Golden Age for Writers

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 29 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

I'm doing pretty well these days. I write each day for TheStreet.com, do a few pieces for Seeking Alpha, and I'm usually done by noon.

But I'm not alone. These are golden days for writers.

The reason is that, while newspaper editors keep whinging they don't know how to make money and that people refuse to pay for news, lots of companies have cracked the code.

1. Identify a business, industry, or lifestyle to focus on. Politics can be a lifestyle.

2. Offer ample opportunities for interaction. Scale it. Keep people talking back-and-forth to one another. You're building a community. Focus on that.

3. Show that your community represents your target market – that you have a big share of buyers in your target – and sell against it.

4. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Conservatives don't want to admit this, but it was Arianna Huffington (left) who proved this works.

Since the Huffingtonpost.com got big every other media company has been following her example. The Washington Post has the DailyBeast, NBC has thegrio, the right has Dailycaller.com, and on-and-on.

Each one needs writers, and all these outlets have been poring through the blogosphere looking for talent. If you're a blogger, if your stuff is interesting, chances are good you've gotten an offer. 

Or you will, soon. 

Before moving on, here are some things that don't work:

• Limiting feedback to only those columns you think aren't news.

• Putting in huge obstacles to commenters, like a double registration wall. Use one of the biggies, like Facebook, and integrate from there.

• Paywalls. Paywalls limit your audience and guarantee you won't hit a significant portion of your target market. The Wall Street Journal and New York Times keep pounding the table, claiming this is not so, but the only reach each gets if from free stuff, either on related sites or on others' sites.

What's interesting is that this works with vertical market communities. We've seen a host of tech publication start-ups using this technique, from Arstechnica to Gigaom.com and on-and-on. We have all those finance outfits, like Seekingalpha.com and thestreet.com, both of which I work for. There are sites aimed at women, sites aimed at young people, sites aimed at people who like to eat, sites aimed at old people.

All that has to happen now is for this to filter down to the local level. To the city level, and to the community level within metro areas. Coverage here remains spotty, but it's growing all the time. Business, by its nature, abhors a vacuum, and the “news vacuum” that the newspaper idiots keep complaining about is steadily being filled – just not by them.

The result of all this is a growing appetite for talent. It's too early to call this competition yet – there is a lot of talent out there. But as the months roll on, it will become competition, as we find out which writers do the best job of attracting, and holding, a community of readers.

They're not the only talent that will be sought. Good publishers are in shorter supply than writers ever were. Each good publisher we find can employ dozens of writers, and a few editors. There will be opportunity for business types, for techies, and for merger guys to leverage all this up into the next generation of great journalism companies.

It's gratifying, personally. Back in the late 1970s, I had lots of arguments with my Northwestern professors on just this point. They claimed that online offerings, which were then just starting to gestate, would kill the news business and mean fewer jobs for journalists. I said there would be more jobs, just different jobs.

As the web was spun, my professors appeared to be right. But only because the wrong people were running the online side of the news business.

It was being run by editors, and by people like my professors. Businesses need to be run by businessmen, and technology businesses need to be run by technology businessmen.

Now that it's happening there is opportunity aplenty. Once you have a scaled community reading your stuff, you can expand into podcasting, into video, into events – the sky's literally the limit!

And we're all on the ground floor.