. Sound far-fetched? Not if you’re Leo Babauta, the author behind Zen Habits, the rookie blog sensation of 2007. OK, it’s not a print magazine. But in this brave new world of online media, it could very well be the next best thing.

Babauta, a veteran staff and freelance writer, started the blog at the beginning of 2007 as nothing more than a personal journal about simplifying his life. At first, family and friends were his only readers. But word about the blog started to spread. Visitors stopping by for a look found themselves getting hooked on his soothing prose and insightful advice. Other bloggers started singing his praises. The numbers kept mounting. And by October, Zen Habits had achieved the near-impossible: It cracked the Technorati 100, the list of the most popular blogs in the world. Today, the blog is in the Technorati 50. (For those who’ve lost track, there are at least 100 million blogs out there. And counting.)

Over 30,000 people subscribe to the Zen Habits RSS feed, and that number will surely rise — it’s already up from 24,000 a month ago. In December, Zen Habits received 800,000 unique visitors, with 200,000 of those returning more than once. (For comparison, the Drudge Report received 1.3 million unique visitors that month, according to a recent article in Portfolio.) The blog, which makes money off advertising, is doing so well that Babauta, a modest, 34-year-old father of six who lives on Guam, is now quitting his job as a legislative analyst to devote himself full-time to the blog, as well as to a new online business venture, and … drum roll, please … a brand, spanking new book contract.

mediabistro.com caught up with Babauta to ask him how he went from being just another Joe Blogger to one of the leading Internet scribes, and a self-supporting one at that — all in a single year.

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How did the idea for Zen Habits come about?

I had a great year in 2006, making some amazing life changes, from quitting smoking to training for and running my first marathon to starting to wake up at 4:30 a.m. to getting my life organized to eating healthier and simplifying my life to doubling my income and starting to eliminate my debt. Accomplishing goals like this, and creating a series of new and positive habits, it’s something you want to share with people. So I created a blog, most of all to post my goals and hold myself accountable for them, but also to share what I learned along the way with others. It turns out that there were a lot of people like me, looking to make similar life changes.

When you started, were you trying to create something that would have a wide readership and would become well-known? Or were you just creating something for family and friends?

It was mostly just something for myself, and family and friends, but there were points in the beginning when I was reading other blogs and thought to myself, “I can do that!” I mean, I read some great blog posts, but they weren’t anything that I couldn’t write. I felt I was as good a writer as most bloggers out there, and that I had a lot of things to share too. So I wrote some early posts with the desire to learn the new medium of blog writing (which is different from other forms of print journalism), and to see how well I could do it. When I thought I could do it well enough, I started to share links with others, and it just took off from there.

At what point did you realize the blog was becoming bigger than just one guy’s personal journal?

There wasn’t one point. The few early visitors to Zen Habits just loved my posts, and it encouraged me to try more. The more I wrote, the more people came, and the more positive the reactions were. I mean, these were extremely positive, praising reactions. It was very encouraging.

What did you start doing differently, once you realized you had a real audience out there?

Every writer, if he’s good, writes for an audience. That might be an audience of one or one million, but you have an audience with certain interests and backgrounds in mind. With new visitors came a new audience, and I began to feel them out, based on their comments and
emails, and to start the process of discovering what they were interested in, and to write with them in mind. Writing is a conversation, and as new people came into the conversation, my writing changed. I’m still going through that process, and probably always will be.

What specifically did I do differently? I think I began exploring the form of writing on blogs that’s a cross between a feature magazine article and a memoir. That is to say, they are often how-to articles that address a particular reader problem, written in a more conversational style. I’m still experimenting with that form now.

How did your readers find out about you?

Well, in the beginning I had to tell them I was there, otherwise no one would have found me. I posted a link or two on other blogs, just letting them know about a related article I’d written. I also posted on some forums now and then. Those links would bring in perhaps a dozen readers. But those readers would stay, and some of them would post a link on their blogs. From there, things grew, a little slowly at first, but they snowballed. Bloggers link to me, and other bloggers
read those blogs and then link to me, and so on.

There are a jillion blogs out there, and a bunch of them focusing on self-improvement. What about your blog stood out from the rest and led to the following you’ve built?

That’s something I’m trying to figure out myself. Based on what my readers have told me, it seems that I offer very practical, rubber-meets-the-road advice, as compared to more generalized advice you might find on some blogs. I’ve also been praised for my style, which people say is humble and down-to-earth. It’s hard for me to judge whether that’s true or not, but I’ve heard it enough times from readers that I can’t discount it anymore.

But just as importantly, I think I’ve tapped into something that many other people haven’t. Specifically, I focus on simplicity in a world where others focus on doing more. They are worried about getting things done with new technology, while I’m more concerned with scaling back in the face of the chaos of our technological world. I don’t eschew technology, but instead advise that we don’t have to do everything, just because we can. There is more information available than ever before, but we don’t need it all. We get thousands of emails, but don’t need to respond to all of them. That has turned out to be a powerful message that appeals to a lot of people like me.

How much do you think using the word “Zen” in the blog’s name and its visual design (with its soothing white space and gentle gray font) has played in the blog’s appeal?

The word “Zen” and the uncluttered look of the blog tie in directly to the message of simplicity that runs throughout my blog. The name, design, and content are in unity, and I think that’s incredibly
important. It’s easy to talk about simplicity, but it’s harder to actually do it. The simplicity of my message that’s implied in the name Zen Habits has hooked into a consciousness that rarely has an outlet in our online society. I think that’s helped my appeal tremendously.

How is the blog doing financially?

I make more money blogging than I do at my day job these days. In fact, I’m quitting my day job.

You’ve said on your blog that you’re conservative in the number of ads you accept. How has the blog been able to meet your financial needs, if you aren’t taking as many ads as you could?
You have to think about the reader first. When I go to another blog and there are a lot of ads on it, it turns me off, and I don’t come back. My fear is that I’m going to overwhelm the reader with too many ads, so I’ve tried throughout the year to limit how many ads I have on there, to keep it relatively clutter free, and to use the ad networks that really work.

Having a bunch of ads does not guarantee revenue. What really brings revenue is traffic. So what you really have to focus on is attracting readers — ads don’t attract readers, great content does. First, build up a destination. The readers will come, and if the readers come, the revenue will come — not the other way around.

“The reader is the new editor.”

In addition to your day job, you’re also a freelance writer. Historically, freelance writers have been at the mercy of the traditional media establishment. Newspaper, magazines, and books — run by editors and publishers — were the only ways a writer could get their work out, and make a living. But blogging is changing that. With blogging, a writer can get their work out and generate income all on their own. How is this changing the equation for writers, or changing the balance of power between editors/publishers and writers?

Going from freelance writing to blogging is incredibly, incredibly liberating. I’ve always been at the mercy of an editor. I can propose topics for articles, but in the end it’s their call. I can write articles with unique angles, but in the end, if they don’t like it, it doesn’t fly. I can put in my personal opinions and anecdotes, but more often than not they will be cut out. So my creativity is
stifled by the traditional freelancer-editor model.

As a blogger, I can write about whatever I want, whenever I want, however I want. The pressure of deadlines, of meeting someone else’s expectations, of being limited to a certain kind of writing, it’s all gone. The need for an editor is gone.

I’ve been an editor. I know the value of an editor for a newspaper or magazine. But for a blog, it’s completely unnecessary. In the end, the reader is the new editor. The reader will decide what he likes to read, and if a writer isn’t good, the reader will go elsewhere. The reader’s choices are the ultimate edits.

You made a somewhat controversial decision recently to make all the content on your blog copyright-free. Anyone can use it any way they like, though you’ve asked folks to credit you if they do use it. Why did you decide to give up your copyright?
It highlights the changes that are happening in the publishing world. It’s definitely a change in the mindset of traditional publishing. Copyright was necessary when publishing and distribution was limited and expensive. But nowadays distribution is unlimited and publishing is extremely inexpensive.

I see the new business model being completely different. Now, the more people who know your name and know your brand, the better. From a business standpoint, if someone wants to share my content with friends, and they share it with more friends, you might say you’ve lost revenue … but from my point of view, I haven’t lost revenue because I never would have gotten that revenue anyway. But this way I’ve gained more readers, and the model of the future is to gain as many readers as possible.

What’s in store for you in the year ahead?
First is just to continue to improve Zen Habits. That has become my greatest joy in life.

The second thing is my book [The Power of Less, to be published by Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff publisher Hyperion]. That is going to be a major accomplishment in my life, one of the biggest things that has ever happened to me. I want to do a great job with it.

I’m starting a second blog, called Write to Done. It’s a blog for writers. I’m going to cover everything from writing your first novel and selling a book to writing great blog posts and the business side of freelancing. I’m not really doing it to make money but to write about stuff that I’m interested in writing about. If it eventually makes money great, but if not, it’s a great outlet for me to write about things I want to write about.
And I’m starting an online business with a partner, Glen Stansberry of the LifeDev.net blog. We’ll be selling a series of short ebooks, guides to doing different things on the Internet. It’s a way for me to share some of the things I’ve been learning online. The online market is really growing. People are just starting to get into writing blogs, even to get into reading blogs. The audience for these kinds of things is going to be greatly expanding in the next few years.

So you get to the end of 2007, and there are at least 30,000 people out there who think you’re a rock star. How about your wife? Does she think you’re a rock star? Or just the same old guy who can’t manage to get his dirty socks in the hamper?
[Laughs] She definitely thinks I’m a rock star. She’s been so supportive and so excited about my success — more than anyone else, with the possible exception of my mom. Every time something great happens, I call her up or instant message her to share it.

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Tips for creating a blog with mass appeal
1. Be useful
“Figure out what problems people face in their lives, and write incredibly useful articles that help them solve those problems. The more useful info, the better.”
2. Write great headlines
“Headlines are the most important words the blogger writes. They are the only thing people see when they read your blog in an RSS feed reader. They see a bunch of headlines and decide whether they’re going to read more based on your headline. I use magazine covers as a model — whether Cosmopolitan or Men’s Health — they have a bunch of cover lines that are designed to draw readers in.”
3. Sell yourself
“Promote your brand by networking, by writing great guest posts for other blogs, and through social media such as Digg and del.icio.us.”
4. Integrity builds loyalty
“Always, always, always remember that the readers must come first and must be central in everything you do. If you have things on your blog that are about your blog’s promotion, or about promoting anything else, and are not there for the reader’s benefit, remove them.”

