I hinted a few weeks ago at some big news about this blog that would be upcoming, but I couldn't actually make an announcement because it wasn't official; now it is. Dispatches from the Culture Wars will be moving sometime in the next week or so to a new location. When the move is completed, I expect that I'll just make this page automatically forward to the new one to make it easy on everyone. In the meantime, let me address the two obvious questions - where is it moving, and why?
A few weeks ago I was approached by the editors of a fairly prominent scientific publishing company, Seed Media Group, concerning a new project they wanted to put together. They have also approached several other big science bloggers. I don't know exactly how many, but I know who some of them are. Their plan is for all of us to move our blogs to their servers where they will handle all of the technical aspects of blogging and we would continue to do what we do. Each blog will remain independent of all the others, but they will be linked together in hopes of increasing everyone's readership. There will also be shared advertising, which will allow us each to be paid for our efforts. Over the last couple weeks, we have been negotiating contract terms and last evening I signed and faxed my agreement to join this project.
Let me make one thing entirely clear: nothing is going to change about this blog. No one but me has any editorial control whatsoever over what I write, and that is spelled out explicitly in my contract. I will continue to write what I want, when I want, about whom I want, without restrictions. I will continue to cross post some of those entries to Positive Liberty and to the Panda's Thumb. The only difference is that I'm going to be able to make a little money doing it and, hopefully, increase the visibility of my work and pick up new readers through this new blogging community.
I do not yet have a URL for the new location, but I will have one soon. As soon as I do, I'll let you know. And once it's up and running, I'll make sure everyone gets sent there automatically so you won't even have to change your bookmarks. So yeah, I'm selling out like the capitalist pig that I am. But if anyone from the IRS asks, you never heard a thing...
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I am just so sure that it must have been the work of that "designer" that made it necessary for you to hold off your major announcement until i got back from my business trip. Congrats Ed, in the sense that linking w/ others of like minds and hopefully similar intellectually sound reasoning provides increased readership for all of us.
Ed, is it true the new blog will be known as stcroesus.com?
Congratulations on the move.
Let me be the third to say: You go, Ed! Woo hoo!
Btw, does anyone know what's up with the Ecosystem? I seem to have devolved several levels (Slithery Reptile to Crunchy Crustacean), while Ed, whose ascension to Large Mammal we all celebrated the other day, is now listed as an Adorable Little Rodent.
This is awsome news, Ed. Will you eventually be able to tell us some of the other blogs that will move to this server?
Chris Berez wrote:
Well, by the time I know that for sure, you'll be able to see them for yourself. I know of 4 or 5 others who have been invited to join the project, but I don't know for sure if they've signed on. The first draft of the contract was pretty rough, but they corrected all of my concerns and I signed last night. I don't know if the others had their concerns answered to their satisfaction or whether they've decided to make the jump.
Duck wrote:
I read that they've just altered the system because, the way it was set up, the more blogs they added to the bottom of the list, the more it pushed up everyone above them into higher categories. I don't really understand how it all works myself.
Congratulations, Ed, it sounds like something you're excited about and that's great. They're lucky to have you, and I look forward to seeing the rest of the Bullpen.
This is an interesting time in the blog publication world, with things like TPM Cafe and Pajamas Media, Andrew Sullivan moving to Time, heck even Panda's Thumb (though that's been around a while) ... I wonder if down the line we'll look back on all of this as "The Great Gathering", when previously independent and lone bloggers banded together into much larger entities, kind of like when cable got its big push and cable companies started grouping together groups of channels.
In the beginning it was the channels driving the conglomerates -- if you were MTV, you had the power to make customers go to their cable companies and demand "I want my MTV!". Over time, though, that reversed, and the power shifted to the cable carriers. You then had to bend to their idea of what the "right" kind of shows/channels were to fit in with their offerings.
In a way, those small crazy shows got co-opted by the very power they had provided in the first place.
Of course the good news is that if you were in at the beginning you had a great shot to end up a Really Big Player. Look at MTV and HBO -- they still bring quality, edgy shows to the table. And cable is a lot more diverse and creatively energetic than the broadcast networks.
And the internet isn't like print or broadcast/cable, either -- a blogger can pull out of a "group" blog and carry his audience with him in a way that MTV never could have done. If they didn't have a publisher they were screwed. Not so with Blogs.
Anyway. Long post, sorry -- short version is, congratulations and make sure they don't ever make you change, your work's awesome just as it is!
I'm kind of curious where this is all leading to as well. I was certainly cognizant of the possibility of being co-opted in that manner, which is why I insisted on my total content control being put into writing in the contract.
I didn't realize this was a science blog, but congrats anyways.
Well Matthew, it is sub-titled -
Thoughts From the Interface of Science, Religion, Law and Culture
Good to see more evidence for evolution in progress... Congrats, way to go, we'll look forward to reading you down the road.
Yay! Go Ed.
Congratulations Ed. You have it well deserved. This is one of the best blogs on the net, and what you and others do to defend science in the US is a comendable job. I Hope this move makes you more a public figure, to counter all the nonsense of people like O´Reilly and the religious right push in the media. It was about time.
Matthew wrote:
Not entirely science, obviously, but I do write about it quite a bit. But I'll still be writing about law and other things as well. Like I said, don't expect the content to change at all.
Just wondering, is this a change of web log hosters, or a change of subject matter?
raj-
Just a change in where the site is hosted. I will continue to write about a variety of subjects as I see fit.
Keep up the good work, Ed. Work keeps me busy so I rarely post, but I'm usually reading.
Oolong
Outstanding news, and well deserved. I can't wait to see the whole group in action. A clearinghouse to promote science and debunk pseudoscience will be a fantastic place to visit.
Great, Ed (but don't give up your day job)(;-)
Awesome. Congrats, Ed.
The "Seed" magazine is one of the best (IMO) magazines out there, from the presentation to the subject matter. Do you know if SMG will carry over any of the blog content into the publication?
Congrats Ed! Thanks for letting us know...
The "Seed" magazine is one of the best (IMO) magazines out there, from the presentation to the subject matter. Do you know if SMG will carry over any of the blog content into the publication?
Congrats Ed! Thanks for letting us know...