Can an ambitious, made-in-L.A. model for political blogging succeedhttp://lamag.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=14D5B253DB1D499F9AD38F459D8E926A&nm=&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=8F3A7027421841978F18BE895F87F791&tier=4&id=01765D28B50A40CC8A4BCD592182FFFE<
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"In recent months a strange maple syrup scent has wafted over Manhattan, making the island smell like a massive Mrs. Butterworth’s spill. This is a perfect story for bloggers—those computer-bound diarists who post obsessively about of-the-moment stuff. What’s more in the air than an unexpected odor? “It smelled very very strongly of maple syrup and cookie dough, both of which are nice things,” proclaimed the musician Moby on his blog. Gothamist wondered if this was a “maple syrup dirty bomb,” while somebody wrote to apartmenttherapy that, “if terrorists find a way to scent their chemical agents to smell like Krispy Kreme doughnuts, we’re all screwed.” This may be what bloggers do best: grab something that’s happening right now and examine it from all angles.
One day in November, as dozens of bloggers filled the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center, the smell in the air was likewise sweet and omnipresent: It was the scent of money. The event was to launch Pajamas Media, a politically minded Web site that tilts right, though not exclusively. Founders have raised three and a half million for the new business, and the lavish party recalled a shinier time, before the tech bubble burst. Though based in L.A., Pajamas was seeking to make a splash in the East Coast capital of old media. There was a catered lunch and former New York Times reporter Judith Miller delivering the keynote speech. This was a freelance writer’s dream—free food! open bar!—and a liberal’s nightmare. Wandering about was Lucianne Goldberg, the woman who told Linda Tripp to buy a tape recorder; seated up front was John Podhoretz, New York Post columnist and Fox News contributor. There was a cluster of Los Angeles conservative writers and bloggers, including Jill Stewart, Andrew Breitbart, and Catherine Seipp.
Pajamas’ significance, though, does not lie in its politics but in its attempt to revolutionize the economics of blogging. By bundling a collection of sites, Pajamas wants to make blogs attractive to national advertisers and put money in the pockets of bloggers who, for the most part, are making bupkis. Cofounder Roger L. Simon says ultimately he wants to develop a Web network that will function as a news gatherer—“a virtual Associated Press.”
The very name is a provocation: If skeptics called bloggers a bunch of amateurs working in their pajamas, the new company was wearing the moniker with pride. In the months before the Rainbow Room unveiling, Pajamas had roped in some of the biggest, most inflammatory political voices of the Web. It had Glenn Reynolds, the man behind Instapundit, who is sometimes called “the father of the blog.” It had Michelle Malkin, who has argued that the World War II internment of Japanese Americans was a good thing. Also representing the right were Tammy Bruce and UCLA law prof Eugene Volokh. On the left, Pajamas has recruited the L.A. Weekly’s Marc Cooper and The Nation’s David Corn. The consortium almost nabbed one of blogging’s biggest names, Mickey Kaus, who says he might have taken the leap if the money wasn’t better at Slate, his current home.
Pajamas has drawn preemptive fire from those on the left who feared that yet again, the right was getting the jump on use of a new technology. It could still turn out that way. But Pajamas has had a short, bumpy ride up to now, one that points out the reason why most Web sites prefer to launch without fanfare: You can work out problems without intense scrutiny. In New York the Pajamas crew announced with a whoop they were changing their name to Open Source Media, before realizing (a) the name was lame, and (b) somebody else was already using it. So after a week or so as OSM, it reverted to Pajamas Media. Then it adopted a logo, without realizing it was lame and it’s not even a pair of pajamas—it’s a robe. The criticism meanwhile has been blistering, as the skeleton staff fumbles with goofs and glitches and has much of the blog world wondering where that $3.5 million is going. Even members are snorting: Seipp called the home page “weirdly bland” and cheered the notion that the site had gone 24 hours “without doing anything egregiously stupid.” Before the launch some liberals were quaking about the right-wing dreadnought they were convinced was on the horizon. Instead it’s been a gaffe factory that won’t survive without overhaul."
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