BevLog

Here's a story about a guy who is not "just another casualty" of the death of print media. He's actually capitalizing on it. "The buyout. The blog. The business." David Hobby is an ex-newspaper photographer who is passing on his expertise to amateurs and making big bucks. Not everybody's happy about that.

Too bad it doesn't work for copywriters like me. Why not? Because "everybody knows how to write" and there's no need for "cool tips" or "inexpensive equipment" to get expert results. It's called social media.

Note the byline. Steven I. Weiss contributes to Slate, a socially hip division of The Washington Post Company.

Rumor or new policy? Apparently the media's strategy/reward is for writers to "think digital." I don't know how the quality of writing the news would change, but my guess would be more focus on drama/entertainment than substance.

Speaking of money (or rather lack of money) and writers, some HuffPo "contributors" have decided "to stop giving it away." One response is to compare that to how L.A. comedians doing shows for free at the comedy clubs reacted back in the '70s. They went on strike to a positive result that unknowns (at the time) David Letterman, Robin Williams and Jay Leno started getting paychecks. the rest is/was history on TV. But that was then and this is now when there is a seemingly endless supply of wannabe contributors to crank out content consumed for free.

Speaking of money (from the consumers' side) - how about the ongoing attempts to get people to pay to read content online? "The New York Times" new paywall went live at the end of March. At the end of today's "McLaughlin Group" show, John McLaughlin's prediction about that was "It will fail within one year. Then he closed with his signature wave and "Bye-bye!"