Reed Hastings put his Netflix strategy deck online a few days ago. In it, he says “almost no consumers leave Cable/Satellite/Telco for Netflix.” Later this summer, Lori and I are going to join those “almost no consumers.” We’re moving in to a just-renovated building in Center City that’s serviced only by Comcast, not by my beloved FiOS.
It’s going to be a busy summer, and I don’t much care for the idea of waiting all day for a cable guy to come. And I’m not convinced that we need to pay $150 per month to get the same level of home entertainment that we currently get from cable. Here’s my current plan:
- Grab a WiMax modem from Clear to replace our current broadband connection. Speed tests in our new neighborhood look great for streaming.
- Replace my current Moxi setup with a Mac mini running EyeTV for OTA broadcasts.
- Download Hulu Desktop to replace much of our current DVR/on-demand viewing.
- Grab our favorite cable series from iTunes. (Mad Men, It’s Always Sunny.)
- Add streaming Netflix for movies.
I don’t watch very much TV, usually just 3-4 hours per week. Lori, however, likes to cozy up while I’m writing, and asked me how we’d replace something like Turner Classic Movies. So I told her I’d look into it.
Let’s look at Sunday’s schedule: TCM posts all their listings well in advance.
- 10:15am: Strangers on a Train (Available by DVD Delivery)
- 12:00pm: The Keys of the Kingdom (Available by DVD Delivery)?
- 2:30pm: Lolita (Available by DVD Delivery)?
- 5:15pm: Funny Girl (Available to Watch Instantly)
- 8:00pm: Old Yeller (Available by DVD Delivery)??
- 9:30pm: The Yearling (Available by DVD Delivery)??
- 12:00am: The Sea Hawk (Available by DVD Delivery)??
Maybe that Sunday’s not a typical day. How about the following Saturday?
- 9am: Monkey Business (Available by DVD Delivery)??
- 10:30am: Hold that Baby! (Not available.)
- 12pm: A Big Hand for the Little Lady (Available by DVD Delivery)??
- 2pm: Ivanhoe (Available by DVD Delivery)??
- 4pm: The Wreck of the Mary Deare (Available by DVD Delivery)??
- 6pm: The Last Voyage (Available by DVD Delivery)??
- 8pm: San Francisco (Available by DVD Delivery)??
- 10pm: Flower Drum Song (Available by DVD Delivery)??
- 12:30am: Bullitt (Available to Watch Instantly)?
With the exception of a lone Bowery Boys feature, we can use our Netflix queue to recreate an entire rainy day weekend of TCM. We really adore Robert Osborne, and have even been to his film festival, so we may just subscribe to Now Playing as thanks for curating the queue for us. But I don’t think we’ll need to keep paying $150 a month for cable, especially since TCM is only available here in standard-definition, anyway!
When Mario Batali comes home from a long day at the kitchen, does he cook for himself? If you’ve read Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, you’ll know that professional cooks often end up at the same diners and dives that we like to haunt at 1am.
That’s the dilemma whenever I talk to a writer about whether they blog.
On a day when I’ve spent 3-4 hours cranking out 2,000 or more words for my clients, do I have any gas left in the tank for my personal blog? (And that’s the work I do before heading off to my “day job” at 9 or 10 in the morning.) It’s not always consistent, but it’s important. Most of the best client projects I’ve ever landed have started because a prospect found one of my pieces on a search engine, and traced it all the way back through to my contact page.
Every pitch meeting I’ve been in over the past five years has included a conversation about how I could support the gig by driving traffic, subscriptions, or clicks from my own audience into my clients’ world. Sometimes, the demand is so ludicrous that I have to just walk away from the deal. But, more often than not, I’ve been in such alignment with a project that it totally makes sense to steer some of my own audience toward a new project or collaboration.
Larry Brooks’ article on ProBlogger got me thinking about this again this morning. I recently spent some time overhauling my own website into more of a portal that collects my very best stuff, while still giving some column space to a personal blog and to some articles that don’t neatly fit into any of the projects I’m actively managing.
Blogging, to me, is about customer service. My prospects should be able to scan a portfolio of my clips to understand what they’re getting when they hire me. My readers should have a resource to let them know what I’m working on, even if I’m not working on exactly the thing that they wish I was. (Yes, I am still working on that GYBA ’11 manuscript!)
Of course, blogging holds even more challenges for a professional writer. We don’t forgive typos as easily. Despite blogging’s reputation for being freewheeling, a client’s not going to make a distinction between something you dashed out on your personal site and something destined for print. Blogging and Twitter both take on added dimensions when clients are watching.
I’ve certainly seen some e-mail over the years that say things like: “WTF are you doing on Twitter when you should be working on the article I hired you to do?” (I tend to filter out those kinds of clients.) Writing like crazy means you’re going to write what’s in your head that moment. I’m lucky enough to have a stable of clients and projects that can keep me engaged with something at any given time. It’s a great way to avoid writers’ block, even if it means that I miss the occasional deadline.
Right now, my biggest challenge is to reconcile the “tight niche” of vertical blogs with my public and personal personae. When I write my ass off, there’s no telling whether I might be writing about the music industry, the mortgage industry, the credit card industry, or something else that strikes me as important that week. Making the crossover work can get a little hairy. Some days, it’s like arguing that Lady Gaga should totally make a country record.