In five short years, entertainment reporter Jane Boursaw has gone from doing the typical freelancer thing — picking up gigs catch as catch can — to creating a series of syndicated columns that now run in more than 300 publications and Web sites nationwide. Boursaw, the author behind Reel Life with Jane, focuses on family films and TV shows, and her syndicated TV and movie reviews appear in regional and parenting publications nationwide. She’s also kept up a vibrant freelancing career, often penning profiles of child celebrities, including, most recently, a profile of Heroes actress Hayden Panettiere that appeared in American Eagle’s Latitudes magazine. The kicker? Boursaw is no typical Tinsel Town scribe. Instead, she does it all from her home near Traverse City, Michigan.

mediabistro.com caught up with Boursaw to ask her how she landed her syndication gigs and how she stays on top of the latest Hollywood shenanigans from 2,000 miles away.

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How did you get the idea to start covering Hollywood from Michigan?
I’ve always loved movies, TV and celebrities, and I had one of those “If I could do anything, what would it be?” moments. What I’m doing now is what I envisioned when I posed that question many years ago.

How did you get the idea to create a syndicated column?
I saw a need for a good family movie column for the many regional family publications in existence. I love family movies and enjoy seeing them with my own kids, so it seemed like a natural path for me.

How did you get started?
My first column was on MommaSaid.net, owned by Jen Singer (author of 14 Hours ‘Til Bedtime). Jen has been my loyal supporter from the beginning, and she was more than happy to launch my column on her wonderful parenting site.

Any false starts in getting this underway?
Not really. I think you just have to be patient and not expect that it will happen all at once. It takes a long time to establish yourself and build a presence in any given niche. I’ve never had a time when I had 50 new markets come in all at once. It’s more like two here, three there — the goal is to keep marketing all the time and building slow and steady.

Always market yourself — try and do some sort of marketing every day. Keep building a good Web presence and keep networking in a lot of different areas.

When did you start feeling like you had momentum?
Probably a couple of years ago. I hired a professional Web designer to redo my Web site, and that helped to solidify my brand, Reel Life With Jane, on the Web.

What’s the key to being a successful syndicator?

Always market yourself — try and do some sort of marketing every day. Keep building a good Web presence and keep networking in a lot of different areas. Aside from the syndicated column, I write for a variety of markets, providing TV, movie and celebrity content. All my articles and bios include a tagline with info on the syndicated column. So even if it’s a celebrity profile in Latitudes, an editor for a regional family publication might see my tagline and contact me about the syndicated column.

Which of your columns is the most successful?
The weekly family movie review — an in-depth review of a new family movie each week. Most regional family pubs have an online presence, and many use this review for their Web site. I think there was a need for an affordable, down-to-earth column that would tell parents which movies are OK — and not OK — for their kids. Parents can’t see every movie before their kids do. I have a responsibility to offer parents good info that they can trust. The MPAA ratings system isn’t always black and white, so there may be some PG-rated movies that aren’t appropriate for kids. That’s why my reviews include detailed content on profanity, violence, and sexual innuendo. It’s amazing how many PG-rated animated movies contain all of these elements.

What are editors looking for from a syndicator?
Someone who’s reliable, delivers clean copy on time all the time, and isn’t priced out of the ballpark. Most regional family publications don’t have a huge budget, and I’m happy to work within their budgets. I concentrate on building a good client base, so that I’m not dependent on a few markets to keep me solvent.

What’s hard about covering Hollywood from 2,000 miles away?
My particular niche doesn’t require me to live in LA or NYC. I’m well-connected within the industry, so I generally get intel regarding movies, TV shows and many celebrities before it reaches the general public anyway.

Do you ever get any pushback by folks in Hollywood, because you’re not on their home turf?
Never.

What’s the key to staying in the loop?
Being connected doesn’t necessarily mean living in LA or NYC. It means building good contacts with publicists, TV networks, and movie production and distribution companies. I’ve spent years doing that and feel like I have a pretty good handle on the inside track. Also try to diversify yourself as much as possible. During the past few years, I’ve focused on having a variety of clients. Good markets end all the time, for reasons beyond our control. You don’t ever want to be in a position of having all your eggs in one or two baskets.

You covered Spinal Tap actor Michael McKean from Michigan for a Southern California magazine. How come the editor didn’t just go with a local writer?
Editors are looking for good writers who deliver clean copy on time. I’m a phone call away from any celebrity, so I don’t think you necessarily have to meet with profile subjects face to face. Other than my Web site, I’m listed in a variety of places, including Freelance Success, ASJA, mediabistro.com, JournalismJobs, and others. All of my listings give editors a good idea of the types of work I do, and I still query editors with ideas, as well. I also belong to several online writers’ groups. Those give you a built-in networking community.

How do clients find you?
Many clients come to me through referrals from current clients or via my Web site. My Web designer has done a fabulous job of placing me high in the search engines, using keywords for my niche. But I’m always marketing, scanning job boards for new clients and possible gigs, and all my writing buddies send me job opportunities that seem like a good fit for me.

In addition to the three columns and assorted freelance assignments, you also contribute to five blogs (including your own Reel Life With Jane, Ruby Shoes, and Film Gecko). How do you find the time?

I’m really geeky when it comes to using lots of different tools to streamline my work, but it’s a necessity to keep track of everything. For overall planning, I use both a hard-copy calendar on my desk, as well as Franklin Covey’s PlanPlus on my computer. I use Google Reader to collect news items and intel from at least 300 sources every day. That keeps me up-to-date on the inside scoop from pubs like The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, IMDB.com and a variety of RSS feeds.

I use an offline editor (Windows Live Writer) for composing blog items, which streamlines the blogging process tremendously. That program allows you to easily compose blogs, add photos, videos, Amazon links, hyperlinks, tags and other necessities. Right now, I have five blogs on Windows Live Writer, each in their own file.

I use multiple spreadsheets to keep track of what’s been blogged where and how many blog posts I’ve done on any given day. More specifically, for FilmGecko.com, I have a spreadsheet with upcoming movies for the year, and each movie has a column for trailers, news items, interviews, casting news, previews, reviews, contests, etc. That way, I can know at a glance what I’ve covered for a given movie and what still needs to be covered.

Best Hollywood reporting moment?
I think a lot of people feel like celebrities live in another world from the rest of us. But all the celebs I’ve interviewed are just regular people with families, schoolwork, and jobs they go to every day. Because we see them in the press all the time, I think there’s a tendency to feel like they’re somehow different. But I haven’t found that to be the case. Most are friendly and down-to-earth and just trying to get by like the rest of us.

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Tips for starting a syndicated column:
1. Offer options: I offer two versions of the syndicated column. The monthly version includes short synopses of upcoming family movies. The weekly column is a detailed review of a new family movie released each week. If there are no new theater releases, I’ll do a DVD review. I find that most editors like the monthly column for their print pub and the weekly for their Web site.
2. Market continually: I market all the time, usually every day, in one form or another. I send emails, scan writing job boards for family pubs, and work from a couple of reliable contact lists.
3. Work within their budgets: The rates for my syndicated family movie column vary from $5/mo. for really small pubs to $100/mo. for larger pubs. I’m OK with that. I’m here to serve them, not the other way around.
4. Offer them something they can’t find elsewhere: In my case, I have a particular voice to my writing that’s chatty and conversational. Again, I’m here to serve the clients and offer their readers something interesting they won’t find anywhere else: Me.

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E.B. Boyd is a freelance writer based in San Francisco.

Back in 2002, Jessa Crispin’s job as a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood kept her occupied for all of one hour a day. Needing something to fill the other seven, Crispin started blogging about books. In 2003, her site, Bookslut had grown into a Web zine with a handful of writers, and Time named it one of the 50 best Web sites of the year. How they found her, Jessa doesn’t know. She wasn’t actively seeking stardom. Eventually, however, she did become a full-time writer — out of necessity. When she moved from Austin to Chicago and started job-hunting among nonprofits, prospective employers threw her name into Google to check her out. The name “Jessa Crispin” being somewhat distinctive, they inevitably stumbled across Bookslut — and the explanation of how it got started — and suggested that perhaps her passion lay elsewhere.

Today Bookslut is one of the leading literary Web zines, with about 9,000 unique visitors a day. Thirty to 40 writers contribute to the daily blog and write features, Q&As, and reviews for the monthly magazine. At a time when newspaper book review sections are folding and traditional book reviewers are grousing about the quality of criticism on the Web, Publishers Weekly declared that Crispin is “rewriting the rules of reviewing” and called Bookslut “one of the most provocative and erudite” of online book sites.

In addition to Bookslut, Crispin freelances for NPR.com’s Books We Like and for The Smart Set, the online reincarnation of the early 20th-century literary magazine that once featured the writings of Dorothy Parker, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Theodore Dreiser. mediabistro.com caught up with Crispin to find out how she turned her literary musings into a leading Web zine.

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Bookslut started out as a place to record your own thoughts, but today it’s fairly prominent. When did you realize it was having influence and resonance beyond just your friends?
It took three months for me just to check the stats to see if other people were reading it. It was sort of a surprise when I did and there were. There were also two major milestones. One was when Time called us one of the 50 best Web sites [in 2003]. And then, about six months before that, Neil Gaiman [of The Sandman comic book fame] linked to us and brought us a huge audience. I had not told Neil we existed, so it seemed surprising that someone found us on their own, especially someone like him. But I also realized [it had traction] when I no longer had to search for new reviewers and new writers, when they started coming to me and wanting to write for me.

How far into it did that start to happen?
About a year into it.

You’ve said you prefer the multiple-voice approach of a Web zine to the single-voice approach of a one-person blog. Why is that?
It’s helped me just so that I don’t get bored. Sitting there talking to yourself day after day, you get tired of yourself. It helps to invite some other people to join in the conversation. But also, I think it helps the audience, so they don’t get totally bored with you. One person may hate me but love Sticky Pages, which is our Tuesday blogging section. It just broadens your appeal.

You’ve watched other literary sites come and go over the past six years. Why have some succeeded and others failed?
The ones that have stayed around have very unique voices, and they’re updated on a very regular basis. The ones that have fallen away the most seem to be the ones where the writer was like, “Oh, I can do this too, but I’m not going to put that much effort into it.” It’s hard to get an audience if they don’t know when to check for updates.

Also in the last two to three years, there have been an overwhelming number of blogs about literature, so I can’t imagine how somebody outside of The New York Times, which just launched their books blog, or The New Yorker, which also launched a books blog, would be able to find an audience without some sort of already established site or established audience. I can’t imagine it would be easy to get anybody’s attention.

