Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

I'm quite surprised by the criticism directed at David in particular. I don't know him, but I have done a little editing as a volunteer and seen what happens a little bit behind the scenes. How many organisations would divulge the information that WD does? Our governments certainly don't.

Some may think I am biased, but Hamish would assure you that I have been critical frequently and had nothing but acceptance and encouragement in return. I only know Hamish a little and have not met any of the others, but it's clear to me that WD is meant as Margo summarised it several times. For those that want to make use of the site and hopefully make a decent income as well. Just like we all do.

Unfortunately a site such as this does need time to grow and attract more use. With extra use so will the earnings possibilities. But to me it is clear that this will happen as what I see in the mainstream media is simply copycat rubbish mainly. One paper publishes something so they all do. To what end? To sell papers I guess but I would have thought that copying others simply restricts their reader audience.

As an example, in Brisbane, the  Courier-Mail continually advertises how many papers it sells etc, but it is the only widely published paper in Brisbane. So who are they competing with? No one in hard copy. Yet their sales figures have dropped in recent times and to me it is clear why. The internet.

One thing that does surprise me is the number of page hits per day compared to the number registered to post. I can only say to those reading, please join in and broaden the base of support and particularly input.

One of my pet peeves which most would know is that I dislike posts which simply regurgitate Party propaganda, from any party. To me Australia is shot if we are so polarised by politics that we can't see the good and bad in any position taken in politics. That's how the parties want you to react, to be their news bearers, believers.

Without that broadening the posts become repetetive and the reading wanes. If those that want to support but don't have money to donate, just give your time by expressing your opinion or respond to anothers posts. Just join in.

Andrew makes some good points and would it be that more could support rather than try to find fault. Criticism is always possible but destructive criticism really only reflects on those that provide it.

Also, as Andrew says, Bastards Incorporated isn't just a Coalition organisation. It accepts members from any part of the political spectrum.

David Roffey said

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Funnily enough, it's often the left that think that employee's rights should be trampled on when it's for a cause - I've seen this on any number of occasions on the executive of charities etc, not to mention trade unions, who tend toward being the sort of employer they'd fulminate against.

There is no question that many left-wing trade unions are brutal employers. Unilateral, immediate terminations of employment, compulsory tithes or levies to private political accounts, low wages, no over-time, all these things are indeed common place. It's less common these days fortunately but unresolved sexual harassment matters also seemed distressingly regular.

I don't often find myself agreeing with much of what gets written in Webdiary (especially anything written by Ms Kingston) but rather than turn on yourselves and calling each other losers, why not adopt a more positive approach. I suspect a for-profit structure is probably the wrong way forward for what seems to be a collectivist exercise. The clowns at Wikimedia Foundation show what can be done, they seem to be able to raise money when they need it because all the mad leftists involved think they sort of own a piece of it. Might work for you guys. Then you can have elections, internal politics and carnage the Left are so good at, which will in turn attract traffic and interest. (and sympathy!)

New media always - whether it was radio or television or the net - takes a long time to generate ad revenues. There's a lag between attracting the audience and bringing in the bucks and there's not much you can do about it. You guys are basically a very new part of a newish medium. So be patient. Presuming that you will get the same revenue your traffic would if you were getting the same sort of audience on radio or a mag is pretty unrealistic, in my view. It won't happen over night, or even this year or next but it will happen. And props to you for opening up the books, a counter-intuitive thing to do but probably very worthwhile in getting those involved to face reality.

But I hope you all keep the faith, keep at it and give sensible people like Tim Blair something to complain about for years to come.

Good luck.

Thank you for posting the accounts, David, it woke me up to the fact that I’ve been a freeloader too long – a drop in the bucket is in the post.

It started me thinking that those of us with influence should be championing Margo for an Honour. Which made me ask – for what?  I think Webdiary is not simply Media. Nor is it Democracy. Perhaps it is closest to Politics – a modernisation of Athenian principles.

Don’t you dare be disheartened by the nay-sayers.  You are making a substantial contribution to our society. With hindsight, there are bound to be errors, but thats how we learn.

Jay

Ps.  I presume you have looked at making donations tax-deductible and decided not to take that path.

What a real shame.

I know that I was not the only one to implore Margo to get the financial side of things well and truly sorted out from day 1. And not only for her own sake... I said at the time that the death of Webdiary would be a loss for the poltically active community... and particularly the Left. As long as the Webdiary "model" relied on unrealistic non-sustainable sacrfice from Margo there was no robustness to the plan.

It seemed ironic that Margo was often the champion of sustainable economic behaviour and yet was unwilling to practice such behaviour "locally".

Hopefully a new sustainable structure can be created that can allow Margo to continue to contribute to political life via this site. After all, by far the majority of contributors are not journalists and Margo's retirement from that field should hardly disqualify her from future contributions.

To make it clear, as with previous management updates, I won't publish comments that relate to the quality of work or value for money of Webdiary's current and former employees. If anyone disagrees with this, consider what your response would be if your employer insisted on sending out their appraisal of you to all the customers ...

Margo chose to take on people to support her work because without that support she would have given up long ago. Even with the paid support, we needed additional support from teams of volunteers to keep the rate of publishing comments even close to the rate of submission - and if comments are not published and responded to relatively quickly, the debate dies. When Margo was away at her mum's throughout October, the site would not have existed at all without their work.

