On The Difference Between Having Something Of Interest And Being Interesting...

I've received a whole lot of email since November 16 asking two simple, fundamental questions:

1) What is Pajamas Media supposed to be?

2) Why is Pajamas Media so bad?

The short answers are, in my opinion, as follows:

1) Interesting.

2) It isn’t interesting.

And as strange as this may sound, I’ve had a lot of trouble coming up with reasons that can explain away what Rog and Chaz have actually shoveled our way since November 16. It is so glaringly apparent that Pajamas Media neither redefines nor improves upon information and/or news delivery on the internet, which is what it is supposed to do, that one has trouble accepting with any seriousness the idea that such is the mission of company or the site. It is difficult to look at what Pajamas Media actually is, and separate that from any idea of what Pajamas Media was supposed to be.

On some level, I suppose, Rog and Chaz really did think that Pajamas Media was going to be the paradigm for some sort of New Media. But I have trouble taking that entirely seriously. It seems apparent now that such an idea was some sort of hazy, semi-erotic fantasy of future glories... the equivalent of a school-boy daydream. Certainly the web site betrays no amount of serious thought or work reaching towards a goal of being either uniquely effective or efficient in presenting New Media to the masses.

If we accept the proposition that Rog and Chaz weren’t particularly serious in thinking of Pajamas Media in terms of some sort of New Media, then the next question that needs to be asked is simply, “What did they think they were doing?” And that is a hard one to answer, because it is very difficult to put yourself in the place of the architects of disaster when that particular disaster is on such a vast and grand scale. Your first inclination is to always assume nobody could be stupid enough to dream up a web site like Pajamas Media’s. In this case, you’d have thought that someone would have looked at the stated objective, the available resources, and then at the product, and said, “Whoa...”

Right?

Well, stupidity definitely plays a part in any outright catastrophe, including the catastrophe that is Pajamas Media, but it isn’t really a satisfactory answer to what went wrong. Despite massive amounts of evidence to the contrary, it must be remembered that neither Simon nor Johnson are particularly stupid men. Nor can ignorance or naivety provide the answer, either. While it is true neither Rog nor Chaz has any meaningful knowledge of media operations or journalism, one look at the Pajamas Media site basically confirms the idea that the flaws are not the product of any sort of inexperience in or lack of sophistication about Old Media.

Ultimately, what it came down to was that Rog and Chaz never actually understood their own considerable blogging success. All Pajamas Media really needed to do is be interesting to a certain percentage of bloggers and blog readers. Had it succeeded in that, everything else would have fallen into place; they would have had traffic, blogger support (via comment and link) and at some point, financial reward. And if this was done long enough, well enough and on a large enough scale, it might have served as the beginnings of some sort of New Media.

But it appears that is not to be.

Why? Well, primarily because Rog and Chaz let their egos get the best of them. Pajamas Media, as it stands now, is simply a vanity project. That’s why it is so laughably dull. So many of us have focused so closely on Pajamas Media’s operational gaffes that we’ve basically ignored just how trite and vapid the ‘original content’ at the site really is. One of my commenters posited a while back that Pajamas Media was largely a product of hubris, which Steven Den Beste promptly picked up as the truth of the matter. And while hubris (which I would define as “overweening pride”) has a certain appeal as an explanation, I cannot wholeheartedly accept it as the solution to this case.

That is because hubris was a feature of tragedy, and I cannot find it in me to consider Pajamas Media substantial enough to qualify as such. There is no gravitas there. Pajamas Media is more along the lines of buffo comic opera, and if there is one place you don’t find hubris, it is in comedy. No, hubris isn’t the correct way to characterize what has happened here. What I think has happened, ultimately, is that Rog, Chaz, and perhaps even Glenn looked at their traffic and their fan mail and then came to a logical and completely incorrect conclusion:

They were interesting, therefore their blogs were interesting.

