Is Demand Studios the new Associated Press?

I recently wrote an opinion piece defending Demand Studios after another blogger chose to label them as a scam based on the fact that their pay is somewhat low and they make frequent requests for rewrites of articles. I still side with Demand Studios on that issue, but I do want to point out a better (though not perfect) article about Demand Studios at ReadWriteWeb. This article doesn’t try to portray the writers as victims but rather tries to analyze the effect of such a large content mill on the Internet as a whole. The basic premise is that Demand Studios has a content creation system in place (using both automation and live reviewers) that results in an assembly-line style article that RWW compares to Henry Ford’s original automobile production line. The article takes issue with the quality of the content being produced, and that is a more legitimate criticism than the exploitation of writers.

4000 Articles a Day

According to the RWW piece, Demand Studios produces approximately 4000 articles a day through its combination of freelancers and editors. The one issue that I have with the article is that they use this as an indictment of the quality. They ask:

The bigger question is: there are surely many examples of good Demand Media content on the Web, but how many of the 4,000 articles it produces every day aren’t?

To me this is a poor argument. Yes, I’m sure that some of the 4000 articles aren’t great, but no one can judge what the percentage of this is so it is a specious question. I mainly read blogs by single authors. Mass produced blogs leave me a little cold. As a follower of individuals I can tell you that even the best bloggers put out lousy articles on occasion. Lord knows I do. No one is brilliant every day.

The better point the article makes is that the Demand Studios assembly line style and fast turnaround time creates a certain sameness to the articles being written, that there is a Demand Studios style, and it isn’t very interesting or incisive. I don’t read enough of their types of articles (like I said, I follow individual bloggers) to know if this is true, but it seems like a legitimate possibility.

In the Eighties the Definition of a Content Mill was “Associated Press”

Way back in the eighties, I served as the Associated Press Wire Editor for my college newspaper. Having an AP feed back then was as close as you could get to having Google News now. Article after article printed out on the dot matrix printer they provided, and I looked at them all (while dressed in my linen Miami Vice jacket) to see if they were relevant. I can tell you that AP’s style (they do have their own stylebook after all) was pretty bland even then. For most articles, you got the facts, and nothing but the facts. There was little room for color or individuality. A single article might get published in 500 different newspapers all over the world. Any sort of colorful writing had to be killed in case someone out there didn’t get it, or worse, was offended by it. Another interesting similarity between the Associated Press and Demand Studios is that AP has always used a number of low-paid writers (they call them stringers) to freelance for them. In the eighties, the saying was, “You can’t spell stupid without UPI and you can’t spell cheap without AP.”

Obviously Demand Studios is not identical to AP. The journalistic standards and the general level of talent at AP are considerably higher than at Demand Studios. AP is more selective about who they hire and more stringent about the sources for their articles. It is the similarities though, not the differences, that catch my eye. Both organizations tap a worldwide pool of writers. Both organizations exist to provide content to other organizations. Both organizations rely heavily on freelance work. Most importantly, both organizations have writing philosophies based on a universal cookie-cutter style.

I believe that sort of generic writing was the beginning of the end for newspapers, and I think that it can only have limited success on the Internet. A certain number of people will be satisfied with these articles, and search engines may never be able to tell good articles from bad articles, but there will always be plenty of room for individuals with distinctive voices to keep writing. A loyal audience that comes back again and again is in most cases preferable to a large number of casual readers who never return.

Demand Studios is a company that is filling a content niche quite successfully. The fact that they have enough writers and customers to be publishing 4000 articles a day shows that they are filling a need that exists on both sides. That said, if someone else comes up with a better way to do it, then the market will change again. I think Demand Studios does a lot of things well, but I also think there is plenty of room for improvement. If they can make a profit doing things their way, then surely someone who improves on the concept can do even better.

For Further Information:

• Is Demand Studios Worth Your Time?
• The Answer Factory: Demand Media and the Fast, Disposable, and Profitable as Hell Media Model
• About Hub Pages: An Interview with Ryan “Hup” Hupfer
• FakeAPStylebook on Twitter

How to Write Quality Query Letters: Be real, specific

When a potential publisher reads your query letter, you want to excite them, but don’t promise something you can’t deliver. Not only would this make it difficult for you if you did get the assignment, but a good editor can easily spot ideas that are too broad or unrealistic to make it into their publication. The best query ideas are specific and achievable. For example, if you were pitching an article for a men’s magazine, How To Make Any Woman Go Home with You is general and unrealistic (not to mention creepy) but Six Pickup Lines that Won’t Make You Look Like a Jerk is a little more specific and a little more realistic.

