If for no other reason than a mild validation of my own career, I have to be happy whenever someone else decides that there is a business plan, even in this economic climate, to a website devoted entirely to news and opinion about the media. Mediaite launched today, a combination of Mediabistro and Gawker that promises not to be “over-snarky or mean and nasty.” But you may want to read it anyway. (Side note: how the hell do you pronounce Mediaite? Should there be a diacritical mark in there somewhere? Doesn’t it sound like the name of an early civilization, like the Hittites?)
One pre-launch criticism has been that the site’s publisher, Dan Abrams, formerly of MSNBC, also runs Abrams Research, a business that connects corporations with journalists—preferably ones who cover, or have covered, the corporations’ field—to “consult” on PR dilemmas. (Abrams has said that the company will hook up companies with freelance or former journalists in the field, not full-time journos, which I suppose is meant to be reassuring, because then it’s merely as ethically dubious as politicos jumping back and forth between government and K Street lobbying firms.)
Jeff Jarvis charged earlier that the setup “smells,” because of the potential for Mediaite contributors—who may consult for Abrams Research—to write about the very companies paying Abrams. Abrams has said that Mediaite is editorially independent, though he does bankroll the small editorial operation. (On the one hand, journalists have to write about their outfits’ advertisers, and sister companies, all the time. On the other hand, as the recent Washington Post “salon” controversy shows, selling advertising and selling access to journalists are two different things.)
Thus far, in any event, the content of Mediaite (edited by former Huffington Post media critic Rachel Sklar) seems to be in line with the media-minutiae fixations of Gawker, the Huffington Post, the New York Observer, et al. I’m guessing that the site’s chief eyeball magnet for now will be its algorithmically-generated “power grid” ranking media moguls, editors, personalities and reporters. It’s an ingenious marriage of technology with two of life’s great truths: (1) list features are pageview-generating machines and (2) media people’s desire to compare themselves to their peers is the most powerful force known to nature.
That said, I have to wonder how much revenue there is to be monetized from media people checking theirs and others’ rankings over and over again. Though I guess I should feel happy that advertisers are actually willing to bet that journalists will have discretionary-spending money in the short-to-intermediate-term future. Hey, we can all dream!