Jeff Jarvis, who knows much more about publishing than most, looks at the New York ‘Cityblog’ and explains why listings on their own don’t pay.
My issue with Cityblog and with collaborative blogs like Boingboing is that weblogs are primarily about people. Weblogs are publishing taken to its ultimate extreme in terms of efficiency where there are no distribution or production costs other than the time and effort of the writer and its ultimate utility in terms of benefit for the reader – I read to hear what the writer has to say, and as I get to know the writer the nuances are easier and the communication better. This is why the byline free Economist is so damn frustrating. With weblogs I’ll read whatever Jon Udell says about web services or Jason Kottke says about web design and, because they are all published separately, I can jumble them up myself with an RSS aggregation tool and read just what I want.
Is Cityblog a blog – or an online magazine that uses blogging tools because they have evolved to be the simplest way of publishing online?