Why have you decided not to make Bookslut your full-time job?
We realized that trying to be supported completely by publishers’ ads wasn’t going to do it because they don’t advertise that much, especially online. So the idea of opening the site up for conventional advertising — the liquor ads and that sort of thing — that whole system is dependent on page views. It’s the Gawker way of running things. I realized Bookslut would probably have to turn into something [that] encouraged page views and would become something that I wasn’t proud of anymore.

You’ve said that, since the bankruptcy of the parent company of book distributor Publishers Group West, online ad sales from publishers have plummeted, so now you’re paying writers in books. Why do you think so many people, good writers, are willing to write without pay?
Part of is that we don’t put a lot of restrictions on what they’re able to write about. I don’t mind if they wander in territory that they didn’t initially sign up for. They appreciate that. And there are a lot of people out there who really enjoy writing about literature and the authors that they like. I guess I should have figured that out since I was doing it myself. It was sort of surprising when I found out there were others who wanted to do it, too.

Also, the other day I was talking to one of my feature writers, who writes books. She does criticism, and she said all publishers expect you to have an established platform when you come to them with a book. She said there’s no better way to build that platform than to do a consistent column or feature online, so people know where to find you.

Does she have to have to show traffic stats to the publishers to prove she has an audience?
She’s never asked me for stats. I think the name Bookslut carries enough weight these days that that’s all people really need to know.

Did that change your thinking about what you’re doing?
These things sort of momentarily freak me out, and then I try to forget that I know them.

“I’m pleased as punch that the idea of the authority is going away. The New York Times never spoke to me. If you were one of those people who don’t agree that Philip Roth is the greatest American living writer, where were you supposed to go to find new books?”

You’ve mentioned that you don’t follow your traffic all that closely. You don’t break down what your audience is reading, for example.
I’m afraid that will influence what I do on Bookslut. Once you start chasing the reader, that’s when the reader loses interest. There’s all this talk about what can we do to capture the attention of a particular demographic, but I think having a conversation is probably the least productive thing you could be doing. I like what we’re doing on Bookslut. Our audience likes what we’re doing on Bookslut. So I just sort of leave it at that.

If the stats started spiraling downward, then I would probably pay attention to see what’s going on. But as it is, we’re seeing consistent growth, so I try not to obsess over “Why do poetry reviews not get as many page views as the fiction reviews?” or “Why does this column not get so many hits?” I like what we’re doing, so I figure that’s enough. It’s a dictatorship; it’s fine.

A benevolent one.
Yes, I’m a very benevolent dictator.

What reactions do you get from authors you ask for interviews? Do they get what Bookslut is about and understand what you’re doing? Or do they think you’re coming out of left field and don’t understand how it fits into conventional book promotion?
Most authors like us unless we give them reason not to. Most writers like the enthusiasm, and they like that there’s a new, more approachable avenue that’s not The New York Times. Obviously we don’t get the traffic that The New York Times gets. It doesn’t give them the hit that that would. But at least we’re enthusiastic, and we’re paying attention.

What are your favorite sites to go to learn about new books?
I really like the Guardian books section a lot. As far as other blogs, I like Journalista [the blog of The Comics Journal] and Maud Newton — and I read Jezebel way too much.

What do you like about Journalista and Maud Newton?
I like Maud because she’s very thoughtful. She much more thoughtful than a lot of other bloggers, and she doesn’t have an ax to grind with anyone. I like that she keeps her distance from any sort of literary scene.

And Journalista is just… A lot of comic book Web sites are overrun with geeky nastiness, sexism, and weird obsessive-compulsive behavior. Journalista is not like that. It has a very good sense of humor.

What’s wrong with being a part of the literary scene?
I noticed that, when the literary blogs first started to be accepted as a credible thing, a log of bloggers would brag about what parties they got invited to, and there were pictures of them at the parties. And then those writers would get glowing notices in the blog. It seemed they were spending a lot of energy trying to get into the cocktail party scene. They were willing to trade their legitimacy for a party invite.

Many traditional book reviewers look still askance at online literary sites. In fact, The News Hour just had a debate on this very thing, after the Los Angeles Times jettisoned its standalone book section. Why the animosity?
Part of it is the disappearing newspaper book sections. It’s so hard to make a living as a book critic. The newspapers don’t pay very much for reviews. But people who had worked out a system saw the rise of Internet criticism, not even criticism, but just the blogs, at the same time as they saw newspaper book sections declining. I think they thought the blogs were the cause of the demise. But they weren’t. No blogger has ever said that their goal was to destroy the newspaper book section, or even that they thought they could replace it. But I think there was a lot of animosity because the reviewers’ livelihoods were disappearing, and they thought us young whippersnappers were invading their territory.

What do you think the world of book reviewing is going to be like 10 years down the road? What’s going to change? What are we going to gain? What are we going to lose?
There’s going to be a lot more original content online from both “legitimate” sources and so-called “non-legitimate” sources, the “legitimate” sources being The New York Times or The New Yorker or the like. A lot of lit mags will move online because a lot of them are hurting trying to meet printer costs.

With the demise of newspaper book review sections and the explosion of book Web sites, how are readers supposed to figure out where the voice of authority is? In the past, all you had to do was open your newspaper’s book review section, and there was your bible.
I’m pleased as punch that the idea of the authority is going away. The New York Times never spoke to me. If you were one of those people who don’t agree that Philip Roth is the greatest American living writer, where were you supposed to go to find new books? I think it’s great that that filter is changing.

As far as finding your authority, you just have to read a lot and find the person that you like or the book review section that you like. I get more accurate book recommendations from the London Review of Books than I’ve gotten anywhere else, and it’s taken me years to find that thing. I understand the exasperation, especially when so many books are published, hundreds of thousands of books are published in a year. It’s difficult for the publishers, for the writers, and for the audience, because nobody knows who to turn to. But I think the longer that we get used to this, the easier it will become. The blogs or publications that survive will survive for a reason, because of their quality and because of their dedicated audiences. I think things just haven’t evened out yet.

Are there any unexpected side benefits to being the founder of a fairly well-known Web zine?
It certainly opens freelance doors. I don’t have to make blind pitches. I can say, “Hi, I’m the editor of Bookslut,” and people already know where I’m coming from. That recognition has helped considerably. But also the books delivered to my doorstep are very nice.

Fill in the blank: If the Internet hadn’t come along and I wasn’t doing this, I would probably be working in/at ______.
A nonprofit. That’s what I was doing when I started Bookslut, and Bookslut turned into either a distraction or a course correction. I sort of wandered between the two. But I really loved working at Planned Parenthood.

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Tips for starting your own literary Web zine

1. Find a niche. The literary zine market is saturated. To stand out, you’re going to have to focus on something in particular — like young adult novels or science fiction — where you have a chance of getting noticed.
2. Stay regular. “Regularity in posting is so important,” Crispin says. Audiences get created when readers make regular visits to your site. They’ll make those visits if they know when the new stuff is going up.
3. Trust your intuition. Crispin says she regularly gets unsolicited advice from all corners, including established figures in the literary world. So far, however, she’s followed her inner compass. After all, the Web is still uncharted territory. Nobody has the secret to what will make it work, including those operating from maps drafted in the offline world.
4. Find soul mates. Join forces with other writers whose aesthetic you share and trust. Multiple voices increase the chance a visitor will find something they enjoy, and common aesthetics ensure that the zine develops a distinct identity.
5. Don’t pander. Resist the urge to try to figure out what readers want and to give them that. It’s a really good way to chase them away. After all, readers are coming to your party. They want to see what you’ve got going on.

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E.B. Boyd is a San Francisco-based freelance writer. She blogs about the future of the news business at future-of-news.blogspot.com.

The Huffington Post’s Off the Bus reporting project set off a firestorm in journalism circles earlier this year when one of its correspondents broadcast the “bitter voter” comments Barack Obama made during a fundraiser that was closed to the press. Jay Rosen, the project’s mastermind, says that the correspondent, Mayhill Fowler, shouldn’t be condemned for transgressing against rules that were created in the pre-digital era. Instead, he says, she should be viewed as a harbinger of the new realities, including the fact that publishing capabilities have now been extended to anyone with access to the Internet. Media organizations should take note, he says, and adapt accordingly.

Off the Bus is one of several projects Rosen, a professor of journalism at NYU and author of PressThink, has initiated to explore ways professionals and amateurs can collaborate to produce journalism. The approach is inspired in part by the open source movement in software, in which masses of programmers collaborate to build new computer programs. In 2006, Rosen launched NewAssignment.net as a home for his real-world experiments. The first of those was Assignment Zero, a joint project with Wired.com to use crowdsourcing to cover the story of, well, crowdsourcing. Off the Bus is the second project. And the third, launched last year, is BeatBlogging.org, where reporters at 13 news organizations across the country are exploring how to use social networking to fortify their reporting.

Earlier this year, an article by Rosen appeared on Salon.com decrying the traditional media’s “on-the-bus” horserace approach to reporting presidential elections. It’s a practice, he says, that is easy and safe for journalists but does not usually provide the most useful information to voters. mediabistro.com caught up with Rosen to find out how he thinks Off the Bus is improving the quality of election reporting.

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What have you learned so far from the Off the Bus experiment?
One of the most important things we’ve done is in the name: the idea of getting off the bus and off the merry-go-round of “inside baseball” journalism and trying it from another place. When we have a report from, let’s say, someone who wanted to volunteer for the Obama campaign and assumed they were going to get a ticket to the Denver convention, and then they find out it’s not that simple, their account is about politics, it’s about the campaign, you could even say it’s revealing of the candidate, a little part of the candidate. But it’s not starting at all from being “on the bus.”

“Rather than following the campaign around, why not remain where you are and write and report where the campaign intersects with American life?”

The second thing we are trying to offer is a variety of perspectives that are “off the bus,” just by becoming a version of the Huffington Post, but specifically for the campaign, developing bloggers and voices who are coming from lots of different places. Because they are not professional journalists, they have other vantage points.

One of the images we started with was: Rather than following the campaign around, why not remain where you are in American life and write and report where the campaign intersects with American life? We’ve been fairly successful at doing that.

The third thing is that the events surrounding Mayhill Fowler showed some important things about the distribution of the press’s powers to more people.

Number four is we’re making slow but crucial progress on the whole challenge of distributed reporting, which is lots of people sharing the work of investigating something, or reporting on a big event, or compiling information. Continuing from my earlier project, Assignment Zero, we’re learning how to tackle that big, practical challenge of doing distributed reporting. It’s easy for me to write about it at PressThink and say, “We could have thousands of people on one story.” But the real work is in how you actually organize people to do that.