If people think that our full-time workers should have refused their pay when the revenues weren't coming in, I invite them to make the same offer to their employer - I'm pretty sure it will be accepted. We, on the other hand, believe that contracts with employees should be honoured. Funnily enough, it's often the left that think that employee's rights should be trampled on when it's for a cause - I've seen this on any number of occasions on the executive of charities etc, not to mention trade unions, who tend toward being the sort of employer they'd fulminate against.

With hindsight, and indeed for many of us at the time, the decision to take on a second journalist within a few days of independence was at least courageous, but once made, we had obligations to actually pay what we had contracted, and to pay out to end that arrangement.

If you weren't aware of all these facts, you weren't listening. All of it was published - an unprecedented degree of openness for an organisation like this. If you missed any of it because of the volume of publication on the site, there were plenty of other sites that happily drew attention to any detail on the financial side. We continue to believe in transparency and accountability, hence the publication of these updates, which we are under no legal obligation to make, but will continue to publish, and to reply to comments that do not abuse our people.

Without risk there is no faith, and the greater the risk the greater the faith.
—Sören Kierkegaard

As they say, if there is no struggle there is no progress. Even without advertising revenue, no one can take away the fact that Margo has made a huge difference and will continue to make an impact in the way political and cultural stories are generated and debated in Australia. Readers concerned with capitalism with human face appreciate the high price of moral stand Margo paid in terms of advertising on the site. Like David, I hope that over the next few years the WD will be in a position to repay her tenfold for all the risks she took in order to create something worthwhile for the community.

In 2004 Dan Gillmor quit his job at the San Jose Mercury News to practice what he preached and started a citizen-journalism project. Giving up a technology column and blog at a daily paper, with all the perks and advantages, was quite a gutsy move.

Gillmor and Margo know that the internet network itself will be a medium for everyone's voice, not just the few who can afford to buy multimillion-dollar printing presses, launch satellites, or win the government's permission to squat on the public's airwaves ...

Quite simply, unless we get behind projects like Webdiary, we cannot possibly be fully appraised of what is occuring around the world particularly in regards to the role of Australia. Non profit organisations and universities in America support independent movements such as Dan's Bayosphere. In Australia we still have a long way to go to match this kind of independent spirit with financial support rather than a lip service.

This morning a reread an article by Douglas McCollam who says that media need owners that value journalism and understand that putting out the news is an inefficient business that's in a period of profound transition:

"The private press baron of the past might have been a blowhard propagandist with the ethics of a wharf rat, but at least he loved the trade. Compared with the lineup of bloodless managers and mandarins currently squeezing the life out of journalism, Charles Foster Kane looks pretty damn good. So while there is no guarantee that the private ownership of today would recognize the value of journalism, it has already been established that Wall Street does not. Maybe it’s time we took our chances." A Way In ...

Last year I noticed that DailyKos.com and AndrewSullivan.com sell ads via blogads. They were both below SMH.com, in terms of traffic level but together they more than trumpped it. In fact, they also trump foxnews.com, reuters.com or usatoday.com when the two bloggers incoming links are combined. More and more websites and bloggers are getting serious about both paid services and targeted advertising. I understand that as a sole instant political Pundit, Daily Kos, charges US $4500 a week for his ads Markos Moulitsas

Lets hope Webdiary in 2006 will taste financial success here just as Bayosphere and Daily Kos have done in America BlogAds

Daily Kos BlogAds rates

Kos makes the most of blogging, daily.

Just a note on another question that was raised. Donations are only free of GST if no service is provided in return. It would be more accurate to describe the donations we receive as voluntary subscriptions to the service, thus GST is applicable to these as well as to advertising income.

This seems to have been a financial disaster! What is the exit strategy? How come it got so bad so quickly? Should the directors resign? I think you should open the company to elect its board from contributors? This would add to the transparency. 

David, I think you really have a case to answer as to how you have presided over a financial catastrophe. I mean poor Margo, no wonder she had to quit, you were driving her into the poor house!

As much as I enjoy Webdiary, I think its time to call it quits, otherwise you are soon going to be trading whilst insolvent.

David: I'm surprised you're surprised. There is nothing in these acounts that hasn't been extensively discussed before, throughout Webdiary's brief history as an independent organisation, and was essentially on track for the business plan up to the point where Margo resigned.

When Margo set out into these waters she indicated that she was fully funding it herself - and indeed had been doing so for some time, since the SMH contract was not paying her enough to run the site once the volumes on it got to the point where it wasn't possible for one person to cope, and she employed Jack, then Hamish and Kerri to edit it - and then Wayne as a contributor. That constitutes almost all of the costs, as can be seen from the accounts.

It was always clear that the potential for significant income could only be realised on this site, where we had the capabilty to place ads under our own auspices and via Adsense. Income other than donations thus only began on 15 December, and given the cash nature of the accounts is barely represented here.

Following Margo's resignation, we took action to reduce costs to the level where current income streams could support ongoing future costs. Financially, the company is currently actually in better shape now than it was over the last five months, but in terms of carrying on the business, in much worse shape, since a publisher that is losing journalists and editors is moving backwards not forwards - which at least puts us in company with Fairfax, News and PBL. If Hamish is successful in selling advertising, we can begin to build back again (and, again as noted in these accounts, also use some of any increased income to repay Margo).

What an appalling set of figures.

You are almost on par with the NSW Labor government.

David: see the reply to Russell Edwards