Tag: The Dish Model

A reader writes:

I just read that you pay your interns.  I applaud that! In the ’90s I did a couple of unpaid internships that paved the way for gainful employment, so I have benefitted from the system.  I was lucky because my parents could help me out while I was working for free.  I agree with the idea of people paying dues, learning the ropes, starting in the mail room, etc.  But why not for minimum wage at least?  The poor cannot afford to audition for jobs for months the way I could. The rise of unpaid internships as a prerequisite for interesting work is just unfair and perpetuates the class system. Thanks. I’m gonna subscribe now.

We actually pay Dishterns one-and-a-half times the minimum wage and include health insurance. That’s the deal they had with us under the Daily Beast, so that’s the deal we are determined to continue under the new independent Dish. You can help keep our Dishternship a paid one by subscribing here.

(Clockwise from top-left: Maisie Allison (now at The American Conservative), Zack Beauchamp (now at Think Progress), Gwynn Guilford (now at Quartz), Chas Danner (who will serve as the Dish’s tech manager after we go independent), Doug Allen and Tela (current Dishtern and beagle bait, respectively), Brendan James (current Dishtern).

Nat Worden gets our readers:

The complex but natural reporting process that is generated by [online journalism] has a certain organic authenticity that is rarely found on TV or radio or in newspapers or magazines. More expertise and perspective is typically brought to bear. The pretense of objectivity is abandoned, making for a more honest forum, and everything is generally much more transparent.

Online journalists like Sullivan invite their audience into the reporting process and bring them along for the ride, while many traditional journalists keep the reporting process between them and their sources, leaving their audience in the dark about how they came upon the information they're reporting. Naturally then, traditional journalists often put the interests of their sources above their audience — a major problem in the corporate media — whereas the new breed of online journalist is reestablishing a genuine connection with readers and earning their trust in an age where distrust of the media is probably more rampant than distrust of government.

One of the best examples of reverse-reporting on the Dish was our "It's So Personal" series, a spontaneous outpouring of first-hand accounts from readers confronting late-term abortions, triggered by the murder of abortion doctor George Tiller. My impression at the time:

I've never seen the power of this medium so clearly and up-close: one personal account caused a stream of others. How could old-school reporting have found all these women? How could any third-person account compete with the rawness and honesty and pain of these testimonials? It was a revelation to me about what this medium could do. 

Coincidentally, a reader wrote in yesterday to praise the series:

I first became a regular reader of your blog in 2008-9, in the lead up and aftermath of Obama's first victory, during the financial crisis, and as you covered the Green Rebellion in Iran.  I became particularly taken with the Dish, however, when you started posting letters you were receiving following the murder of George Tiller. 

I am a philosophy professor and often teach bioethics.  For the past few years, when I've been introducing the topic of abortion by reviewing the different methods of abortion (on the premise that getting the empirical facts right is the obvious starting point for philosophical progress), and mentioned late-term abortions ("intact dilation and extraction" aka "partial birth abortion"), I've ended up talking about the "It's so Personal" posts.  I've then posted a link on my course website for the students to read themselves.  So thank you for offering my students a resource for understanding one of life's most complex moral decisions.

P.S. I haven't yet subscribed to the Dish, but that's just because I'm a procrastinator, and probably will wait until I'm forced to subscribe before getting myself officially signed up!

Previous commentary about our readership here. The full discussion thread on the Dish model and its new independence here.

Jonathan Glick wonders about them:

I suspect the longer pieces that trigger the pay-us reminder will need to be original just because writers being aggregated will get pissed if they use long quotes from their stuff to drive subscription sales.

We've been contemplating the best way to use "read-ons" going forward, since the read-on clicks are what will trigger the meter and the please-pay message. We could set the meter lower and only have read-ons on longer original commentary and on reader threads. Or we could set the meter higher and use read-ons essentially as we do now. Or we could just play it by ear, experiment a bit and see what works best. What do you think?

Andrew Sullivan Splits With Daily Beast huff.to/UImcxg via @huffpostmedia Huh? won’t his links want share of income? — Patrick O’Connor (@Pocee) January 2, 2013

Noah Millman, who wishes us well on our new venture, contemplates the economics of the web:

[N]one of Sullivan’s revenue will downstream to the content-creators on whom he depends. And that remains the essential business-model problem of the written word in the age of the internet. Newspapers were vertically-integrated: the same organization produced the content, aggregated it, and delivered it. But in the age of the internet, the delivery mechanism and editorial function have been disaggregated from content-production. You get access to the internet from a utility company like Verizon that does not own and is not responsible for providing content. And you find what you want using an advertising-supported search engine like Google that similarly does not own and is not responsible for producing content. Or through a reliable aggregator like Andrew Sullivan, who also does not own or pay for most of the content he steers people towards. These business models depend on content-generation for their own viability, but they aren’t primarily responsible for content-generation.

It’s easy to see how things could be structured differently. Aggregators could downstream a fraction of their advertising or subscription revenue to producers of content that was clicked through to. But it’s not obvious what would motivate these entities to adopt such a model, there being no actual shortage of content. And there will never be a shortage of content, because there is a large enough group of people who will do this for fun, whether or not it is profitable.