But if all of this transition and conflict is recorded on my own blog, it makes so much more sense to the editors and entrepreneurs trying to figure out why I don’t fit so neatly into a silo. Businesses demand transparency. Readers demand engagement. And while I agree with Larry that you need to split your site into “portfolio” and “blog,” I find it’s so important to connect with clients and audiences in whatever way works for them.
by Joe Taylor Jr. on February 21, 2010 · 0 comments
Sometimes, when I’m not griping about still having to pay down my student loan, I think about what I really got for my money when I attended Ithaca College. I may not be working in either of the two media mentioned in my major concentration (“radio” or “television”), but I sure do a heck of a lot of writing these days. A lot of that work is as a ghost blogger for some fun and exciting personalities.
Blogging often feels like a curious cross of journaling and journalism. When I start working with a new editor or a new client on a project, I like to make sure that we’re setting ground rules about telling the truth and being transparent. Ben Crane spent a semester drilling the importance of triangulation into my head: if you can’t find the information from two unconnected sources, you don’t run it. It doesn’t matter how juicy it is.
I haven’t talked to Professor Crane in years, but I can’t imagine he’s terribly happy about what blogging’s doing to journalism. A wave of readers and writers who have never known an adult world without the internet take Facebook status updates as absolute fact. A wave of new writers worry that disclosing promotional consideration is going to completely ruin their business model.
The good news: audiences aren’t dumb. They have long memories, and they’ll remember who got the story right. Even in today’s ever-collapsing news cycles, we still have plenty of opportunities to recollect our thoughts and deliver context to readers. Audiences may not always demand transparency, but they reward transparency. Readers who found it difficult to take TechCrunch seriously just about had their heads explode when one of their writers got caught accepting kickbacks for coverage. ZDNet just realized that one of its writers has been using his alter ego as a source.
So, if audiences expect transparency, honesty, and ethics, how can a ghost blogger reconcile those concepts with work that is inherently masked by a pseudonym?
For me, it comes down to using Michael Port’s “red velvet rope policy” when it comes to selecting the companies with whom I do business. When my ghost blogger projects involve writing under a specific byline, I make sure that my client’s values are aligned perfectly with mine. I refuse projects that promote a product or service that I wouldn’t recommend under my own name.
My ideal clients often have the vision to develop great products or ideas, without the writing skills to make those ideas leap off the page. My ideal clients challenge me to refine and amplify their professional voices. My ideal clients even allow me the luxury of writing about things that wouldn’t make sense for me to explore within my personal brand. Often, the only thing I don’t like about ghost blogging is that I write great pieces that I don’t get to take credit for. (Fortunately, my best clients offer me some great referrals.)
Too many companies are content to hop on Elance to find offshore bloggers willing to write 300 words about ottomans for $1.50. I crack up when a prospective client approaches me about writing copy for a ten page website and complains that they have only $50 or maybe $100 for the project. And that they’re doing me a favor by bringing it to me. Sorry, no. After twenty years of writing for money, I’m lucky enough to get to turn down requests that don’t let me get both personal satisfaction and fair compensation.
Some writers aren’t in the position to refuse bad offers. There are days when writing a toothpaste review for $10 isn’t a perk — it’s dinner. I remember those days. And I learned quickly that selling yourself short results in a professional life surrounded by people you can’t wait to escape from.
I agree with Andy Wibbels that ghost blogging is fraud when you’re simply replacing the authentic voice of a company with bland corporate-speak. Ghost blogging is fraud when companies hire writers to “engage in conversations” that they have no intent of fully pursuing. And ghost blogging is most certainly fraud when the writer puts words into a client’s voice that they would never, ever say.
Along those same lines, blogging under your own name is fraud when you’re simply struggling to find a way to cram one more affiliate link into a post. Blogging is fraud when you’re spending more time trying to trick a prospect into buying a product than trying to create great stuff. Blogging is fraud the moment you decide you’re going to try to sneak something past someone, even if you think it’s for the greater good.
While I can’t say I’m 100% proud of every ghost blogging gig I’ve ever completed, I can tell you that there’s nobody in my current roster I wouldn’t hug on stage in front of a thousand of my peers. Every one of those gigs that went wrong (either through my fault or the client’s) helped me learn how to get to today.
by Joe Taylor Jr. on February 21, 2010 · 0 comments
Almost two weeks later, and the snow still reminds me more of Ithaca than of anything I grew up with around here.
by Joe Taylor Jr. on February 10, 2010 · 0 comments
The creek next to our house has been repurposed as a snow reservoir. It’s also good to know the electrician on our block has made it back to the neighborhood.
Posted via email from Joe Taylor Jr.’s Blog
by Joe Taylor Jr. on February 10, 2010 · 0 comments
Nothing proves how deeply entwined you are in someone’s life until you try to plan a surprise party for your spouse. You can’t rely on Facebook or Twitter if your wife checks your feeds, and it’s very hard to make phone calls when you and your wife share a home office!
Thanks so much to all of our friends who kept this a secret for the past few months. Even though the blizzard forced us to move everything a day forward, we were still able to pull off a great surprise!
Posted via email from Joe Taylor Jr.’s Blog
