The Blog I’d Write If Someone Paid Me
The makes me feel guilty. Every day tens of thousands of people pull up this URL—tune in, if you will—to see if I’ve opined on this or that. And, for the most part, I haven’t.
Failing to meet consumer expectations is not a sound business strategy. A few years back the CEO of Blockbuster Video surveyed the company’s customers and found that, the vast majority of the time, they couldn’t find the video they’d most hoped to rent. Look at Blockbuster now. (Well, Netflix didn’t help.)
The trouble is, the isn’t a business. It’s a net loss, not only in the time it takes to feed its gaping word-count maw, but in the cost of paying for server space. In an average week, I owe three editorial cartoons and a column to my syndicate, two cartoons to freelance clients, and half a book chapter to my publisher—plus whatever random projects (movie pitches, nascent animation schemes, searching for WMDs) I happen to be working on at a given time. If I were starting out now and were, say 24 years old, a blog would be a great way to practice writing and gain attention. Now it’s a distraction from paying work. This is why the best blogs are written by 24-year-olds and pros who get paid by someone.
Today I proffer the kind of stuff I’d talk about if I had the time. After today, well—back to catch as catch can.
6 Comments.
Do it the postmodern way and write blase entries about your cats or weirdos you see on the subway.
The best way to firmly establish behavior?
1 – Set up a frequent, regular reward schedule (the comics).
2 – Once you've done that, reduce the frequency of the reward (the columns).
3 – Now, to really establish the behavior, make the reward completely unpredictable in frequency (the blog!).
Very clever, Ted!
Ted Rall is a rip-off artist. Getting paid is everything to Ted, and he'll take advantage of even those who have bought his books. Case in point: those who submitted corrections to his latest piece-of-shit book on the Silk Road were rewarded with …. NOTHING! Not even a "thank you" email. Of course Ted promised sketches, etc … for this free labor but never made good on it. I guess we should have known better since he faked a lawsuit against Ann Coulter, collecting nice donations from gullible readers in the process. Free laptops, and now this. What's next Ted, should we pay your rent to get you to write a blog entry now and then? How about a new Porsche in exchange for the cartoons?
Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I have a reason for being late–being busy–but a reason is not an excuse. I've been collecting the corrections for Silk Road, which continue to come in, with a view toward sending all the responses and gifties at the same time because, well, I find it easier that way. So, to anyone who submitted correx, worry not–I've got them, and you'll get stuff sooner rather than later. My apologies for the delay.
As for the Coulter thing, well, that's just not true. Because I wasn't sure whether I'd be able to go forward I collected pledges, not donations. Pledges are a promise to send money upon request, not the money itself.
And Porsches suck. I'd much prefer a 1972 Roadrunner.
It's a shame that you don't have time to do the more often, because when you do it's almost always worthwhile. Yesterday's entry on Eagleton was indispensable reading for people like me who weren't around in 1972 – it put into context a lot of things, not just the Eagleton Affair itself, such as what Republican dirty tricks really means and how little has changed in that respect between Nixon's time and now.
Well, making a living as a cartoonist is a rare thing, so some counting-of-one's-blessings is in order.
Plus, a blog is all about branding.