There are two advantages to pitching very specific subjects. The first is that it makes you look more knowledgeable. Specificity and knowledge go hand in hand. Anyone can pitch an idea about picking up women. Even “six pickup lines” is general. If you dig deeper, you might find a more unique perspective. For example, if you have studied linguistics, you might pitch, Why Your Pickup Lines Don’t Work, Six Tips from a Cunning Linguist. If you used to be a bartender you might pitch, The Bartender’s Guide to Picking up Women: Six lines that never work (and three that do).

The second advantage of specificity is that it reduces the risk of you pitching the same idea as someone else. The last thing you want is to pitch a topic your potential publisher has seen (or even published) before. There are limits to how much research a writer can do into the past topics at a magazine, especially if you want to spend more time writing articles than pitching them. Specificity gives you the best chance at originality.

Realistic ideas are the other side of that coin. If you don’t know anything about pickup lines, don’t pitch an article about them. Your query letter should start with some flash, but the body of your letter is going to have to back up that flash. You will need to give examples of what you intend to write about. You not only have to convince your potential publisher that your idea is perfect for them; you have to convince them that you can turn that idea into a great article. If you can’t convince them you are the right person to write the article, your great idea won’t help you.

One Blogger, Many Roles

I am a blogger

As a blogger, I keep and update a blog. I do it as a business. Because of this, I have many other roles besides blogger.

I am a writer

I write just about every day of the year. If I am not writing for my own blog, I am writing for someone else’s blog or I am working on an assignment that came from my blogging. Whatever the case, I am always writing.

I am an editor

I am often in the rather uncomfortable position of editing my own work. This is a situation in which my abilities and flaws as a writer do not mesh well with my abilities and flaws as an editor. I don’t always catch my mistakes. When I don’t, it is the editor’s fault. As editor, I also solicit and edit articles from outside sources. There, I am at least dealing with someone else’s flaws, which are often easier to recognize and fix.

I am a publisher

I own my blog. That means I own a publication. That publication has to have standards, and I am in charge of setting those standards. I am responsible for all of the things that appear on my site. I set the direction I want my blog to go in. In the end, everything about the publication is my decision. I am often put in a position of having to overrule the writer and the editor because I have to think of the big picture.

I am a designer

I wish I was a better one. I am at least smart enough not to rely entirely upon myself, although I assure you that it wasn’t an easy decision. I use a blog theme, and I paid some real money to make sure that I have a good theme. In the end though, the way things are placed on a page, the graphics I use, the font style, the font size, those are all up to me as the designer.

I am a marketer

I maintain a marketing strategy. It isn’t as well thought-out as it probably should be, but it includes advertising, networking, contests, branding, and publicity. I have a small budget (though better than some others) so I have to be creative and I have to stay on top of the latest trends.

I am a customer service representative

When I get a complaint about my blog, anything from the content to the design to the technical features, I am in charge of getting the problem fixed if it can be fixed. I am also in charge of making sure that the customer gets a satisfactory response that keeps them coming back. It isn’t always easy.

I am an analyst

I spend a great deal of my time looking at my web statistics. I pay attention to where people come from, what they look at while they are on my site, how long they stay and where they go when they leave. I also monitor revenue sources closely, because when they go down or up, I want to know why. Having this knowledge helps me plan for the future and to correct problems as they occur.

I am a web programmer

There are plenty of people who are better at this than I am, but I know enough to fix errors as they come up, and to make minor changes when needed. In the old days I could build a site from scratch, but at this point I have to be happy with being able to tweak someone else’s work to fit my needs.

I am a small business owner

As a small business owner I have to collect revenue and keep a budget. I have to weigh the pros and cons of investing money in the business versus taking the profit out of the business and using it to provide for my family. I have to do the accounting and the taxes and I have to decide when it is appropriate to buy new hardware, software, furniture and equipment. I have to decide whether the business is succeeding or failing and what to do to make things better.

I am all of these things and more

All of these role spring from my life as a blogger. They can be difficult to maintain and to separate. My needs as a small business owner or as a publisher are often at odds with my desires as a writer. I sometimes write or don’t write about a topic based on how I think it will be received versus the level of interest I have. I have to determine how far from my central topic (writing) I can stray. I have to decide if another writer is more appropriate for a topic than I am. I have to weigh issues of revenue versus design and content. I sometimes have to be nice when I really don’t want to be because the success of my blog carries more weight than my personal issues.

