[O]h, what a drubbing we took. Many, many readers pointed out to us that OSM™ was an oxymoron; the open source tech community expressed concern; and a very fine gentleman named Christopher Lydon at Open Source (www.radioopensource.org) politely pointed out that we might be trampling on his space. ...Even me? My biggest problem with the name "Open Source Media" was not the wound imagery ("open sores"), but that is was so thuddingly dull and corporate-sounding -- as if they hoped to suck the life out of blogging.
[T]he whole experience of being caught with our pajamas down has been a bit embarrassing, but in the end, when we realized we could get our beloved name back, we were overjoyed. So a warm, hearty thanks to all of you who expressed your displeasure with our phony identity.
So how did this happen in the first place? Back at the beginning, certain, shall we say, paternalistically minded parties (i.e., the guys in suits) decided that we should act like grownups, and being as yet somewhat immature—at least as businesspeople--we did as we were told.They're not the guys-in-suits. Some other guys, who once pushed them around, are the guys-in-suits.
Which is how, one day, we ended up sitting around a conference table listening to representatives from a "branding" company....
Enough said. So, in the spirit of "open source," we thought we’d tell you the real story behind the reason for our name change. And hope that our corporate parents will be satisfied with good grades and healthy revenue.
Now that the name has been changed, will there be other changes? Will the site fill up with exciting, interesting material? Because it's the lack of good stuff to read that has always been their main problem. Did the guys-in-suits make that happen?
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Throughout these last few days, I keep thinking that the Huffingtons dealt with ridicule with much more backbone than Roger and Charles and friends. Has everyone forgotten the funniest website of the year - Huffington's Toast? Arianna was ripped to shreds and then those shreds were put through a coffee grinder and I don't recall much of a complaint. Nope, that just kept doing what they were doing and it's become somewhat successful. I guess.
With Pajamas, they make grandiose pronouncements and deliver no content. People come knocking - hello, anyone in here? - and the faithful act like Althouse and Den Beste and Hogonice and Moxie, and many, many others are guilty of philosophical impurities. Not to mention the Open Source debacle and the very interesting claims of Dennis the Peasant.
So they've changed the name. Huzzah. What do they have to offer?
It's still wire copy from the Xinhua News Agency.
There's a link to NormBlog. Actually, it's a link to an inside page, but if you click again they claim they'll take you to Normblog. Gotta get those page clicks for the advertisers.
At the top is a post from the vaunted Barcelona staff. Whoa, I think this qualifies for www.bulwer-lytton.com/: A few days ago it was Liberia; today it's in Germany where a female will be taking power for the first time in the country's history (she's also the first head og government to have grown up in Germany's formerly Communist East, CNN reminds, and the youngest one since World War II, according to Bloomberg). No! not an honest to goodness FEMALE!
Dont't forget the tag: And, predictably, bloggers are starting to have their take...Well, thank God, because the world can't spin until bloggers have their take. I guess it's better than bloggers go wild.
I was surprised at the number of blogs I read that are OSM blogs. They all seemed more reasonable...more intelligent.
It's been almost a week and other than Roger L. Simon worried the internet will harm his daughter and the intelligence carnival, I have yet to see them offer anything of anything. Say what you will of Huffington Post, but at least they had crap to make fun of. Which is a heck of a lot better than being made fun of for having nothing.
-having to pay someone to make a mistake - not a good start - one would think they could have ascertained that themselves, the OSM title was not to be used - blaming 'the suits' only puts mud on the frosting which the cake didn't deserve in the first place. Witty, one-liners don't do a hell of alot for me, though I am only referencing Little Green Footballs, i.e. some pasted blurb on some world event is followed by several hundred 'cute' one-liners. I'm glad it's a free country though. By the way, of roughly the first 119+ respondents in LGF, I saw only one snide reference to you.
*..one day, we ended up sitting around a conference table listening to representatives from a "branding" company...* Ugh..
Use of outside consultants is a death knell. Look inside the ranks for ideas and energy.
The name was uninspiring making it difficult to remember.
Why, exactly, does that site merit the level of attention it's getting?
It's the internet -- let them have good content, then we can talk about them.
Goesh, it's like this: when the VC gives you three and a half million dollars, you tend to want to make them happy. At least they resisted eventually. (No doubt the name problems helped convince them.) I think Pajamas Media is a better name, anyway.
Bill, um, ... are you saying now that you'd prefer that Roger et al would have dealt with all the criticism by not changing anything in order to show "backbone"? So your point would be that you don't like the set up, but don't like that they're responding to criticisms because that makes them spineless --- doesn't that imply that you don't think the criticisms are all that important? Maybe even kind of trivial?
I'm not completely clear what the problem is Xinhua is --- it's not like no one else in the world uses copy from Xinhua. Nasty right wingers using Maoist copy? I don't get it.
Bearbee, I think you've got it exactly right. Doubly so when you realize that one of the jobs of the "branding consultants" would have been to identify any potential trademark issues....
Adam, I'm still puzzled by why it deserves not just the amount of attention, but the degree of vitriol.