That, I feel, is the fatal flaw in Pajamas Media. Pajamas Media is a catastrophic failure not because the principals are stupid, ignorant or naïve (although you could make a case that they are), but because they assumed that they themselves were, in and of themselves, of interest. Glenn Reynolds may be an interesting guy, but that isn’t why people go to Instapundit. They go to Instapundit because Instapundit is interesting blog. The same scenario goes for each and every blog and blogger associated with Pajamas Media. Just look at the Pajamas Media Blogjams for your proof: Blogjams are a painful embarrassment because they have eliminated that which we find interesting – the bloggers blogging – and substituted that which is not interesting – the bloggers not blogging.

Peyton Manning may fascinate us on any given Sunday right now, but I’m not so sure he’d keep our interest if he suddenly decided to spend those same Sunday afternoons playing old Led Zeppelin tunes on an accordion. He fascinates because he does something really, really well... not because he is inherently fascinating. That is the fundamental problem with Pajamas Media: Somewhere along the line Rog and Charles decided that because they had managed to produce interesting blogs they were inherently interesting folks. They then assumed that because they were interesting in and of themselves, whatever they did would be interesting to others as a matter of course. Period. And that pretty much explains why Pajamas Media is as half-assed as it is. It was assumed that we are enthralled enough that whatever was put before us would be good enough to keep us enthralled until the next installment of enthrallment was served up.

Fundamentally, Pajamas Media is awful because Rog and Chaz got it backwards... Interesting blogging makes the blogger interesting – not the other way around.

Comments

[FabioC.]

Also SDB a while ago was contacted by PJM, but he refused the offer and wrote that it looked a lot like a fishing expedition for big blogging names. This fits quite well in your Vanity Scenario.

[Scott Ferguson]

Given time, I think Pajamas Media may develop into something interesting.

For right now, I think THIS is interesting.

[FabioC.]

That does not exactly come totally unexpected, Scott.

Charles will likely have to police his comments more extensively.

[Timothy]

Troja claimed 16 million pageviews for PJM blogs...but he didn't give me a time period (I'm going to guess since launch), didn't tell me how many of those came from each blog, and didn't tell me how many are unique. Those questions, along with the fact that he's their marketing guy, make me wonder exactly how meaningful that number is.

You're right that the whole sad enterprise is vanity. None of the principles needs it to succeed. As for bloggers/blogging: I'm a regular Instapundit reader, but I hardly read anything Reynolds writes besides that because it's usually short and boring. Simon's only moderately interesting on a good day, and LGF is like the in-patient ward at Right Wing Nuthouse a lot of the time so I rarely bother even looking.

[Jim]

Dennis, you're being generous about the interesting part.

Didn't you notice how New Media Mogul (TM) Rog survived a long drought period of reader comments with the help of inflated comment numbers? I've never been to a site where so many accidental double and triple posting of comments occur. Funnier yet, even more padding of numbers happens with the hapless offenders' apologies.

1 person 2x post + obligatory apology = 3 comments.
1 person 3x post + red-faced apology = 4 comments.

And it still happens, but not quite so often. Now that a post-PJM SOS has gone out among his supporters, and they're valiantly commenting over there, again, Roger's blog is back to shallow opinion, Earnest Diatribes, occasional pedantry, chatboard flirtation, and tedious over-response to trolls.

Bleah.

[Jim]

Dennis, you're being generous about the interesting part.

Didn't you notice how New Media Mogul (TM) Rog survived a long drought period of reader comments with the help of inflated comment numbers? I've never been to a site where so many accidental double and triple posting of comments occur. Funnier yet, even more padding of numbers happens with the hapless offenders' apologies.

1 person 2x post + obligatory apology = 3 comments.
1 person 3x post + red-faced apology = 4 comments.

And it still happens, but not quite so often. Now that a post-PJM SOS has gone out among his supporters, and they're valiantly commenting over there, again, Roger's blog is back to shallow opinion, Earnest Diatribes, occasional pedantry, chatboard flirtation, and tedious over-response to trolls.

Bleah.

[Jim]

Oh, I'm completely embarrassed by the double post. Damn Typekey.

