At a bar last night, I was talking to someone smart who made an excellent point: that a very quiet, revolutionary act in the history of publishing had just taken place. (This person compared this moment to Gutenberg, which might be a little bit far afield but not that far off!) That is that Joshua Micah Marshall is hiring a publisher for Talking Points Memo, the blog he started all on his own in 2000, a bit before all the warbloggers like Jeff Jarvis and Glenn Reynolds came onto the Internet, and four years before Michelle Malkin. (Oh yes, how soon we forget.) My friend's point was: here is an editor, who built and owns his publication, who is now going to be the editor-owner, who will employ the publisher. For those of you who have worked at any sort of publication, the implications of this are staggering.
via www.theawl.com
Choire nails it, except this is the present, not the future. This is the major business shift that we're witnessing in the media world, and it's less dependent on the Internet than we all think. Other great examples of this – Serious Eats, Gothamist, the Awl itself, and even skunkworks projects within large media companies (a la the Big Picture).
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