All questions we are closely considering as we go along. More on this soon. Freddie DeBoer, for his part, focuses on the Dish’s endless search for new online voices:

I literally started this blog at a public library, here on Blogger’s free platform using Blogger’s free server space, with no connections in media or journalism or commentary, no published work, and seemingly no entrance into the Byzantine and cliquish world of professional media. I had little thought of anyone reading this blog. But within two weeks or so of starting it, Andrew Sullivan had linked to one of my pieces, and from their came far more clicks, links, and attention. My readership is small, but it is committed, and while I am terrible at communicating with people who thank me for my work, their support means everything.

This is still an amateur blog, one for which I have never received a dime, although I have had people buy me books from my Amazon wish list, for which I’m immensely grateful. That amateur status suits me fine, both pragmatically and theoretically. But to be in the conversation, to have the ability to weigh in and be listened to– that’s a blessing, and I owe it to Andrew and his deep commitment to equality on the level of ideas. Whatever disagreements I may have with Andrew or with the Dish as an entity, his fierce commitment to looking anywhere and everywhere for fresh voices, quality writing, and provocative opinions is a profound credit to him. When it comes to writing, he is truly an egalitarian. More than anything, that commitment, and the workload it requires, will be his enduring legacy. I can only thank him and his staff and wish them all the best.

You can read Freddie on a regular basis at L’Hôte, his excellent little blog. Update via email from Patrick O’Connor, whose tweet is embedded above:

FWIW that tweet was made within moments of reading about the plan at Huff Puff before they corrected their story saying the rate would be $19.95 a month, not $19.99 a year. So I retweeted “never mind” soon after. After learning the correct (and very reasonable) amount to be charged, I regretted the flippancy of tweet’s “huh?” I have great admiration for what you all do.

O’Connor adds:

By the way, I don’t know if any of you are Californians, but a dear member of the California Public Broadcast community passed away today at 67. His name was Huell Howser. Everyone I know is very upset at his passing. He was like Fred Rogers for grown ups. His programs on every facet of California life are treasures. His format was simple. No crew for his shoots. There was a hand-held cameraman. Huell was his own sound man, holding a microphone. He would travel thoughout the state, stopping wherever appealed to his fancy to interview the locals. It was as close to blogging as you could do on television. For example, did you know that the world’s biggest wisteria vine was just east of Pasadena in Sierra Madre?

Conor Friedersdorf, a Dish alum, understands that strength is you:

I finally saw the reader inbox in all its glory while guest blogging for Sullivan as he vacationed. It's a gig I did several times, all of them while The Dish was hosted here at The Atlantic. I've never received so much delightful correspondence. The Dish readership is massive, highly educated, ideologically diverse, employed in a stunning array of fields, and spread out across the world. Of course, those same attributes characterize the readership here at The Atlantic, and I've gotten tons of wonderful emails in the course of my current job, but something about the blogger's personal, informal tone inspires correspondence of a different character. Compare the comments on the average item here at The Atlantic with the loyal readers Ta-Nehisi Coates has cultivated in the comments section of his blog, where it's more like an intimate community.

Alex Massie, who has also guest-blogged on the Dish, bets that "many bloggers could perhaps raise more money from an annual 'pledge week' than they suspect":

Not enough to compensate them for all their time but enough to make a difference. I think – actually, I just hope – that some goodly proportion of readers (at whatever "level" you’re at) appreciate that, at some point, not everything can be free and that even "amateurs" catering to small or specialist audiences merit some compensation for the enjoyment they provide.

(Photos from Dish readers' Gmail profiles, used with permission. Become a founding member of an independent, ad-free Dish here.)

Ann Friedman joins the discussion:

Whether or not the phrase "personal brand" grosses you out, it’s something any journalist who wants to be employed in another 10 years should be thinking about. Having a direct, dedicated following—a readership invested in you, not just the publication you’re primarily associated with—is like a career insurance policy. While there are many fine journalists who never bring even the lightest detail about their personal lives into their professional narrative—no tweets about their kids, no first-person anecdotal ledes, no opinion-tinged asides in reported features—they are an increasingly small group. I cringe every time I read a New York Times story in which the reporter awkwardly refers to herself as "a visitor." Really? You can’t just say "provided me with directions to her Craftsman bungalow"? Please. …

[J]ournalists were always a part of the story. Why not just own up to the fact that three-dimensional humans are doing this work?

All of the posts in the Dish Model thread can be read here. A reader sent the above photo:

My mother-in-law, after years of me talking about "Andrew" and her asking "Who?" and me responding "My favorite blogger", got the jump on you re: Dish merch.  I received a one-of-a-kind coffee mug for Christmas, replete with your face on it (courtesy of the George Stephanopoulos show).

Of course the Dish has grown to be much bigger than one blogger – four other staffers, two paid interns (new ones started this week: Doug Allen and Brendan James), a poetry savant and a million-strong readership, which provides about a third of our content.