What’s wrong with reporting from the bus?
It’s trying to do something that is meager to begin with. It’s trying to tell us who’s going to win. We’re going to find out anyway. It’s unwilling to go outside that very limited idea for a sense of purpose. All this talent and intelligence and time and money that goes into campaign coverage — which is a lot, really good people are assigned to do it — it ends up almost poverty-stricken because of the limitations of the idea.

How else should they be reporting on the campaign?
In 1992, I was one of the people calling for the press to take more seriously the idea of a citizen’s agenda in election coverage. The Charlotte Observer did exactly that in 1992. They actually went out — and this was before the Web — to try to figure out: What do citizens say ought to be talked about as the issues in the campaign?

Earlier this year, Charlie Savage at the Boston Globe [asked the presidential candidates to fill out a detailed questionnaire on the limits of executive branch power]. This is an important issue — the expansion of executive power. We’ve got to get the candidates on the record about this. We have to push this. He had an agenda, which was: Let’s make this part of the agenda. He thought it was important, based on his reporting.

But [the mainstream press] won’t take up his idea, and this is what I wrote in my Salon article, because horserace coverage works for them, on all these different levels. It’s safe, known, easy, reproducible, transferable. It just solves their problem, which is: How do you immerse yourself in politics without becoming politically attached, without becoming political yourself? That’s actually hard to do. Horserace journalism solves your problem.

But aren’t readers interested in the horserace?
It’s true that people want to know who’s winning and why. And I agree. There’s definitely an audience to be served there. You have to do that. But that’s totally different than making this our idea and our identity and organizing the campaign around who’s going to win and how. That’s where I think the horserace press went wrong. Not in meeting audience demand for information. That’s good. But you can do that without making it your mission.

“It didn’t bother me that I was wrong about whether people would organize around candidates, because getting closer to what does motivate people is our goal.”

What has Off the Bus tried that hasn’t worked? And what have you learned from those failures?
When we started, I thought we’d be able to organize big teams of people who were interested in particular candidates to do journalism about those candidates. But it didn’t really work at all. People didn’t necessarily want to organize that way. Or we didn’t know necessarily how to engage them in it.

So you thought, ‘Whoever is interested in McCain, go in this room and figure out…’
Yeah, “the McCain corps.” We envisioned that the more popular candidates, or the candidates more likely to win, would probably have bigger groups. But it didn’t really work that way. This is not unusual in these types of projects.

My purpose as a college professor and a knowledge worker in new media is simply to learn by doing. Meaning, we don’t know how to organize thousands of people to provide an alternative to the “on the bus” campaign press. The best way is not to have a perfected model but just to start. And that’s Off the Bus: Let’s do it and learn from trying to do it.

So then you try to organize people around candidates, because “that’s what they’re excited about,” right? And it doesn’t work, fine, because you’ve learned something about your ideas and your assumptions and where they go wrong. In that sense, it’s fundamentally an academic project. But I like, when I can, to give my concepts a totally real-world test.

How long is this real-world test going to last?
We’re doing it for one election cycle. That’s our unit. We started it around the time the media got its own election year act together. We put ours together. They gave theirs a name. We gave ours a name, “Off the Bus.” And we run the base.

What sorts of results have you collected so far?
[Part of it is project director] Amanda Michel herself. We had to decide who should take on this project. The natural tendency would be to go with a political journalist and get them to do something “alternative.” Well the alternative to that is hiring somebody who knew how to organize people online. Believe me, there are no journalists who know how to do that. She was one of the few people I could find who had any experience in that, and she was interested in media and how to improve the news media.

Her own gaining mastery of it as we go along — that’s one of the biggest accomplishments. Some of the protocols and tools she’s developing, just to do her job, are among the most important learnings we have. What she’s learning, no one else is learning. That’s a home run right there. She herself is a home run — and somebody who’s going to add to journalism by bringing knowledge that is foreign to it but is necessary for its development.

“The [pool of] people who can record public speech has been extended past the press. That is what the new media revolution means. The tools of journalism have been distributed.”

How do you interpret the fact that people didn’t want to organize around candidates? What did you learn from that about what random Joes on the street are and are not willing to do, and what their motivations are for participating in crowdsourced journalism?
This is the heart of what I’m trying to figure out with this project. The first thing I ever learned from open source software was that you have to begin with what motivates people to participate. That’s the starting point for understanding your project. The design of your project has to obey the logic of motivation. The reason for that is pretty obvious, once you realize you are asking people to donate their time and their talent.

It didn’t bother me that I was wrong about whether people would organize around candidates, because getting closer to what does motivate people is our goal. As I observe this scene, what I’m finding is, through my project and others I’m watching just as closely, is there are different ways people come together to do distributed reporting work.

For example?
The first is represented by Josh Marshall [of TalkingPointsMemo.com]. When you have a charismatic and effective blogger who’s following stuff and develops a kind of miniature public around the story itself or around themes in his or her work. That’s what Marshall did during the U.S. attorneys scandal and many other things he’s done. It’s the story that draws people in. The user public is there for that story. And then something happens where distributed labor is really important and practical to do. So you can go to your public, and they’ll do it. And by “charismatic,” I don’t mean in their personality. I mean in their work. Their work is catalyzing of smart people who hang around and know a lot of things.

What Josh Marshall and company do is embedded in the “open news organization.” The way that organization works as a newsroom is that it starts every day not with its news budget but with inflow from readers, from sources, from people on the Internet, who are constantly emailing Josh and his people, or leaving comments, or doing blogs at community sites. But there’s an inflow from the mini-public. At headquarters, they’re filtering this inflow. They’re doing their own news aggregation around certain themes of reporting that they’re also developing in the old-fashioned journalistic way. That’s how the organization works. It’s in that context that they can occasionally say to readers, “Hey, go do this. Go look at these records. Go sift through these emails.”

What’s another model?
A really important story surfaces, so an organization simply appeals to the public for help, and it’s such an important story that it works. The example there would be what the News-Press in Fort Myers, Fla, did when it got wind of what felt like some corruption in a sewer authority down there. They didn’t really know what they were doing at the time, but they said to their readers, “Help us investigate.” And they gave what they knew so far. It was potentially something really important because it could affect other rate payers. There were lots of people who knew stuff about how sewer authorities worked who had retired to Florida. They volunteered their knowledge.

Any other models?
The third way is to develop a team of people who understand the idea of your project and then try to mold them into a team capable of distributed reporting. We’re getting there with Off the Bus. That’s what we’re trying to figure out how to do.

Separate from the “horserace” focus, what are the traditional media doing right this election season? And what are they missing the boat on?
Excellence in political journalism does go on. Peggy Noonan, as a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, whose politics I don’t agree with, has, through doing good columns and being in touch, really added something to my understanding of the election. Just by bringing herself and her insights. There’s nothing new about it. There doesn’t have to be.

But in terms of organizing people in new ways to do better political coverage, not much has happened. MTV is organizing 50 semi-pro journalists to do election coverage for them. I went and talked to them. The first thing I told them is, “If what you do looks like the ‘on-the-bus’ press, that’s the only way you could fail, to reproduce what they do.”

Are any of the Off the Bus correspondents getting paid? And if not, is that a sustainable strategy over the long term?
I’m not presenting Off the Bus as a sustainable anything. The idea was to run the project through the elections. We weren’t trying to create something to go on. Our idea was just to try to operate as an open campaign bureau, meaning anyone can sign up.

So you’re just trying to figure out how the operations would work, not how you’d finance it.
No.

About Mayhill Fowler: How do you respond to the criticism that she was reporting comments (from the Obama fundraiser) that were made in a context that was presumed to be off the record, by virtue of the fact that the event was closed to the press?
The Obama campaign said, on the record, that the fundraiser was closed to the press but not off the record. It’s very important for journalists to understand what I just said. The Obama campaign said, not in a back channel way, but through a spokesman that the event was closed to the press but not off the record.

What did they mean by that?
They’re making a practical, realistic judgment that, at a fundraiser, someone was going to be recording it, and the chances of them posting it online were very good. To assume anything else would be folly.

Number two, they are saying that, in effect, the public record has been extended to remarks at fundraisers because the [pool of] people who can record public speech has been extended past the press to anyone at the event. That is what the new media revolution means. The tools of journalism have been distributed. The most important thing to understand about Mayhill Fowler is that she is simply representing that fact to the political press.

What does that mean?
There’s a new press situation, so we shouldn’t start with an old set of rules as the norm. Let’s just figure out what the rules should be for this new situation. Lots of people have blogs and Twitter accounts, not just would-be journalists. Let’s say you [are a regular person and you] have a blog. You go to a campaign event because you’re excited about a candidate. You happen to have a conversation with the candidate. You go home that night and log in to your blog and you say, “What happened to me today? I met the candidate.” Now, before you start writing, are you going to ask yourself, “Wait a minute. I can’t report any of this. I’m not the press.” It would never in a million years occur to that person. That is a new situation.

Mayhill Fowler is a figure who is simply in that situation. My thing, as someone trying to operate under new conditions and figure out new possibilities, [is that] I’m not going to condemn her right away because she violated rules that were created for a one-to-many world. And if one of those “on-the-bus” reporters went up to Mayhill Fowler as she exited the fundraiser and asked, “What did he say,” the reporter would be totally within the rules of “on-the-bus” journalism to interview her and [publish] that account.

As you watch the evolution of journalism, what is one question journalists, traditional or otherwise, should be asking themselves, that they don’t seem to be?
What is the knowledge and where is the emotion that I want to get into the campaign system, that I want to bring to it and to add to the campaign, including to the point of making the candidates talk about it. Or to put it another way: What are you trying to accomplish in ’08, besides cover the campaign?

I like what Charlie Savage did. He wanted to make the [issue of the] expansion of executive power part of this campaign through the journalism that he did in 2008.

So instead of letting the politicians set the agenda about what’s going to be talked about, you decide perhaps in collaboration with consulting your community what the issues should be and then force the candidates to respond to them?
Not exactly. They get to set their agenda. And you have an agenda of what you want to add to the campaign.

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Four tips for running a distributed reporting project:

1. Hire an expert. Off The Bus could have hired a political journalist to run the project. Instead they hired someone with expertise in organizing people online.
2. Let go of the canon. Off The Bus threw out the book on what it means to cover a political campaign and instead are allowing their participants to write on a wide range of topics related to the election but not usually covered by the mainstream press.
3. Take risks. No one knows how to do this. You only learn what works — and what doesn’t — by trying something and seeing what happens.
4. Go with the flow. Figure out what motivates people in your community to get involved in communal reporting and organize your project around those motivations.