[Peter vE]

I personally think PJM/OSM/SfHM/WTF?M is a great success. Without it, I never would have come to read Dennis the Peasant.

Roger has succeeded in increasing at least this blogs traffic, and if you add Blogads, you might begin to earn at least peasant wages for your blogtime. Whatever happened to the PJM ads on the conjoined sites, anyways?

[urthshu]

One turn of events may finally make it interesting [to me, if no one else] and that is if, during the next elections cycle, they are prosecuted for political speech, as threatened by the McCain proposal.

Oddly enough, they seem to be well-positioned for that event. No comments, so it tightens that angle; claims to be about news & making money, so labeling them a party's house organ is harder to prove; they've got noted Liberals aboard, so they can claim to be centrist to a degree; they've got professional journalists as advisors, so 1st Amendment issues apply more readily; they've got a 'war chest' etc.

Hmm. :/

[David N. Scott]

Hey, insightful. I've got to catch up a bit on blog readin' but I must say that this is something to chew on...

[richard mcenroe]

urthshu — In short, safely neuter(ed)...

[dragonlady474]

Jim, LOL!

[Guesst]

D: You left out all the bloggers who signed on to the scheme because they believed themselves to be as interesting and fascinating and insightful as Roger and Charles.

I'm talking about the ones who pretended to hold their noses while they wrote snarky comments about how the critics were "jealous" not to be included in the elite list of 70 or whatever it was, etc.

They are the jammas part of PjM.

[Jeff]

Pajamas Media is the journalistic equivalent of the war in Iraq.

[ronin]

I can come up with 3.5 million reasons for Pajamas Media.

[Magnum]

Speaking of getting things backwards, your sentence, indeed standalone paragraph, "They were interesting, therefore their blogs were interesting." is backwards.

[Andean]

It's very easy:

why would any high traffic blogger come to PM and blog for them? That's like doing somebody elses homework for free. No glory. PM is not doing original work and just plan to mooch off people's popularity/traffic.

[DennisThePeasant]

Magnum-

Re-read. I was explaining Rog/Chaz's assumption there. You have it backwards.

[TAS]

Dude! I would kill to see Peyton Manning play Zep' tunes on an accordion.

[Petro]

It's the name. The giveaway. Remember the infamous MSM dis saying that bloggers were just people in "pajamas?" They thought they could get attention and prove that it all (blogging) is irrelevant. Only it turned out that it was they who were.

It's that geeky, nerdy side of Fascism that always takes them down.

[GC Philo]

Aha, so that's what Pajama Media is! I thought it was the web-pages I check before I go to bed and, frankly, I think that's something better left undiscussed...

[Onetrue]

Rather than buffo comic opera, I would classify PJM as poorly executed and pale farce...

[Eric Brewer]

Magnum is right. What you meant to say was:

"...and then came to a logical and completely incorrect conclusion:

Their blogs were interesting, therefore they themselves were interesting."

[Magnum]

Posted by: DennisThePeasant | December 09, 2005 at 10:02 AM
Oh OK, I see it now ;-)
I thought that what you meant to say was that their blogs were interesting (or, at least, well-trafficked) therefore they themselves and their stupid little project would be interesting too.

[Steve H.]

I question the assertion that Instapundit is interesting. It's a boring collection of links supplied by traffic-hungry, butt-licking toadies. Not counting the research I do when tormenting PJM, I only read Instapundit when someone expressly asks me to.

His linkage was always boring, because he linked the same dull favorites over and over Now it's even worse. He's doing exactly what I predicted back in May: linking to Pajamas Media sites even when the content sucks.

You should go to law school and get to know law professors. Then you'd understand the irony of relying on a law professor to decide what's entertaining.

When was the last time he wrote more than two paragraphs? Thousands of bloggers are doing exactly the same thing he does, only better. If he quit blogging for a month, he'd lose his traffic, and he would never get it back.

Fark and Drudge outdo his linkage shtick by an order of magnitude, and when it comes to pure blogging, he isn't fit to carry Michelle Malkin's mouse.