Welcome to the thirteenth “This Business of Art / Media / Web Fix,” in which I share with you things I read that I loved relating to the work I do here — online media, business, entrepreneurship, women in tech, start-ups, journalism, publishing, management, queer visibility, and so forth.
Hello! I had a two-hour BUSINESS phone call last night and a thirty-minute BUSINESS skype call yesterday afternoon AND a two-hour BUSINESS skype call last night. Are you proud of me? I’m proud of me.
This Business of Online Media
+ Okay so, first things first: there’s an article about Autostraddle on Broadly. This piece actually was initially intended to be for Vice’s LGBT section (before Broadly existed) and most of the interviews were conducted back in January and February — Nicole chose who to reach out to on the team, and ended up talking to me probably ten or so times, Laneia a few times, and also Alex, Rachel, Yvonne, Heather, Stef, Mey and (I think) Carmen. I have to be 100% honest and say that I am too much of an anxious psychopath to actually read it myself, instead I’ve made everybody else read it and tell me about it in detail! Contrary to popular belief, journalists don’t let you read what they’re gonna write about you before it goes up, so we’ve been really nervous for a good eight months. I did start skimming it but once I realized somehow “friends made through my personal blog and L Word recaps that I then met in real life” had been framed as “friends made through L Word recaps and forums that were mostly just online” I had to stop. (I only ever visited L Word forums to post links to my recaps, and never made friends that way, but I probably didn’t explain that clearly enough.) So instead I just pull it up on my browser and look at the headline and the picture and feel like FINALLY WE HAVE ARRIVED! Reports that have come back to me on the story have been largely positive — that it was flattering, made our financial situation clear (although many numbers were outdated by the time the story went to press) (Don’t worry, Stef is being more adequately compensated for her Vapid Fluff), and left people feeling good about what we do. I’ve read some really nice quotes from it too! I’ve also heard that it talked about a lot of early problems without discussing the incredible energies we put into fixing them and the results since seen, that Heather and Yvonne were erased from the story, and that it made us seem VERY WHITE due to people talked to, pictures chosen, and aforementioned problems mentioned but resolutions left out. It sounds like very little if anything that Mey said about trans inclusion, Stef said about bisexual inclusion, or Yvonne said about WOC inclusion made it into the final story. Anyhow, maybe you read it and felt FINALLY THEY HAVE ARRIVED. If you did, that’s very sweet, and I love you! Also Nicole is a really really good queer writer to keep your eye on! I recommend Patrolling the Queer Craigslist, Eddie is Gone and Better Sex, Better World.
+ Today is the day — an ad-blocker for Apple mobile devices is coming into our lives, and many fear this will cause the bursting of the publishing bubble. Stratechery has some crucial points about how we got to this unsustainable precipice to begin with and, of course, so does The Awl: in Welcome to the Block Party, one of many issues discussed is that if the lack of display ads drive publishers to produce content primarily on other platforms, like Facebook or Google News, then we’ll really be fucked, ’cause you can’t block those ads and they’re pretty abysmal on the privacy front.
+ How Audience Engagement Editors are Guiding Online Discussions: IÂ didn’t even know these existed!
+ There are exciting changes happening at Rookie.
+ It Happened To Me: I read The First-Person Industrial Complex: How The Harrowing Personal Essay Took Over the Internet.
+ UPDATE: A response to the First-Person Industrial Complex piece on The Hairpin.
+ Why is the Internet so obsessed with celebrity breakups?
+ An interview with the lovely and amazing Eboné Bell, Founder of Lesbian Magazine Tagg, about “racism, labels and building from scratch.”
+ For anybody out there who thinks that podcasting began with “Serial,” this article invites you to Meet the Company That Mastered Podcasting Long Before “Serial.” (Everybody knows podcasting started with This American Life, DUH.)
+ Women Write About Comics thanks you for your help and has new goals and perks for anybody who can pitch in!
+ Everybody’s talking about Slack!
+Â Readers finish 95% of the longform articles they start reading.
+ The viral economy of Digifest.
+ In Against Students Stories, Aaron Bady explains why crafting a story out of comments made on a private facebook group for Duke freshman is lazy, awful journalism.
This Business of Business
+ VC Bill Gurley is confident the on-demand startup bubble will burst, just like Kozmo did in the early ’00s when it shut down and broke my ice-cream-and-DVD-loving-heart.
+ A Case Study of Start-Up Failure.
+ The Rise and Fall of Quirky — the Start-Up That Bet Big on the Genius of Regular Folks.
+ Pack Mentality: How Herschel Reinvented the Backpack
+ The Pilatespocalypse: How the method That Started the Boutique Fitness Trend Is Going Bust
+ The Living Wage Gap: State by State contains an interactive map you might really enjoy tinkering with!
Businesswoman’s Special: How To Do Business Better
+ This was in Helping You Help Yourself, but it helped me really think long and hard about helping myself: How to Sneak a Home Office into ANY Room.
+ This article on The Advantages of Recruiting Your Startup Team Internationally  is actually filled with good advice about what to do when you are planning on hiring a team that telecommutes. So does this.
Stories I Wish Somebody Would Write For Us
+ Personal essays that highlight the struggles still faced by women who date women in this world of ours despite the seeming assumption that everything is a-okay now for the gays. Because it’s not! Especially looking for women of color and people living in rural, conservative or Bible Belt areas.