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E.B. Boyd is a San Francisco-based journalist. She blogs about the changes journalism is going through at The Future of News.

Like many college students, Porter Bayne, a longtime Republican and native Texan, had been active in campus politics. However, after graduating, he eschewed going into politics, instead starting Web companies in his home state of Texas and working for sites like Travelocity.com. Bayne remained a politics nut but found himself continually frustrated with what he perceived as the mainstream media‘s tendency to boil down speeches and platforms into 30-second sound bites. He wanted to use the Internet to help people recontextualize quotes and statements that had been taken out of context.

Along with several other core staffers, Bayne launched Ameritocracy.com in time for the 2008 election. One of those staffers is community director John Brooks. His job is to make sure that users come to the site and feel engaged. Brooks got his start in the community development world at Beliefnet.com, where he helped expand the production of user-generated content. Brooks talked to mediabistro.com about his goals for making Ameritocracy stand out from other user-driven content aggregator sites and how to keep its momentum going post-election.

How was Ameritocracy conceived? Describe the process of going from the initial idea to creating a site and hiring a staff.

The site began as the inkling of an idea by Porter [Bayne]. The earliest form of the concept — which [Bayne] described as “adding concise, hopefully-objective context to major campaign soundbites,” was a newsletter he wrote in 2004. The idea was to create a newsletter someone could [read] to get a more nuanced view of a topic than they were getting from the debates and speeches.

After getting some positive responses to the idea of the newsletter, Porter and [now creative director] Iris Chamberlain started thinking about how to build out a system that would let a lot more people cover a lot more campaigns and topics. After the process of figuring out how to raise some money and form a company, they started building the site in May 2008.

There are plenty of political news aggregator sites out there. Why did you want to create one that focused solely on quotes and statements?

The mainstream media these days is lazy. They rely on soundbites; stuff taken out of context. Our goal is to recontextualize what’s been taken out of context. On Ameritocracy, you can take a quote that’s been all over the media and blown out of proportion and recontextualize it to understand the actual truth of the statement.

In The New York Times Magazine, Virginia Heffernan referred to Ameritocracy as nonpartisan, but you count members of the Kennedy family as some of your staffers and supporters. Do you worry about being perceived as a liberal site?

That’s the great thing about the site — the content comes from readers, not from us. We can only put on the homepage what the site’s members have written or commented on or contextualized. So if you come to Ameritocracy and you think it has a liberal bias, the best thing to do is for you to start adding quotes and comments and contexts that you think represent your conservative viewpoints.

We also make a point to emphasize that Porter was always a Republican, was a member of College Republicans, and “reached across the aisle” in 2004 and voted for a Democrat. He still considers himself a Republican with some liberal viewpoints on some issues. But we’ve also reached out to groups from all over the political spectrum, from the RNC to Common Cause, and received enthusiastic responses regardless of political ideology.

“We’re empowering the commenters, but we’re also forcing them to be responsible, because in order to respond to a post, you need to cite a source. It’s not just a bunch of people crying ‘bullshit.'”

Of course you’re going to analyze quotes from Barack Obama and John McCain, since they were running for president. But how do you decide which pundits, columnists, and talking heads are worthy of review on your site? Who exactly determines this and what exactly are the criteria?

We try to stay as neutral as possible and let the community decide what matters. But we do try to promote as much activity as possible, and so by updating the homepage with, say, a claim that Obama made in a speech that’s making headlines any given afternoon, we know our users are going to respond.

But we place absolutely no limits on who our users can cite. It just so happens that Obama, McCain, Biden, Palin are on everybody’s minds right now, all the time. But a few weeks ago we featured a quote from Paris Hilton on the homepage. She said, “Nowadays, sound bites, not sound policy, determine our country’s course.” We liked that. And she was making political headlines for that anti-McCain ad. So it seemed perfectly appropriate.

Would you describe Ameritocracy as closer to social networking or citizen journalism? Why?

Not to cop-out and give you a non-answer, but it’s a perfect marriage of both. From the social networking standpoint, it’s sort of a more organized and structured approach to the sorts of relationships that have a habit of organically emerging when people post comments on blogs. Often they get to know each other. And we’re taking that aspect of user involvement — commenting — and making it kind of the focus of the site, rather than a peanut gallery. We’re empowering the commenters, but we’re also forcing them to be responsible, because in order to respond to a post, you need to cite a source. It’s structured; it’s not just a bunch of people crying “bullshit.”

Who does what on Ameritocracy’s staff?

There are six core employees — Iris and Porter founded the site together and still run it out of Seattle. Brian Finney, who is our systems engineer, and James Peterson, our CTO, are also based in Seattle. Bobby Kennedy and I are based in New York. Bobby has been on board from very early on and helped Porter launch the site. He serves as our outreach director. I serve as community director.

We also have an amazing pool of freelancers and interns who do superb work, and our team of advisers includes absolute luminaries like Esther Dyson, Mary McGrath, David R. Johnson, and Mike Dover. We have a great team. We’re very lucky.

Ameritocracy is currently in beta. When do you plan to transition out of beta, and describe how the site will differ in conjunction with this change?

Really, to be honest, there’s no deadline. Right now we’re enjoying new members signing up and giving feedback and telling us what they think about the site. Google is still in beta, if you hadn’t noticed. But speaking of which, we’re working on something new for early 2009 that takes what we’re doing and makes it easier for a lot more people to get to and use, and we’re really excited about it. Current users will be invited to the beta.

With whom is the site most popular, and will you continue drawing that user, while expanding to entice a broader group of users? What’s been the feedback trajectory for the site — did users ‘get’ it at first? Have opinions become increasingly positive or negative, and why do you think that is?

We don’t track a great deal of information about our members, but all signs indicate that we’re pretty evenly split down gender lines and that most of our members are probably in the 18-35 age range, people who were already Web-savvy to start with. Generally speaking, people seem smitten with the idea, but as with any new Web site with a new spin on established ideas, it doesn’t mean they jump at the chance to make it part of their morning routine. We hope they will. We think they should. And that’s sort of what we’re focused on right now: taking that enthusiasm and converting it into a fact of people’s Web life.

How will the site evolve after November’s election? How, specifically, do you intend to make it a destination, even after the campaign and all the dialogue surrounding it ends? What will you do to insulate Ameritocracy from dwindling interest and traffic?

Right now the election is the first thing on everybody’s mind, of course. But after the election people will go back to caring about issues. That’s why the site is organized around issues, not around candidates. If you cared about the environment before the election, you don’t stop caring about the environment after the election. That goes for abortion or gay marriage or any other issue you’re passionate about. People who are passionate about specific issues are people who we think will — and should — keep coming back to Ameritocracy. People who are unhappy with the mainstream media’s portrayal of issues and their shortcuts covering the news are people who will keep coming back to Ameritocracy.

Also, [the site] doesn’t necessarily have to be limited to just politics. If you’re a fan of, say, the Rachael Ray show, and you really want to set up a page on the site to check the authenticity of things said by Rachael Ray and the guests that appear on her show, there’s no real reason you can’t do that. As long as your goal is to parse out information, to hold relevant figures accountable for what they say, that’s what we’re there for. And it shouldn’t bore you. If Rachael Ray is relevant to you, go for it. You could set up a “Transparency in Recipes” issues page. I would love it more people did that.

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Five tips for starting — and sustaining — a user-generated site:

1. Let everybody in. The more people on the site, and the more groups you reach out to about joining and creating an online presence, the more diverse the conversation.
2. Be willing to change it up. Ameritocracy started out with a heavy political focus because it launched during the 2008 election season. But they knew they needed a game plan that would keep users engaged after the election was over.
3. Don’t expect immediate success. Ameritocracy is still in beta and doesn’t have a timeline for transitioning out of it. Instead, they’re letting their users’ responses and comments dictate how the site should evolve.
4. It’s okay to be controversial. Paris Hilton may not be a politician, but if you put a quote from her on the homepage of your Web site, people will have strong opinions about it.
5. Let users police each other. Although Ameritocracy does have community moderators, they count on users to provide backup and evidence for any claims they make on the site. And users don’t hesitate to correct or challenge each other if they disagree.

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Lilit Marcus is a freelance writer and the editor-in-chief of SaveTheAssistants.com.

Armed with more than 20 years of experience in marketing, writing and graphic design — and raised in New York state’s Adirondack Mountains by a family who were locavores long before there was an actual term for eating local foods — Tracey Ryder co-founded Communities, Inc. with life and business partner Carole Topalian in 2002. Six years later, the company boasts 50 member publications with more in the works, as well as plans to expand into television and product development. She is also a graduate of the professional chefs training program at the Epicurean Cooking School in Los Angeles and is currently involved in writing and recipe development for the forthcoming book Edible Nation: Local Heroes from America’s Sustainable Farm and Food Scene (March 2010, John Wiley & Sons.)

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You have a background in communications. What were you doing before just before you founded the Edible Communities group?

I owned a company called Elements with Edible Communities co-founder, Carole Topalian. Elements was a graphic design firm that served tourism, agriculture and culinary clients. We created corporate identities, Web sites, ad campaigns, annual reports, PR and marketing programs, did location and studio photography — you name it. During the 11 years we ran Elements, we also designed several publications for our clients, which is what really led us to want to create magazines of our own.

It’s not easy to start a single magazine. What made you decide to start a publishing group based on what appears to be a traditional franchise model? Where did the seed that started this empire come from?

Fortunately for us, most of our experience was on the creative side of publishing magazines before we started Edible Communities, so we took it on as a completely creative endeavor at first. We loved the process of creating beautiful designs and compelling editorial calendars and of merging Carole’s stunning photographs on the page with great language. And even though the work we did on our clients’ magazines had given us a solid understanding of what it means to be an advertising-supported publication and of how important distribution is, we most certainly were not fluent in all the practices of mainstream publishing.

Edible Communities is anything but a traditional franchise model. In fact, we’re pretty outside the box when it comes to how we function as an organization. For example, we never use the word “franchisee” to describe those who have purchased license agreements to publish magazines under our brand; instead, they are “members” of our company. We run the company democratically and each person has a vote in how things are done. Additionally, we allow a lot of freedom for each of our publishers to create magazines that really speak to their own particular community. Other than the overall look of the magazines (which needs to be consistent for brand recognition), they are in complete control over their content. We believe this is one of the strongest features of our magazines — they literally have their own “flavor,” one that is unique to the community in which they are published, and our readers really appreciate that.

