Greg Hernandez, Hollywood writer for the LA Daily News, gets laid off and in seven days he’s competing with his former employer online – using the brand equity said employer helped him build – in his own tinseltown blog, Greg in Hollywood. He tells the story of his launch here. Didn’t hurt that his friend Danny Sullivan is a leading expert in search engines – which apparently brings in enough value to afford him a guest house where Greg could stay while they built the site. He writes:
I was riding bikes with my friends along the boardwalk of the Balboa Peninsula last week and tried to remember the last time I felt so excited about the future. Then I realized exactly when: it was nearly 25 years earlier, the week I moved into the dorms at San Diego State University. Everything and anything seemed possible then and now it does again.Except then, I had a lot more hair.
And he’s off and running. We’ll check back in in a few months to see how he’s doing with stamina and revenue. But it’s exciting to see a journalist excited about a new future.
Note well, other formerly employed journalists, that you don’t need friends in high places in the internet to build your own blog. You can go to WordPress or Typepad or Blogger and start writing and Google or GoDaddy to take your domain. My only advice is to specialize: take on a beat that isn’t being overcovered, do a lot of linking, rise up in Googlejuice, and make the turf your own.
For my part I’d recommend Total Choice Hosting for site and domain. They’ve done all right by me. In the long run the prospective blogger should go with people he feels comfortable with, and a blogging platform he feels comfortable with. And to every one thinking of starting his own blog, good luck.
And it could not have happened to a nicer and more talented guy … good for Greg and Danny and here’s to his success…
Another nice example is Adam Corolla having his radio show pulled by CBS and doing podcasts with the same co-hosts and guests two weeks later from his own website. The best part is that his contract doesn’t expire until the end of the year so he’s getting paid to not do one show while he’s doing it himself. Without the censors and the starting at 5am it’s actually good for a change.
http://carollaradio.com/podcasts/
Kudos to my former colleague! I left the LA Daily News about a month ago to launch my own savvy-spending blog, http://www.bargainbabe.com. Making money off a blog is very tough, but I feel more optimistic about it than staying in print.
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Heh. Wish I had the guest house! We live in a former duplex, and we just call it the far less glamorous name of “downstairs.”
And since you live downstairs…
I think we’ve got the basis for a pretentious tv show here.
My niche is Scotties and wiener dogs. The Scottish Terrier and Dog News is a prototype as is the Daily Dachshund
Seriously, dog journalism and information (and horse too, I’m told) is terrible. It’s dominated by the Kennel clubs and assorted other nutters. Or by people who just want to catch in on the pet phenomenom and don’t even have dogs like the owner of Dogster.
It’s seriously long tail and low margin, but then so was Amazon when it was only about books.
I do wonder, though, where all the dog stories that I aggregate from newspapers will come from in the future.
You’ll always have dog bloggers
i hear this little bitch has one mean blog (click my id)
This guy is a dog uberblogger and this Crufts photo essay is meaner than anything you’ll find in the MSM.
http://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2009/03/crufts-people-their-dogs.html
He’s covered the dog inbreeding story like a true terrier.
Just wanted to say that everything I learned in our entrepeneurial class made me excited about the future of journalism, and can’t wait to bring that enthusiasm with me to Kampala.
Great examples! Still, there is the discussion about how to earn money with blogging (one future day). From my (German) perspective, journalists shouldn’t focus too much on earning money by their blog itself; it’s great if this works, of course, but it narrows the perspective. I think it might be wiser to also think of the blog as a tool to make themselves known as experts in their respective niche.
By becoming visible as an expert, a journalist might be booked for a lecture, a workshop or as a live interview host. Or – forgive me this old school thought – he or she might get an assignment by newspapers or magazines that would like him or her to elaborate on a thought first uttered in the blog.
[...] to Jeff Jarvis for his BuzzMachine post about Hernandez’ new venture. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Gossip GirlFamily Matters: Week of June [...]
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