For editor and contributor profiles and latest developments, link to Pajamas Media in Transition.
From an ABC News article, Silicon Insider: MSM, Meet the Blogosphere :
(Hat tip: BarcePundit)
Silicon Insider: MSM, Meet the Blogosphere [/] Thousands of Bloggers Edge Closer to the Mainstream [/] Commentary [/] By MICHAEL S. MALONE [/] Oct. 27, 2005The sea! The sea!
Please excuse the bloggy style of this column, but I'm writing it on short breaks between meetings. As you read this, I am in New York City co-hosting a conference.
It is officially entitled "The Oxford & York Media, Communications & Technology Summit" -- but it really is the first annual summit meeting between Mainstream Media and the blogosphere. For that reason, the panelists range from senior executives at Reuters, the Financial Times, Forbes and Sony BMG Music to, on the other end, folks from Yahoo!, Odeo and AdventuresofChester.com. The audience, largely composed of CEOs and advertising executives, is equally diverse. The goal is not to throw spitballs at each other (which has largely characterized relations between the MSM and blogosphere in the past) but to see if there is some common ground where the two can work together. [...]
The Impending Launch of Pajamas Media
Though the topics today cover everything from evolving revenue models to piracy, and the social impact to new media versus old, easily the most anticipated event at the summit was last night's keynote speech by Roger L. Simon. Simon had already enjoyed a successful career as a novelist (the Moses Wine detective novels) and screenwriter ("Enemies: A Love Story") when he discovered the then-new world of Web logs.
[...] His blog alone would be enough to make Roger a popular dinner attraction. But these days he is an even bigger draw, thanks to stepping up as CEO of the new Pajamas Media. PM -- its name (which may soon change) derives from a dismissive comment made about bloggers by a CBS executive last year -- is the most talked about secret on the Web. Simon regularly delivers hints about its progress on his site, and for the last month the best-known PMers (Glenn Reynolds' Instapundit, for example) have been running daily profiles of bloggers that have signed up with Pajamas Media. They are an extraordinarily wide-ranging group, from noted political pundits like Michael Barone to a lady who runs a Web site for dogs, and a guy who writes about spelunking, to the most famous of the on-the-ground bloggers from the War in Iraq (Iraq the Model).
Getting the Readers Involved
[...] In keeping with the nature of the Internet, PM will operate 24/7, with managing editors in L.A., Sydney and Barcelona. An editorial board will approve stories before they appear, and corrections will be made on the front page in real time. There will be no editing of the blogs themselves, to preserve their independence. In every way, readers will be intimately involved with the site, from commenting and correcting, to submitting content, especially events on the ground in distant corners of the world -- ultimately providing streaming video. [...]
Will It Succeed?
Will Pajamas Media make it? I've been around too many start-ups in too many brand new industries to make any prediction in confidence. But I will predict that the very existence of Pajamas Media will lead to the creation of scores of other online media companies rushing to imitate its business model. I'll also predict that one -- or perhaps even many -- of these imitators will find the perfect combination, will create a vast new media industry sector that will be chased by scores of venture capitalists and thousands of young entrepreneurs. And their arrival will signal the end of the MSM as we know it.
It can't happen soon enough. Ironically, while flying in from Silicon Valley, I read an absorbing new book by an Oxford classics professor (Oxford's Said Business School is a co-sponsor of the summit) named Tim Rood, entitled "The Sea! The Sea! The Shout of the Ten Thousand and the Modern Imagination" (Duckworth, 2004).
That title (in Greek, "Thalatta! Thalatta!") is one of those phrases that is so resonant that it keeps popping up throughout the last 2,500 years in novels, plays, paintings -- and most recently, in movies. It comes from the climactic moment of one of history's greatest adventure stories, "The Anabasis" by Xenophon. As the tale goes, 13,000 Greek soldiers, rendered unemployed by the end of the Peloponnesian War, sign on as mercenaries for a Persian prince named Cyrus, supposedly to fight some rebels. It turns out that Cyrus in fact intends to attack the current king and take his throne. In the decisive battle, fought near Baghdad, the Greeks fight brilliantly -- but the prince is killed and the rest of the army collapses. The Greeks try to negotiate a safe departure, but are betrayed and their generals murdered.
And thus begins the adventure that has haunted Western Civilization for more than two millennia: The Greeks have to fight, trick, and march their way more than 1,000 miles through enemy territory in modern Turkey, Syria and Iraq to get back to Greece. They succeed through a combination of teamwork, guts and the charismatic leadership of Xenophon, among others. The climactic moment comes when, in eastern Turkey, the exhausted army climbs a mountain pass ... and sees, in the distance, the Black Sea and the safe ending to their journey. The soldiers are so excited they start shouting "The sea! The sea!"
That phrase has haunted western civilization ever since, coming to mean the exhilarating end of a perilous journey. It shows up in Roman poems and plays, in 19th century adventure stories, in the 20th century in POW escape memoirs, and most remarkably, in Joyce's "Ulysses."
The death of classical education means that today's school kids, unlike their Greek-speaking Victorian predecessors, have never heard of Xenophon, much less the cry. Still, it's interesting to note that my boys' favorite cult film is "The Warriors," which is the Anabasis translated to the dark and foreboding street gang world of 1970s New York, in which the sea lies off Coney Island.
Reading the book made me think of the 10 million bloggers out there. They have spent years now in the wilderness, defeating one obstacle after another, somehow surviving the hard times, devoting billions of hours to their dream of one day turning their Web logs into real careers. Now, Pajamas Media gives them a glimpse of salvation just ahead.
Thalatta! Thalatta! [The sea! The sea! (In the language of the New Testament)]
[...] Michael S. Malone, once called "the Boswell of Silicon Valley," most recently was editor at large of Forbes ASAP magazine. He has covered Silicon Valley and high-tech for more than 20 years, beginning with the San Jose Mercury-News as the nation's first daily high-tech reporter. His articles and editorials have appeared in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, The Economist and Fortune, and for two years he was a columnist for The New York Times. He has hosted two national PBS shows: "Malone," a half-hour interview program that ran for nine years; and a 16-part interview series in 2001 called "Betting It All: The Entrepreneurs." Malone is best known as the author of a dozen books: his latest, a collection of his best newspaper and magazine writings, is called "The Valley of Heart's Delight" (Wiley). [My ellipses and emphasis]