The seed that got all of this started came from our personal histories. Carole is Armenian and comes from a large extended family that shares a vibrant culinary history. I was raised by generations of farmers in upstate New York who were fierce locavores long before the word ever existed. I lost my father to a sudden heart attack in November of 2001 and decided to change the direction of my life from working for dozens of corporate clients to focusing on work that I found to be meaningful and rewarding — Edible grew directly out of that decision. We launched the first magazine, Edible Ojai, in April of 2002 and began spreading the Edible Communities concept across the US and Canada in the spring of 2004. Since then, we’ve doubled the number of titles we publish every year.

What about timing? The Edible Communities publications came along in 2002, a few years ahead of the locavore trend, when both foodies and ordinary consumers were just starting to become aware of the benefits of eating locally, both from an environmental and a nutritional standpoint. How much was luck and how much was seeing the early edge of a trend?
Edible Ojai started in April of 2002, we signed our first license agreement (for Edible Cape Cod) in May of 2004 and then grew to 50 titles in the U.S. and Canada by mid-2008. I think there are healthy doses of luck and timing involved whenever a company is successful right out of the gate. We certainly had some of both, however, we were also very aware of food security and affordability issues — as well as the explosive growth in the numbers of people shopping at farmers markets — and felt there was a need to fill in terms of publishing information about the local foods movement.

“One-off titles don’t enjoy any of the advantages we have in terms of track record, credibility and strength of brand.”

If I told you today I wanted to start “Edible Fill-In-The-Blank,” where do we go from here? What would I need in terms of both financing and skills? How long does the process take?

It’s a fairly uncomplicated process that generally takes about six months from the time we hear from someone who wants to do an Edible magazine until their first issue hits newsstands. The cost right now is $95,000. Of that, $35,000 is due when they sign their contract and fulfills the down payment requirement. The balance is financed by Edible Communities for five years at a low interest rate.

First, we determine if the area in which someone wants to publish is available. Our license agreements only allow for one magazine in any given Edible territory and each territory is determined on a case-by-case basis. We also ask everyone to sign a non-disclosure agreement early on so that we can share proprietary information. Then we draft their contract, have them sign it, and begin the launch process. During the launch process, we build their Web site, create their media kit and other collateral materials. We train them on how to do ad sales, run their business, do distribution and team them up with a production person who will do the actual layout of their magazine. We help with the development of their editorial calendar and other items. Each publisher receives a checklist from us that contains a list of everything they need to do from the time they sign their contract until their first issue gets distributed, and that list is monitored by one of our staffers.

It’s a very turnkey business that requires little or no previous publishing experience. It does help if someone has been in business before or if they have done sales of some kind, but we spend the entire first year training them on every aspect of the business. We have a 100 percent success rate, to date, so the training works.

For someone thinking about starting their own local food publication, what are the benefits of being under the Edible Communities umbrella as opposed to being on their own?

One of the best aspects of the company is that we have a lively inter-company listserv that is active 24/7. Each member has access to the listserv and can ask their peers anything they want. Since we now have some very experienced Edible publishers on board (who also happen to be incredibly collaborative and generous with their time), they answer a lot of questions and offer a lot of help to new publishers. It’s literally a community of likeminded people who are running the same businesses without competing with one another, so it works great.

The other huge benefit is that we have a widely-recognized, high-quality brand with 50 successful titles that all produce compelling and interesting hyper-local content for the readers in their communities. One-off titles don’t enjoy any of the advantages we have in terms of track record, credibility and strength of brand.

How many publications are under the Edible Communities group right now, and how many do think there will be?

There are 50 now (with five more contracts pending) and we add, on average, about 10 to 15 per year. We now have inquiries from outside North America and expect to be in Europe, the Pacific Rim, and South America within the next year or two.

How sustainable is that kind of volume? How many local food magazines do we really need?

We believe that every community has an abundance of food stories worth telling, and therefore, we think every community needs its own local food magazine.

What do you consider a success? There have to be publications under the Edible Communities banner that are doing better than others. Which are they, and what do you think accounts for that success? What are the challenges for those that could do better?

We consider our magazines a success when they achieve the goals of their publishers. For example, most of our publishers are very entrepreneurial and are in this to make money as well as to support a mission and a movement they believe in, so we want those publishers to achieve their financial goals as quickly as possible. Others are in this for more philanthropic reasons and they publish their magazines in a completely mission-driven way that allows them to donate much of their time and revenue back into their community. It’s difficult to say if one is doing better than another since many of their personal goals for their magazines are different. One of the hallmarks of success for us is whether or not a magazine really fits the spirit of the community it is representing, and in that respect, we have some wonderful successes. There is no way that an Edible Brooklyn, Edible Iowa River Valley, Edible Santa Fe, etc. could represent any other community than the one they do. A lot of this success belongs to our publishers themselves, who work hard to support and honor the authentic culinary heritage of their communities, while at the same time, they grow and manage profitable magazines without compromising quality.

What’s the distribution model for the publications? Are they all on a subscription basis or do some have free distribution?

They all have free distribution within their communities (through advertisers, farmers markets and other food-related businesses, events, etc.) and all are also available by subscription.

With the 50-plus publications out there, plus their accompanying Web sites, that’s a lot of content for publications with a relatively small staff. What kind of opportunities does that present for freelancers? How much common content is made available/accessible to local editors?

You’re right; we do have a small staff, which is why our magazines rely heavily on freelancers. And since almost all of the content for each magazine and Web site is created locally, and is not dictated by us at headquarters, our magazines utilize well over 1,000 freelancers each year. All a freelancer has to do is contact the publisher of the Edible magazine where they live and pitch a story to them.

“We want to add a more dynamic Web function to our sites, but we believe that print is here to stay and that it’s not as endangered as many people would like us to think it is.”

There’s a consistent quality to the visual appeal of these publications. How is that possible since they’re being developed by individuals/teams scattered across the continent?

In each of our contracts there is a guideline for standards, which all the magazines have to comply with. However, the standards we require contractually are minimal compared to what a more traditional franchise would require. I believe we have a consistently high quality across the board because we have some incredibly talented people creating magazines. Each of our members truly desires to make their magazine the best it can possibly be, and with the support they get from within the membership of our company and from the talent pool in each of their communities, they are able to do that. Plus, Carole Topalian (co-founder of Edible Communities) travels to each and every one of our communities to take pictures for them when they launch. By the time she leaves, the magazines have anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000 images in their archive which they can use in the magazine and on their Web site. The stunning visual quality of her photographs is a big part of what holds the quality thread together for us.

Are there more editions in the works for the near future?

Yes, we have Edible Dallas & Fort Worth coming on board, as well as Edible Piedmont (North Carolina) and Edible Kansas City, as well as editions in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Ohio and California.

All of the publications have Web components. How does online media play into the Edible Communities group?

Yes, all of the magazines do have supporting Web sites and we also have a main site and a blog. Our aggregate traffic for all the sites is huge and this is the area we intend to expand on the most in 2009. Right now, we’re working on a Web 2.0 build-out that will include an online advertising component and user-generated content, as well as a recipe index, events database and several directory functions.

Why launch new print publications when so many outlets are moving online and a lot of new media is online-only?

We don’t believe that print is dead at all — especially print that contains hyper-local content. Plus, our readers continually tell us how much they love the look and feel of the magazines and that they read them cover-to-cover. They also save each issue they receive and some readers have extensive collections of our magazines, which they return to over and over again. We want to add a more dynamic Web function to our sites, but we believe that print is here to stay and that it’s not as endangered as many people would like us to think it is.

Do you worry about over-saturation, especially with ad dollars hard to come by for major mainstream magazines, now that the economy is suffering? Have you ever rejected an editor/investor because you thought they’d be cutting into another’s territory?

We don’t worry about over-saturation at all since each of our territories are clearly defined and protected by our contracts. So within Edible Communities, that is not an issue. In terms of the overall trouble in our economy, we realize we’ll experience some slowing just as all businesses are right now but feel that our readers and advertisers believe in the power of a community-based magazine to help their local community thrive, regardless of what’s happening on a national level. Another aspect of Edible Communities is that we take very little money out of the local communities we publish in. Ninety-five percent of the revenue generated by ad sales stays in the local communities, which means it’s worth a lot more to the people who live there.

The advantage our magazines have over the large mainstream national publications is that we have access to some very loyal and dedicated readers. We are regional publications that have a national reach, thanks to the network we have created, and that’s what sets us apart from the more traditional mainstream pubs. When national advertisers approach us, they are looking to connect with regional markets, and that’s something the national mags have trouble doing.

What is the reader demographic, how much does it vary from location to location, and how do you determine ad rates (or even an ad rate formula) in so many different markets?

We create the ad rate sheets on a community-by-community basis. We look at what other publications already exist and what their rates are. We look at the demographic and then we assess what we feel the market will bear. Overall, we say our readers are “concerned, connected and savvy.” Eighty-five percent of them are college educated, own their own homes and are working professionals. The average annual household income ranges from place to place, as you would expect.

What do you see as competition for the Edible publications? Is it national culinary pubs or local newspapers, etc?

There really are not any “apples to apples” direct comparisons to us in terms of competitors. Sadly, local newspapers are disappearing faster than the rain forests and the national culinary pubs have rounded their heels to advertisers so much that readers don’t believe in them the same way they used to. All of our magazines are at least 51 percent editorial. We are still very content-driven and although we know we can’t exist without advertisers, we sell ads to those who are most appropriate for our content and we don’t let them dictate what we write about.

What’s in the works in the near and long term, book project-wise?

We have a contract right now for a series of three books and expect to do more in the future. Our first book, Edible Communities: Local Heroes from America’s Sustainable Farm and Food Scene, is a coffee table book full of stories about the food heroes within our communities, along with gorgeous photos and delicious recipes. The second two books are regional guidebooks to local foods.

Where do you see the Edible Communities in five years?

Right now, we are in the process of prioritizing our opportunities to decide what will come next. In addition to the Web 2.0 build-out, we are looking at starting a nonprofit arm of the company, called the Edible Institute, which would do education and community outreach as well as have a curriculum for food journalists, a farm-based learning program and a chefs-in-residence program to develop, for example, seasonal recipes. We have also been approached by several producers about doing a weekly show that brings the format of our magazines to life on TV and have been asked to develop a line of merchandise, so I would imagine several of these possibilities will exist under our brand in the next five years.

