Another blog collective designed to provide a “new” kind of journalism and make money is the newly launched site True/Slant: an original content site that has 100 contributors, many of whom are well-known veteran journalists from CNN, TIME, Rolling Stone and The New York Times.
The beta site launched on June 6 with 100 “entrepreneurial journalists” who are blogging already or who have perspectives on the news as academics or professionals who will create original blogs and “curate” news stories in print or video with their own perspectives.
The contributors also agreed to try to “break down barriers between the writers and their audience,” by having online conversations with some of the people who comment on their sites. Everyone is allowed to comment but contributors get to pick comments that they think further the discussion and to highlight that discussion. Contributors are also encouraged to comment on each other’s posts.
The other unique aspect of this site is that True/Slant will give advertisers the same ability to post content and use stories and headlines and video on their blogs as the contributors have and to have a “dialogue” with readers. True/Slant promises that the TS/Ad Slant page will be clearly labeled so that readers will know it’s an advertorial.
It’s unclear how the contributors make money but it seems that part of it will be finding their own advertising sponsors, according to Dan Gillmore, of The Knight Foundation’s IdeaLab (a great site about “reinventing community news for the Digital Age).
A press release about how the business works doesn’t shed much light on the subject. stating that True/Slant “redefines the static employer-employee model.” Some contributors are looking for a platform, others are “sharing in revenue generated from their pages,” while still others “earn stipends based on their editorial contributions.”
I think it’s fair to say that many journalists, like me, are phobic about becoming salesmen both because there is that traditional line between advertising and news and because many of us are former English majors who would rather remove our fingernails than have to sell to people.
There is certainly a potential conflict if contributors are soliciting advertisers although I suppose if they then send them off to their own corner of the world, it might be OK.
I’m also skeptical about the moneymaking potential but then again, I am currently making no money at all, so right now a “stipend” sounds pretty good.
The site has a lot of interesting posts. Recent posts have a blog on “The case against post-feminist marriage,” by Mark Stricherz of the Catholic Independent, a blog on Sarah Palin and a blog on “Next Generation Arranged Marriage,” by Ali Eteraz, of American Saracen. It also has a section called “Headline Grabs” in which contributors link readers to other blogs, stories and video.
I hope that True/Slant works. It’s an interesting model and I like the fact that it clearly separates advertising and editorial at least on the site. I’d still like to know more about how it all works. But as Gillmore, the director of the Knight Center for Digital Media, points out, it’s one of several ideas out there that are trying to keep journalism alive. Even if we don’t know what that will look like, that has to be a good thing.
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