I am a blogger

These are the issues I deal with. I love it, but anyone thinking of blogging, especially for profit, had better be prepared to fill all of these roles and more. It is one hell of a ride.

Why Newspapers are Dying (and what they can do about it)

I’ve been picking on newspapers for a while, for much longer than I have been a blogger. To me the decline became apparent in the eighties and nineties when the big corporations started snapping newspapers up and the focus of newspapers drifted away from news and moved toward profits. Newspapers, at their best, are a very personal enterprise. Corporations, especially ones that are big enough to buy a slew of newspapers, know nothing about passion. Still, for a long time they only had television to compete with. TV is just as bland and corporate as newspapers are. It took the Internet, and passionate individuals, to dig the grave for newspapers.

A Lack of Interest

I haven’t subscribed to a newspaper since the early nineties. I occasionally buy the local paper, but it is usually because I want the car or the grocery ads or because I have some time to kill in a restaurant. I certainly don’t buy the local paper looking for a great reading experience. Every newspaper runs the same canned stories off of the news wire. Their local coverage consists of mostly basic police/court coverage, business stories, road construction updates and reasonably good coverage of the sports scene. None of these are things I can’t do without. More importantly, I can find any of it on online if I bother to look. For the record, I also don’t watch the news, local or national, on television. Television “news” is all about blood, pundits and car chases. I don’t need it.

New News Sources

I am far from uninformed. I read the news just about every day, spending at least ten minutes and as much as an hour scanning headlines and reading anything that seems interesting. I do almost all of my reading online. Google News is my primary source, but I also subscribe to feeds from a number of specific publications and many blogs. I would subscribe to my local papers’ news feeds, if they had them. Unfortunately. the two daily papers don’t seem to have much interest in allowing people to read their articles without being subjected to their ad-filled web sites. I don’t really blame them, but I don’t miss them either.

A Very Long Decline

Print journalism is in the middle stages of what I expect will be a very long decline. Newspaper readership has been dropping for many years now, but over the past couple years that drop has been accelerating. There is no reason to expect this drop to end any time soon. Sadder yet, newspapers are having trouble online as well. People aren’t just leaving their print version behind, they are leaving their online versions behind too. I am sure this is because of the focus on wire feeds and canned news. You can get that kind of news anywhere. In fact, you have to make a deliberate effort if you want to avoid it.

An Outdated Model

The biggest problem is the lack of real journalism. For years now, newspapers have been getting by on wire feeds from AP, Reuters and a variety of smaller news services. Back before the Internet, this model worked because a person in Tucson wouldn’t have access to a newspaper in San Antonio, so it didn’t matter if they ran the exact same stories. Now, however, all that duplicate national and international coverage can be accessed by anyone anywhere. Why read your local paper’s limited international section when you can access the news from anywhere in the world through the web. With Google News and other news aggregators, it is just as easy to find out the news in England from England as it is from your local paper. As for that AP article, it is repeated so endlessly online that you are bound to catch it too, if you bother to look.

Raw VS. Canned and Bland

Print journalists endlessly deride bloggers, and some of their criticisms are valid. Many, though by no means all, bloggers have less news experience and greater political and personal bias than newspaper reporters do. They make up for those shortcomings, however, by being more timely, more passionate, and more detailed in their coverage. The world of journalistic blogging (there are many blogs that have nothing to do with the news) is uneven, but when it is good, it is far better than the canned, bland news stories that the newspapers reprint. Because there are so many sources to choose from, it is easy to decide for yourself what is good and what is worth reading.

Decline and Rebirth

Newspapers are going to continue to decline in readership and relevance as long as they continue to follow the old model of wire stories and short, uninteresting local articles. The only reason to pick up a newspaper (or visit a newspaper’s website) in Fresno is to find out what happened in Fresno. Only newspapers that invest heavily in local coverage and allow their writers to spend more than 300 words on an article will be relevant as the years pass. That probably won’t happen until the giant corporations that own most newspapers lose interest in these now unprofitable entities and move on to other media. It is difficult to image any conglomeration of newspapers embracing individual voices and local reporting. Once it becomes unprofitable enough, however, I predict that as newspapers begin to fold and be sold, passionate local people will return to print. Until then, I’ll continue to get my news online.

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