How to grow an international publishing empire from just one magazine:

1. Find a niche that’s underserved — and focus your efforts on it. Being the first to meet the needs of a particular demographic or special interest audience is an open opportunity to own the category.
2. Leverage what you know and what you’ve achieved. Build on the knowledge gained, and audience and credibility earned by seeking out spinoff opportunities. A successful publication has a ready-made audience for books or a TV show — and a loyal-consumer-base-in-waiting for products.
3. Know when to lose control — literally. As your publication grows beyond your hands-on direction, do whatever it takes to attract smart people who love what they do, train them well, give them the information and resources they need, allow them to learn from each other, then trust them to bring their best to the job at hand.
4. Know the different between a fad and a trend — and keep your eyes on the latter. Being in the right place at the right time in publishing takes a little bit of luck and a lot of knowing what new ideas and issues are going to take root and be important to significant numbers of readers. Stay aware.
5. Trust your gut and live your dreams. It sounds cliché but if an event in your life or just general discontent is tempting you to take a career leap of faith, prepare as best you can, then make the jump. Life (and work) shouldn’t be about what-ifs.

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By Joy Parks.

Victoria Strauss is the founder of the Web site Writer Beware, an interactive hub of information for new writers about literary scams, fake publishers, proprietary writing contests, and other pitfalls in the publishing industry. She runs Writer Beware as a volunteer from her Massachusetts home, along with two other writers who she met through her work with the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. She is the author of seven fantasy novels, mostly recently The Burning Land and The Awakened City.

Strauss compiles and investigates complaints of shady literary agents and vanity publishers so new writers know not to get involved with them, and sometimes she helps police investigations of fraudulent business. We spoke with Strauss and found out what it takes to advocate and get to the bottom of real-life publishing world miscreants and mysteries for new writers.

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You are involved in protecting and advocating for new writers on Writer Beware and also through your board position with the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. How did this become such an interest for you?

People often ask me if I ever got scammed. I never did. I’ve had a relatively good experience with agents and publishers. However, when I first went online in the mid-90s, I found all these forums and message boards about being scammed by charging agents and vanity publishers. Back then there was almost no information about this ugly underbelly of publishing, and I was fascinated because I didn’t know of this experience. I heard that the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America were looking for a volunteer to do a section of the Web site to warn about this kind of thing, and because I was interested and knew something, I volunteered, which was how Writer Beware was born.

Define Writer Beware, and describe the process of how you took it from idea to actuality.

There is a public and a private aspect to Writer Beware. The public face is the Web site and the blog; the Web site has general warnings about common scams and problems that writers can encounter, with sections about literary agents, independent editors, various kinds of publishing, copyright, contests, and really just about every area where scams or schemes might occur. The Web site doesn’t just have warnings but also items about disreputable practice. The blog enables us to focus on specific scams and schemes, and also issues of interest to writers. For example, I just blogged about the common myth that writers have to give back their advance if they don’t sell enough copies to earn it out. Right now, I’m getting a lot of questions about a particular literary contest. The blog lets us be much more specific and timely.

The private or behind-the-scene face of Writer Beware is all the documentation we do when we put the warnings out. We built this into a very expensive database. So when we provide a warning, writers can be sure that it can be documented. We’ve cooperated with law enforcement on a number of cases; they have a tough time understanding exactly what is fraudulent.

What do you do to keep Writer Beware going on a day-to-day basis? Describe a typical day.

Writer Beware is a free advice service where writers can email us with questions or complaints or concerns. We get between five and 15 emails a day. As we become more well-known, people post our email addresses at various places. We also read industry publications and newsletters (like Publishers Lunch) that come in daily. I do a blog post at least once a week. If we get requests from the authorities for information, naturally we help with that. Sometimes it’s just maybe an hour a day, but other times it becomes like a part-time job. It’s 100 percent volunteer: we don’t get paid, and we don’t accept donations.

Describe Writer Beware’s traffic and readership over time. What exactly did you do to bring attention and traffic to the site, and what else has contributed to its growth?

The Web site and blog get between 300 and 500 visits each a day, although it’s less on weekends. It’s totally word-of-mouth. It’s a snowball thing — people tell each other about it. Since we’ve started blogging, our blog posts get picked up by the media and other bloggers. People in the publishing industry know about us and recommend us.

“If someone wants to start a Web site, they should know that people are ready to take the word of someone who seems authoritative. Establish your credentials right from the start.”

How does your work against literary scams correspond with your writing and your novels? Has the site helped drive your book sales or your literary career in any way? Has Writer Beware helped build a brand for you as an author, or is it the other way around?

No — as far as I can tell, it has not. It really is two different worlds. As a novelist, I write fantasy, for the adult market and for the young adult market. They don’t dovetail as far as I can tell.

How can other media professionals who see a need within the media community create a project similar to Writer Beware? Do you have any advice on how to get started? If they want to participate in Writer Beware itself, what would you recommend?

I would say now that blogging is probably a better way to establish yourself. You could have a blog and connect it to a Web site. It’s easy for anyone to set up a blog.

If someone wants to start a Web site, they should know that people are ready to take the word of someone who seems authoritative, even if they’re not. An important thing to do is establish your credentials right from the start. Make it clear why you are qualified to do what you do. Also important, you have to be yourself. I think you should do it as yourself and make it clear how and why you are qualified to do what you do.

How can writers parlay their efforts advocating for other writers into freelance assignments?

I’m sure there are ways. If you are willing to network, once you’ve amassed enough material on your blog, you could self-publish a book and sell it from the blog. We actually sometimes consider doing that — compiling the best posts from the Writer Beware blog. We just run into the problem that the information is really time-sensitive. A year from now, much of the information would be outdated. The upside of a blog is that it changes constantly. If I were really dynamic about networking, I could definitely be parlaying that into article assignments. I’ve written for Writers Digest and a couple of other places. My personal choice is to concentrate on fiction; I don’t see myself as a freelance writer. I’m sure that if I network more, I could do more. The process of establishing expertise is quite a long one — we’ve been doing it for more than 10 years.

The reason to do something like this is not to turn this into a paying career. If you’re going to do it right, you have to do it for the right reasons, to help people. Otherwise, why would you devote a huge amount of uncompensated time in the hopes of getting assignments in two years? The only reason to do something like this is if you feel really passionate about the issue.

Any other advice or guidance you’d want to give writers in terms of their own rights, or helping them protect those of others?

I think that everything depends on a foundation of knowledge. I think writers need to be educated. They need to spend some time researching the publishing industry before they jump into it. If they would do that one thing, we’d have a lot less to do at Writer Beware. Many writers don’t know that they can do research on the industry or ought to do it. When they start to send out their books, it might not seem like such a big deal if an agent asks for $200 up front or if a publisher says, “You need to invest your career and pay us $10,000.” The way writers can help one another is to be informed. There is a huge amount of misinformation on writers’ Web sites and messages boards about the way things work, so speak up when something isn’t correct, and be a smart and informed writer!

Tips for starting a Web site on a specific topic or skill set:

1. Start a blog, or some other way to present updates and new content. This attracts new readers and gives a reason for current readers to keep coming back. It can help your Web site get recognized by the media and get recommended to potential new visitors.
2. Make sure your online persona is who you really are in person. If you want to start a media Web site, do it as yourself: then you can also be open about your credentials and have people really trust you.
3. Make yourself known in the media sphere you want to cover — it pays off! Victoria Strauss is content with her fiction career and writes occasionally for Writers’ Digest, but she is confident that if she networked at her full-potential, she could definitely be getting steady freelance work because of Writer Beware.
4. Don’t do it just for the money. According to Strauss, it takes years to develop rapport and recognition, so it most likely wouldn’t be worth your time to start an informative Web site just for the money. You have to love — or at least be fascinated by — what subject you work around, too!

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Liz Funk is a New York-based freelance writer. Her first book, Supergirls Speak Out: Inside the Secret Crisis of Overachieving Girls, will be published by Simon and Schuster in March 2009.

Charles Sennott has had a long career in journalism, working as a reporter and editor at the Bergen Record, the New York Daily News, and for the past 15 years as a reporter, Middle East bureau chief and Europe bureau chief at The Boston Globe. A former Neiman Fellow at Harvard University, Sennott left the Globe earlier this year to launch GlobalPost, a U.S.-based international news site. Sennott serves as executive editor and vice president alongside co-founder and CEO Philip Balboni. Since the site launched on January 12, GlobalPost has signed the New York Daily News and Star-Ledger as syndication clients. Sennott spoke with mediabistro.com about why he left the Globe, the importance of foreign news and his goals for his new enterprise.

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Earlier this year, you left The Boston Globe after a number of years working abroad and on special projects here in the U.S. What spurred you to leave?

I’ve been a reporter who had what I like to call one of the last great rides in newspaper journalism. I worked for a small regional newspaper, the Bergen Record. I got across the river to the big city to work for the New York Daily News and rose to become a city editor. I covered the first Gulf War for the Daily News. I covered the World Trade Center bombing, which took me all over the world. After I left the Daily News, I went to The Boston Globe knowing that if I worked hard as an investigative and special projects reporter, I’d have a shot at being a foreign correspondent. I worked for two years as a special projects reporter and then they said we want you to go over and replace Ethan [Bronner, now with The New York Times] in Jerusalem.

The Boston Globe once had ambitions that would allow it to have seven foreign bureaus and a foreign editor, and I was really proud to be part of that. It’s my hometown newspaper. It’s the paper where I wanted to work my whole life, and where I really believed that I would.

When I came back from living abroad for 10 years as a foreign correspondent, I came back to a newsroom that was devastated by the economy of newspapers. It was changed, and it was changing its mission. The Boston Globe cut all of its seven foreign bureaus, no longer has a foreign editor, and is no longer really in the business of covering the world, which is my passion.

How did you and Philip Balboni end up working together on GlobalPost?

I began to cook up an idea in my basement of a not for profit organization that would be a boutique agency of foreign correspondents. I was able to get a line on a little bit of institutional funding as a not for profit, but I’m not a businessman and I was definitely hitting a wall. Right when I was pondering, “What am I going to do?” Phil Balboni, who is our CEO, got in touch with me.

We had both assembled boards of advisers, and we had overlap on those boards. We ended up getting in touch. We knew each other because Phil is an institution in Boston; he knew my work, and I had been on New England Cable News, where he was CEO and founder. Phil said, “Look, I hear you’re doing this,” and showed me a business plan that he had put together. It was very well thought-out, but I felt like it needed more depth. We, in essence, merged these two different visions — mine about really deep reporting, and his more about reporting with breadth, having a lot of correspondents. He heard out a reporter who’s not a businessperson, and he allowed me to try to figure out how to put a budget together that worked within his.

