Comments on: Somebody get these guys a mirror

By: Open Source » Blog Archive » Cursing, and Lighting Candles

Open Source » Blog Archive » Cursing, and Lighting Candles — Sun, 25 Dec 2005 00:28:48 +0000

[...] We discovered in a completely insane little fire-fight over the Open Source name of our program and website that the blogosphere is not a jungle at all. There is character and conscience out there and fellow feeling that came instantly and effectively alive just before Thanksgiving when we were almost robbed. Jeff Jarvis led the righteous charge to protect justice, fair play and us. And we are eternally grateful to him and the whole community. [...]

By: maddox

maddox — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 19:40:08 +0000

My take on Pajamas media is that is direly in need of a father figure. Roger Simon is a dweeb, he has no leadership qualities. But think if they hired Maddox to lead them into the Blogosphere 2.0 they might have success. Probably not. They have really screwed up this time. Don’t they know that a bathrobe is not a pair of pajamas?

That just shows you how incompetent they are. And they can’t get there site to be at pajamasmedia.com

they are dorks.

By: Jeff Miller

Jeff Miller — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 17:32:35 +0000

When I look at the blogs I read regularly, most of them are written by:

a) former journalists
b) Working journalists
c) Bloggers associated with a traditional journalistic entity

I don’t think that’s a coincidence. If you want to see what OSM / Pajamas should have been, take a look at TPMCafe. Josh has done a fantastic job bringing in lefties who know their shit cold to blog and he’s now going one step further by hiring muckrakers to do real journalism.

Now that’s damned exciting. And it really is new media.

By: Howard

Howard — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 13:26:56 +0000

Let’s cut to the chase: they were out there to make money, not to put out a quality product, AND they just couldn’t start at the bottom and build; they, like Air America, just had to start at the top, and with OPM ($3.5 million, which may cause them additional problems) natch. I posted a couple of times at my place WITH a constructive suggestion.

By: Noel Guinane

Noel Guinane — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 09:10:08 +0000

Cameron, you might not like it, but that’s life. Some people have advantages. And those of us who don’t have them have to earn them, but the opportunity to do that is there. Keep plugging away and one day you’ll have that track record that will open doors without you having to break them down first.

By: Cameron Olthuis

Cameron Olthuis — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 08:26:25 +0000

I don’t know if I should laugh or cry. I’m working with a company right now that has a wonderul idea and all it’s ducks in a row. They’ve been pitching VC’s & Angels for months now to no success. The keep getting the same response: “We need to see a track record.” Makes you sick to see these other guys that have it so easy piss it all away.

By: » Pajama’s Media: not sure what it is The Blog Herald: more blog news more often

Sat, 26 Nov 2005 05:02:56 +0000

[...] 26th, 2005 and is filed under News Brief. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently notallowed. [...]

By: American Daughter

American Daughter — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 02:59:48 +0000

“Somebody get these guys a mirror”

But it IS smoke and mirrors.

By: Noel Guinane

Noel Guinane — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 02:46:25 +0000

Had a traumatic experience somewhere along the line there, huh Nick?

By: Nick @ HBR

Nick @ HBR — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 00:15:42 +0000

Pajamas Media is the fat girl who calls you ugly.

By: diane

diane — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 19:54:28 +0000

>They talk as if they are the first. I detect a form of snobbery that just
> makes no sense.

It may not be snobbery. Remember these people didn’t know how to use google to look open source media. They really think they’ve invented all these things.

By: Noel Guinane

Noel Guinane — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 18:28:18 +0000

Baloney.

By: Jim Jones

Jim Jones — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 17:59:40 +0000

Pajamas Media is a metaphor for the Iraq War. They aren’t trying to be the MSM; they’re trying to be the anti-MSM — that’s the main justification. But like the Iraq War, there were other justifications and the news feeds will provide handy denials. I suspect, however, that the real justification will never be uttered. The real justification is wrapped up in ego and the desire to be seen as a successful alternative media and not to waste all that political capital accrued from the relative success of amplifying the pro-war case when they had a broad coalition . But their unilateralism has alienated former allies and engendered anti-Pajamas Mediaism. Any suggestions of lack of planning or poor execution will be met with the same counter-rhetoric: critics are objectively pro-MSM, good news is being ignored, missteps aren’t that bad and are really more indicative of misunderestimated strategic genius, media realists are too cozy with the status quo and their own self-interest to accept revolutionary new ideas, defeatists suffer from Pajamas Media Derangement Syndrome and are simply full of hate, it’s us versus them and they hope for our failure and are motivated solely by their own desire for power and to bring us down without offering any alternatives, they even voted their support for this endeavor based on the same intelligence we had. Pajamas Media is staying the course. They will not admit to mistakes, be held accountable or accept responsibility for any shortcomings. Pajamas Media will become more insular over time as non-loyalists are purged and those who give bad advice but give good rationalizations are promoted. Eventually, they will revert back to campaign mode to defend against what are now clearly enemies, to recreate the buzz that once garnerd high approval ratings, and to explain again what Pajamas Media is about. Then, facing unrelenting snark without adequate armor, they will look for an exit strategy. Then Pajamas Media will become what it really is: just another group blog making the same arguments that once gained them some notoriety but have been long since played out. The MSM and the rest of the blogoshere will stand up and Pajamas Media will stand down. Mission accomplished.