All Things Beautiful TrackBack "Pajamas Media Formerly Known As OSM'
"A CARNIVAL OF IRAQ PRE-WAR INTELLIGENCE...and OSM ahem Pajamas Media about their final decision to go back to their original name. So now the pajamas are back on...
Charlie: no, that isn't what I'm saying and that isn't my point, so the rest doesn't even apply.
And where does this leave all of us who sleep in boxers and a t-shirt?
Thinking out loud: They have a concept of being a starting point for readers looking for honest bloggers, combined with a constant summary of news the bloggers are talking about.
It's a different concept than Huffpo, whish is a group blog and an inherent product in itself.
A little voice still tells me their concept is still interesting. I think they haven't figured out how to do it.
Really, Instapundit already does most of it. The Intelligence roundtable, he arranged that, right? Did the existence of OSM make that more possible for him to do? I don't see why.
And they haven't paid any attention to having something engaging at the site itself. Although if they do - again, isn't it just an alternative Instapundit?
In a sense, aren't they just rebranding Instapundit? Why?
(It's possible the Xinhua link is seen from their end as simply something to present, figuring that people reading will either already know or begin to pick up how it should be seen.)
And part of what makes Instapundit good is the way he gleefully links to anyone worthwhile. But Pajamas seems constrained to link only to their "members." The idea that their members represent the totality of what's worth reading is absurd, of course, no one there would even claim it. But again - what's the point? Where's the improvement, seen from the readers' end?
Still it pays to remember, the larger picture is that more people are reading good political analysis. Even if half of us writing are only stormtroopers of the "squadrons of digital brownshirts."
My God, I dislike Al Gore these days.
I just wanted to announce that I'm putting up an Ann Althouse worship site.
As soon as I can find a sucker to give me 3.5 million smackers.
Your Turing test made me type "Bpacpewa."
Hey! BPACPEWA MEDIA! Guaranteed safe from trademark infringement suits!
I want to say .....'who cares?' (About OSM/Pajamas Media). And really .... who does.
They've certainly shown themselves worthy of scorn and derision. But as all have been pointing out for a little while now, there's no there there (@whatever?.com).
Mostly, it reminds me of the closing minutes of the Truman Show. The indoor/underground (?) car park attendants. Sitting in the little office, watching the Truman Show.
And, when it's over, they say to each other: "what do you want to watch?" I don't know .... what do you want to watch?
Hey, I had a short follow-up comment that appeared briefly and then disappeared. I think it was a glitch, didn't seem particularly offensive.
Except I see it in the string of comments when I'm writing a comment, but it's not in the comments when I go back to the main page. Weird, man.
Just saying: to the extent that Pajamas/OSM is constrained from linking to absolutely any blogger who produces something noteworthy, with a main focus on its members, then from the average reader's perspective it's really not an improvment on what the free-ranging Instapundit has provided.
Whatsa - you may well be right that upping the ante on Instapudit might be a good model, but is that what they saw themselves doing? Maybe it is. But so far it's worse than Instapundit.
Well now it's back! What the -! Sorry everyone. Go on about your business. I was never here.
Charlie said... "Goesh, it's like this: when the VC gives you three and a half million dollars, you tend to want to make them happy."
They got $3.5M from Volokh Conspiracy? Viet Cong? I know Eugene has made some money, but sheesh! I know I know venture capitalist --- cool use of initials -- so "inside baseball".
I don't get (read -- really don't care) all the hubbub over OSM/Pajamas, etc., but the website does blow. It's like corporate skateboarding, multi-national (Sony BMG)punk music, Munch's The Scream on Post-Its.... Cool turns to crap. Going corporate and putting out pompous pronouncements sucks the cool out of blogging.
That may prove to not be the case, but whoring for the PRC, makes me wonder who the VC is for OSM, OK?
I think it was the lawyer suits who told them they had to drop the OSM name, not the VC suits.
Whatsapundit, I've been saying the same thing about blogs like Reynolds and Volokh for a long time. The demographics are what advertisers only dream about, but the big companies like Nikon seem mired in the past.
Print media circulation is continuing to decline as people move to other sources of information including blogs and TV advertising is reaching fewer and fewer eyes as viewers figure out how to bypass them using Tivo and other contraptions, but large companies haven't figured it out and don't know where to put their enormous advertising budgets.
This is what I had thought the PJM would do. It was my understanding of their original mission that they would serve as agents by selling blogs to advertisers while at the same time educating them about an untapped potential for sales they didn't dream existed.
I think this would have worked and they might have become the Wm. Morris Agy of the blogosphere. Time will tell how it all works out.
Seriously, I am NOT wearing pajamas.
My DAD wears pajamas.
Frankly, the only reason I wear the boxers is cuz my wife makes me.
You hit it on the nose, Ann. If "the guys in suits made us change our name", then it's the guys in suits dictating how and what they can write. "But it's not!" they'll protest. Yeah, it is. They aren't on the phone telling you what to write, true. But it's that inner guy in a suit that Roger & company are listening to who are running the show now. Those same self-interests that bloggers cut their teeth complaining about are now central to their enterprise. Freewheeling? Devil may care? Hell for leather? Not in the guy-with-suit lexicon. Try "dull", "cautious" and "plodding". Gotta get a return for the investors. Gotta make it work. Get those wagons in a circle, it's us against them - them being anyone not us.