“Newspapers are shrinking both in size and ambition.”

What is the business model for the Web site? How do you intend to grow or at least continue what GlobalPost is doing?

The business model is to recognize that if you look across the media landscape in America, it is barren in terms of international news. There are definitely hilltops of excellence — The New York Times, NPR, The Washington Post — but in general there are very limited options for someone who wants to know about the world in terms of a place where they can go to do that. We wanted to become a place where you could have that, specifically for an American audience. Out of that need came an idea to start a Web-based news organization that would be unencumbered by legacy media. We would be able to start a new kind of news organization that would have a different cost structure, and it would allow us to build a very stealth team of correspondents. This is sort of a super-stringer model as it was often called, people who have a fixed payment every month for a set number of stories with a long-term agreement.

Our Web site intends to cover a lot of the issues we face as a country that are very global in nature, the economic crisis being the most yawning, obvious one we can see right now, but also climate change, global health, energy, etc. We came up three revenue models. And when I say we, I should really say Phil. This is his business plan. The first is advertising. The second is a syndication model. We are looking at newspapers that have abandoned or significantly cut back their foreign coverage. We offer a really attractive and affordable option to have interesting engaging content for their readership that we can provide both for their paper and their Web site at a very modest sum, and we have an incredible discounted rate for the first year. We’re hoping to get 50 papers that will be part of our network of syndication. The third model is that we are a destination site. We’re free. We want to build a community, to have that community come to us for information and not have any barrier to that.

We also are developing a membership model for what we call an inner circle of premium content. We would stream live interviews with newsmakers: We may invite the deputy interior minister, for example, of a country in turmoil and really troubleshoot them in a way that may not make for the greatest story, but would be a very interesting interview if you had interests abroad, whether economic or idealistic. We want to have this available so that you can get a much deeper grounding of a place. We also want to offer country profiles and different products for premium content that make up an attractive package for people who become members. We also just want to ask people, “Become a member and support the idea that great journalism needs to be self-sustaining.” This is a way to really vote for that and get a very good value at the same time. Beyond the paid part of that premium content, there’s an avenue to get access to that premium content where we’re developing a sort of point system. We’re coming up with a sort of schedule that will allow us to award, for free, people who have been very loyal to our site that same premium content — so it doesn’t just become news for rich people, but it becomes news for people who really care about the world and need to know. If that means you pay for that subscription or membership, that’s fine, or show us your commitment and we will create a point system for you.

In addition to diminished foreign news coverage, for various reasons, many American newspapers are now ending their relationship with the Associated Press. By syndicating articles, does GlobalPost aim to fill that void?

We can never replace the AP and we don’t intend to, nor do we have any pretension that we could try. We want to write differently than the AP. We want to find stories that are narrative and strong — we want to tell great stories, not simply deliver information. The AP has developed a reputation for excellence among its reporters for getting info right, for being there when it counts, for being a very reliable news source, but they have not earned their reputation as a place with extremely interesting writing. They’ve never had that tradition. We want to be a place where we really find an American voice for storytelling in the world. What I mean by an American voice is not jingoistic or nationalistic. I’m talking about an appreciation for a yearning in America to reach out to the world.

You attended journalism school, and you’ve taught and lectured at a few schools over the past couple years. When students ask you for advice on whether they should pursue work as a foreign correspondent, what do you tell them about what opportunities exist, and how might they set themselves up to take advantage of those?

I used to come from Iraq or Afghanistan and say, this is a great calling. You should do this. Being a reporter puts you on the front line of history. It’s really important work. We need good young people. Starting about two years ago, I couldn’t even look them in the eye, because there were so few opportunities. They don’t have a prayer of having the sort of ride that I had in newspapers, where you can rise up and get to a position where you’re in a sweet spot, like being based abroad full time. That was an extraordinary opportunity that The Boston Globe gave to me, but those opportunities are for the most part over. The idea that you could have some of the interesting positions I had along the way like a national correspondent or a special projects correspondent — those are over. Newspapers are shrinking both in size and ambition.

Now that I’ve started this new news organization and now that we have brethren like Politico and ProPublica, there is this stirring of hope. There are these new news organizations that are going to be multimedia, Web-based, multiple platforms. It’s going to require a new kind of journalism. We want great storytellers, great writers, but if you happen to also be a sufficient or even talented photographer, that’s great because you can learn FinalCut Pro and mix some multimedia packages for us. We also are interested in great storytellers who are photographers who might want to try their hand at writing. That doesn’t mean we want everyone to do everything. We want people to go to their strengths and go to excellence. When you talk to young journalism students like that, whether they’re a photographer or a writer or a producer, you can see their eyes light up because they get it. They know that they can find new ways of storytelling across platforms. They’re dying for the chance. It’s very easy to go talk to schools now, and I am flooded with applications or requests for business cards. I encourage people to come to us because we want correspondents all over the world. We want young people. We also want experienced people in the field. We want to create a community of both veteran correspondents who really know what they’re doing and young people looking for their first opportunity. I think everyone has a lot to learn from each other.

At what rate do you intend to add locations and correspondents?

Beyond the 70 correspondents in 53 countries, we hope to ramp up over time, but we’re not assigning numbers to that. We want to be in more countries, but I think more precisely we want to be more deep in big countries, like China, India, Brazil, Indonesia. We want to add staff where we think there are great stories that aren’t told often enough to an American audience.

“We’re just this little lifeboat, and we know this is tremendous talent we’re picking up. We can’t give them full-time jobs, but we can become a very important piece of a freelance portfolio for them.”

In your opinion, which outlets cover foreign news well? Are there any from which you draw inspiration for GlobalPost?
The Economist is an incredible organization with a very successful model, but one where voice is intentionally industrialized. There are no bylines on anything in The Economist. It’s an approach that has a very important place and I respect the organization a lot, but we want to do it very differently.

The BBC is the greatest news gathering organization in the world. I had an opportunity when I was based in London to do a lot of work with the BBC. I learned best practices just by observing how truly convergent the BBC is, in terms of print, radio, audio and video coming together in one Web site where you can really understand the world. I also hugely admire the BBC and have a lot of good friends who are correspondents there. I will point out that these two examples are British. I’m someone who loved living in London, I love the culture of the United Kingdom, but I am tired of getting my news with a British accent. I would like to have an American sensibility of storytelling.

I remember a story I did — I thought I was losing my mind, but I swore I heard a Boston accent through Arabic one day in the West Bank. I said to the guy for the hell of it, “Where are you from?” and he said, “Somerville, Massachusetts.” This falafel shop that he owned where all these young guys throwing stones at the Israeli army would go to get sandwiches, he’d often give them to them for free. I had an attitude about this — this guy is so irresponsible as to be encouraging these young teenagers to go out and throw rocks at a tank and get shot at. But once I stood there with my taxicab Arabic (I had a very good translator, a colleague who I worked with really closely), we found out that what he was telling them was [that] this methodology of throwing rocks doesn’t work, and if you want to stand up for Palestine and your rights you should do that, but find new ways to do it. He was a really interesting and positive voice with young people in the community. That kind of texture, of hearing a Boston accent through Arabic and knowing that this guy is a Bruins fan who came to the West Bank to start a falafel chain and took on the role of teaching young Palestinian kids some of the things he learned in America — I don’t read those stories in The Economist, and I don’t really see those stories on the BBC. I hope to have a group of writers, photographers, and videographers who are out there in the world looking for narratives that help us as Americans connect to the world.

What do you think are the essential qualities of a good foreign correspondent, and where did you acquire those skills in your career?

I think the greatest foreign correspondents have covered cops. When you cover cops, you are forced to go behind official information and get into a neighborhood and see for yourself whether that official information has any bearing on reality. [You] use your wits and resources, your pluck and courage or whatever skill set you have, to talk to people and hear their story out. [You] try to piece it together on your own from the street, and weave that understanding with the more official understanding that you’ve gotten from police headquarters or the prosecutor. In that weave comes a mix of storytelling, street-level reporting and official documentation. That raw skill set of covering cops, I think, sets you up to be a foreign correspondent. It also instills in you — almost into your DNA — a sense of skepticism of all sides, and you are served very well by that in the field as a foreign correspondent.

The greatest foreign correspondents are the ones who live in the country about which they write, and those who speak the language. I was only able to do that when I worked in Spanish-speaking countries. I tried hard on Arabic, but I couldn’t get it. I regret that. I think you need that. It’s something I’m not giving up on and am working on.

Great foreign correspondents want to tell a story to the friends and family they have back home. When I wrote for The Boston Globe, I never needed a reader survey to know who the readers were. They were my cousins, my friends, the guys I grew up with, my wife’s family, the people I knew my whole life. I knew who I was talking to. When you think that way as a foreign correspondent, you produce compelling stories that grab people. That really is what we want to create in our organization, and actually to be more precise, to draw upon from a very experienced set of mid-career journalists who are already out there in the world. We’re just this little lifeboat that’s trying to pick them up, and we know this is tremendous talent we’re picking up. We’re aware that we can’t give them full-time jobs, but we can become a very important piece of a freelance portfolio for them.

What made you decide you wanted to be a journalist?

My brother, Rick Sennott, was a photographer for the Boston Herald. When I was 17, he had this job on the night shift doing sports, and I used to run film for him. I couldn’t believe that he was getting paid to be courtside to watch Larry Bird. I remember specifically one night, the city editor, this grizzly old guy, opened up a Red Cross medical kit on the wall, and there’s a bottle of vodka inside. He says, “Hey kid, you want a drink?” I swear I knew at that moment, I’m doing this job, this is me. A chance to be courtside on life. At 17, that was Larry Bird for me. At 25, that was New York City and crime. At 35, that was Israel-Palestine. At 40, it was Sept. 11, Iraq, Afghanistan. And at 46, where I am now, I feel like I had an incredible ride. Now I want to share what I know with other correspondents in the field who I want to have that courtside seat.

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Tips for starting an online media business:

1. Identify an under-served niche to target. “The business model is to recognize first of all that if you look across the media landscape in America, it is barren in terms of international news,” says Sennott.
2. Utilize your contacts. “I would pull together many of my friends and colleagues from the field… I knew these people, and I knew that they were in the same position I was in.”
3. Know your limitations. “I’m not a businessman.”
4. Be flexible and open to different ideas. “We, in essence, merged these two different visions — mine about really deep reporting, and his more about reporting with breadth.”
5. Develop a business plan that relies upon multiple revenue streams.

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Alex Dueben is a freelance writer living just outside New York City.