You KNEW it HAD to happen: a site has been started to formally start a deathwatch for Pajamas Media.
Read the introductory post HERE (some highlights below).
Why did you KNOW it had to happen? Because the way it was set up has apparently irked so many writers of weblogs that an idea that was touted as something that could revolutionize the Internet has gotten out of the starting gate with hideous image problems, leaving a path of bitterness in the wake of its launching. The basic idea sounded cutting-edge: a new, innovative Internet concept and infopackage — taking blogs to a new level.
But if you measure the advance publicity, the potential and the advance buzz with what has actually come about and how it has been received so far (not counting on the reaction of those who are involved with it due to their vested interest) it seems to have already been judged as indispensibly revolutionary as the highly-touted Segway and as popular in some quarters (right and left) as the New Coke.
IMPORTANT CAUTIONARY NOTE: But don’t forget what happened when CNN was launched. Critics ridiculed Ted Turner, called its intial broadcasts boring, said it would never last, people wouldn’t want to watch 24-hour news, they could never fill the time, etc…In the end, PJ Media could be something that either (a) blossoms in its own right, or (b) does not do that well but inspires another venture that gets off to a better start, has a more ideologically-inclusive writers’ roster and truly is the next step in wedding this new news medium of blogging with more traditional news media.
On the other hand, Pajamas Media is already the recipient of a kind of new cliche: people saying it’s a wannabe conservative Huffington Post. (TMV just learned that this site is included in PMJ Media’s blogroll so we’re going to add it under OTHER VOICES since it really is not quite just another conservative site — and that’s where the Huffington Post is located).
The new death watch blog is taking predictions in comments. Here’s a small part of what it writes:
The website is not a failure yet, but we do expect that it will be soon. Hey Roger, hey Charles: You do realize your website is inferior to virtually every other blog portal/aggregator currently available, right?
Worse than that, it makes no sense at all, even to many people who read and like your personal blogs. It doesn’t have a personality. It doesn’t update very often, especially considering the 370 bloggers involved). The site doesn’t even work — our favorite mis-step is the whole Xinhua thing (still there last we checked!).
Nobody knows what it’s supposed to deliver, let alone how you’d describe it in a single sentence. The only reason to come back is to see if it’s as godawful as it was the last time. (After seeing the OSM logo get X-ed out, it does, and are they trying to compare themselves to Dick Cheney?)
Read the post in its entirety. Is it fair? Perhaps not. Interesting and indicative of the fact that PJM had a highly-flawed launch? Yep.
Also read Jack Grant’s previous post on PJ Media. And Bogus Gold is MUST READING HERE since he’s deliciously blunt as usual. Here’s a small taste:
There is a lesson here that I’m honestly stunned some of the insiders didn’t already understand. OSMâ„¢ pissed off a load of bloggers before it launched by its individual treatment of them. Individually they seemed too small-potatoes to matter. But, through the miracle of the blogosphere, those opinions were amplified and distributed far beyond anything any of them alone could have accomplished. Dan Rather didn’t get that, but I sort of assumed Charles Johnson would.
Required reading for any debate over this new venture…