OSM Changes Back to Pajamas Media
Good for Pajamas Media. They have decided to give up the bland, already claimed moniker "open source media" and return to being Pajamas Media. Pajamas Media has personality and a history, or at least a story behind it. OSM seemed like a corporation rather than a creative syndicate.
The other thing Pajamas could use is a hand-rolled newsfeed. It looks like they paid big bucks to some corporate outfit to create their newsfeed, and it seems to me to be an automated, overly-inclusive, non-specific feed that doesn't inform on any topics bloggers would be interested in.
For a lot less money they could have hired one person to create a unique feed using uncomplicated software that would automatically update throughout the day.
Until last month when I ran out of time, for the last five years I created a daily newsfeed for TalkLeft and CrimeLynx. It took me about an hour every night to find the articles that resonated by reading the next morning's papers from around the country online and subscribing to a few commercial services. It then took me ten minutes to put them into a software program I paid $600 for in 2000. The feed becomes a two line javascript or php which is completely customizable to a site's appearance. When I wanted to add an article and update the feed during the day, it took me under two minutes. Here's an example of what it looked like:
Obviously, I picked articles about crime and politics that represented TalkLeft's point of view, but you could pick anything. There really is no excuse for robotic news services any more.
I do think Pajamas has potential, particularly if they lose "the suits" who are advising them and get back on the creative track. Look what Arianna has done with Huffington Post. It's the best one-stop site around with up-to-the-minute news articles and blog posts. While it began as all celebrity-written, Arianna has graciously invited several liberal bloggers to cross-post what they write on their sites on HuffPo. She links to non-celebrity bloggers. HuffPo has a great layout and graphics. It's inviting. Not surprisingly, it's a success.
Pajamas' bloggers, with the exception of Marc Cooper, David Corn and Max, are conservative. Maybe they should stay truer to who they are and strive to be a conservative HuffPo. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
In any event, I admire Pajamas for admitting their mistakes and getting back on the horse. There's room for everyone in blogtopia. (y. skippy c.t.p.)
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