well, that's what i meant about not knowing what they're doing. i think the economist has done what the american newsweeklies have failed to do: maintain coherence. in lots of ways. these days, i think you barely know what you're getting with time or newsweek from one week to the next. but maybe not. it's not like i read them. haven't in some time, although i used to poke around in newsweek just to know what they throught was important.
> Could you guesstimate an annual budget for the kind of pub that
> > would be
> > worth doing? I have a couple of ballpark figures in my head, but I
> > was never
> > privy to the budgets of the ezines I worked for in the past (except
> > that one
> > was very small and the other was pretty big).
>
> Off the top of my head, I'd say a mil a year, or maybe $750,000. Full-
> time staff of 4 or 5, well-paid with benefits, plus freelance
> writers. These days you'd have to do audio & video too.
that's about what i'd been thinking, too. we might have to double it to account for some IT and other things (it's like cartman buying his own amusement park, stuff always comes up). but still, $2M/yr might be doable.
i was glad jordan posted the stuff on salon, because i'd been thinking about them, too. i just don't really know what lessons to draw from it, since whether we're talking about a daily newszine, a weekly anti-Economist, or a weekly-ish commentary pub, Salon ain't that. it is clear, though, that their bread and butter is advertisements. yes, there's the whole community thing (i've been there done that, and there are lots of pluses to it, but, again, so much free community out there . . .), but that's not what keeps them afloat.
i'll bet, though, on the weekly news format, if we were doing out jobs, we'd cut into the Economist's market, or at worst get subbed to alongside it. Here Michael's comparison with the FT is perhaps instructive.
but i've lost sight of what sort of pub we're fantasizing about. :)
meanwhile, i keep watching my phone for a call from that angel funder that reads lbo-talk. why doesn't she call??
j