Cosmic Variance "sells out" : Gene Expression

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Posted on: November 17, 2008 2:05 PM, by Razib Khan

Chad has a post up about Cosmic Variance's move to Discover Blogs. He notes that some people lamenting the decline of the "old blogosphere" haven't been around blogs that long. He doesn't mention that he's been blogging since 2002. So have I. Most blogs have always sucked, that's a constant. Some of the less-sucky ones now have the option of remuneration. With four major competing scienceblog networks I think you'll get some competition driving quality. Granted, a great deal of blog writing will remain crap; just like a great deal of the media. The laws of the universe have not changed. And the "good old days" were not really that good.... (e.g., the "warblogging era," where I was unfortunately a marginal player).

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Comments

Discover is just a pale shadow of what it once was. I picked up an issue about a year ago, and was shocked at how far it had fallen from the days when I had a subscription.

Discover used to have intelligently-written articles that were both accurate and comprehensible to people not familiar with the field. Now it's double-spaced, wide-margined nonsense, with lots of double page photo spreads and little content.

It boggles my mind to think that someone would choose to associate themselves with the magazine if they didn't need to support themselves financially.

Posted by: Caledonian | November 17, 2008 2:42 PM

It boggles my mind to think that someone would choose to associate themselves with the magazine if they didn't need to support themselves financially.

blogs are blogs. though true they are on the discover domain. i think the main issue is that running a high traffic blog like CV ends up sucking up a lot of time re: tech support, etc. it's about opportunity costs, not the $.

Posted by: razib | November 17, 2008 3:01 PM

I actually thought Jennifer already wrote over there so I was surprised it wasn't a part of Discover before now. I think it's a good fit because of the miracle of compounding. Most popular writers here (or on any of the large blog sites you mentioned above) benefited from the compounding that occurred by aggregating so that's always a good reason to move to a bigger stage.

Posted by: Hank Campbell | November 17, 2008 5:18 PM

I actually thought Jennifer already wrote over there so I was surprised it wasn't a part of Discover before now.

she writes for discovery :-) it confused me too....

Posted by: razib | November 17, 2008 8:40 PM

you don't consider nature network one of the major science blogging networks?

Posted by: RPM | November 17, 2008 10:10 PM

i always thought of it more as a social networking site. but sure, add them to the list.

Posted by: razib | November 17, 2008 10:17 PM