Meet the new boss.
I Emailed them about the lack of an RSS feed. A bunch of bloggers without one? What are they thinking? I won't bother with a blog site that doesn't have one.
One always does want to watch out for taking the obtuse anti-next-step role in a repeat of the old food coop wars. Ugly time, for those few hundred Americans paying attention.
(The losers then have become part of the core of the Kos crew now. Don't know what that means. They're related to the "all music should be free man!" contingent.)
A couple of posts ago, the user paulfrommpls wrote: "One always does want to watch out for taking the obtuse anti-next-step role in a repeat of the old food coop wars. Ugly time, for those few hundred Americans paying attention.
"(The losers then have become part of the core of the Kos crew now. Don't know what that means. They're related to the 'all music should be free man!' contingent.)"
Could somebody please decipher this for me? "Food coop"? "Anti-next-step"? Huh? I don't mean to come off rude -- I'm genuinely eager to know what paulfrommpls was trying to convey.
This smacks of exactly the sort of unprofessionalism the media has accused bloggers of all along. The blythe tone of the "Oops! We made a mistake," just adds more fat to that fire.
Sad. Really, really sad. Not just for Whatever-The-Hell-They're-Calling-Themselves-Today, but for all bloggers.
Excuse us while we pee ourselves with embarrassment
Charles Johnson & Roger L. Simon
Monday, November 21, 2005
Once upon a time, some friends who met at a bedwetters support group following 9/11 (us) got together and decided it would be super neato to start a blog company that noboby, including ourselves, could figure out what in the hell it was supposed to be. "We could call it Peeholes Media," we said, referring to our now-famous propensity to pee ourselves when anyone who looks remotely Muslim gets within 30 yards of us. Well, we were as surprised as anyone when we managed to raise a significant amount of capital to form said whatever-in-the-hell-it-is....
Jim -
I'm just saying, watch out. Just a thought. The new co-ops also probably screwed up too and were made fun of along the same lines.
Having etc. -
"Food coop" should be "food co-op." In the early 70's, the small ultra funky original co-ops began to give way to slightly bigger and more professionally-managed ones with a wider variety of less-pure and alternative foods. That's "the next step" I mean. It's the first step on the path to a place like Whole Foods, if you know what that is. The mainstreaming of the alternative. Some of it is inevitable and some of it is good.
Ahh, Paul, gotcha.
I think, yes, I was reading "coop" as kewp -- e.g., "chicken coop" -- and just got myself further entangled from there.
Thanks. (And now that I understand your post, I can say that I agree with your assessment.)
*Bearbee, the name did come from insiders. RSimon asked his commenters for name suggestions....*
Hmmm....disappointing...but gee I wonder what they would have thought up to call Apple Computer?
Well that certainly elevates the level of discussion a notch or two now doesn't it. (not why I'm commenting. I'll just step around).
OSM now reminds me of the "Indymedia/Google News" affair. Where Indymedia was previously listed on Google among/with the world's news providers. When most of the stuff linked to them, on Google, was simpleton propaganda.
OSM's credibility is fading ....
Very nice blog you have, having to register with blogger to comment sucks. I envy people with a tight focus.
I guess this is different set of guys-in-suits from the ones who thought Yahoo! and Google sounded professional...
Are you sure it wasn't men in these kind of suits that made them do it?
(everybody loves Kaiju (except Prof. Althouse when it comes to Rodan))
playah grrl appears to be a fan of the Roger "No Written Contract" Simon Hollywood School of Management™
XWL, you didn't just link to Kaiju, you linked to Kaiju Big Battle! That stuff RULES!
Sarah, (yes, I got the hints, I know who you are), what the bloody hell is this thing with wondering about whether I'm the same person as Jakemanjack and, now I guess, Corvan? It's not like I'm particularly shy about my identity --- as I told Jakemanjack (who emailed me after my suggestion), my email address, with my real name, is in my profile. I'm the Charlie you know, my Japanese name is Yukio, and I have a Japanese name because (as I told you) my Ura no Senki teacher couldn't pronounce "Charlie" because she was a 90 year old Japanese lady with no teeth.
Are you really so arrogant to think that there couldn't be two people reading Althouse who disagree with you? Or two people on Comcast? (Since I got email from JMJ, I know it's a Comcast address. Is the IP address part of what you're on about? Do you have any idea how many people get high speed internet from Comcast?)
I mean, Jesus Kee-rist, if you can't think of something stupider to complain about, could you try to be more amusing about it?
Oh, and Bill, I know you didn't mean to imply that you were subverting your whole line of reasoning with an inconsistent "damned if you do and damned if you don't" line of reasoning.
And speaking of "damned if you do", as far as the Xinhua thing goes, if' I'm getting this, the complaint is that PJM is a right-wing biased web site that links to too much Commie propaganda.
Sarah, if it's not too late here --- there's no way to *prove* this (how can you prove a negative), but if you still think I'm jakemanjack, it's because you have misled yourself. My word on it.
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