By: Noel Guinane

Noel Guinane — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 17:20:09 +0000

TouchÃ©, though that old saying, twice nothing is still … does spring to mind, but I’m too big to mention that here.

By: Timothy

Timothy — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 17:14:55 +0000

Besides, it’s not about the money, it’s about the schadenfreude!

By: Timothy

Timothy — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 17:12:35 +0000

Hey, I need to update that, we’re all the way up to $6!

And it won’t get bigger unless you contribute!

By: Noel Guinane

Noel Guinane — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 17:06:37 +0000

Last time I checked out the death pool, Timothy, it had all of $3.

I’d like to point out that three and a half million bucks can sustain a project for some time. It might be a long wait before you get to claim that $3!

By: Timothy

Timothy — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 16:52:14 +0000

Well, this is a bit OT, but in the spirit of finishing this sentence: Pajamas Media is _________________. I’d like to encourage y’all to join the Pajamas Media Death Pool.

By: Balloon Juice

Balloon Juice — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 14:31:39 +0000

[...] BTW- you want some honest criticism of PJ? Try Laurence Simon, Jeff Jarvis, or the editorial board themselves. [...]

By: Noel Guinane

Noel Guinane — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 12:55:15 +0000

Sounds fascinating. Why don’t you Spew about it?

By: FloridaPatty

FloridaPatty — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 12:26:39 +0000

Yawn.

Speaking of Navel Gazing, in other news, Tom Cruise bought Katie Holmes…

By: Noel Guinane

Noel Guinane — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 08:54:29 +0000

I don’t know what their business plans are, but I do know that the success of any business depends on its people and Pajamas have plenty of clever, funny and professional people involved in it. I haven’t read all of them, but those I have read interested me enough to want to read the rest of them.

I check in now every day and I’m finding that they give comprehensive coverage to each story they feature and they make it easy to follow what’s being said, both in the MSM and in blogs.

I enjoy reading them and have so far found their standards to be high.

By: John Barr

John Barr — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 08:41:35 +0000

The suits lied, Pajamas Media died!

By: Jay Currie

Jay Currie — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 07:24:48 +0000

Entertaining as it is to pile on….

What would make sense for these folks to do right now?

a) lose the bathrobe.
b) lose the news feeds until they can get it right
b.1) call Gabe Rivera and ask, nicely, if he’d be willing for 10k a month to give them an exclusive ad free feed from Memeorandum’s American politics bot
c) move the Blogjam to the front page - see The Corner or, in Canada where Thanksgiving comes early, The Western Standard
c.1) have the Blogjam the lead feature with lots of links out to the blogs the PJ folks are reading
d) get some Yahoo/Google/Chitika ads and see if there is any money to be made
e) understand the real market. I point this out on my own blog but with my numbers it will get missed: there are millions of people who read blogs in the US, there are tens of millions who don’t. The one’s who don’t are the market.
f)Seth is dead right about this looking like a bunch of folks trying to build their own Boeing. Imitating MSM is not the same thing as actually being MSM nor will it get more than a couple of contributors more than the occassional op-ed gig.
g) Set the goal of replacing MSM. But recognize that comes through sheer volume.
h) Where is Matt Drudge??
i) Where is Nick Denton???

It is easy to sit in my pyjamas sniping and I know just how hard it is to get something like this off the ground. But with 3.5 million in the bank (less consultants’ fees so call it 3.0) moving forward is not that tough. What is tough is getting beyond the blogging world with content not found anywhere else and an interface that does not simply lift OS-X’s “cool two years ago” drop shadows.

By: richard mcenroe

richard mcenroe — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 06:47:21 +0000

Pajamas Media is (or wants to be) the Blockbuster Video of blogging.

Of course, they seem to be emulating that model’s mistakes, first.