QCP – Quick Content Production

There’s the old fashioned way that lead publications to bankruptcy – three levels of editorial, including fact-checkers that documented their sources – it’s the right way to go, but deathly expensive.

Then there’s content farms. As much as I’m an it’s-all-good person of extreme populist sensibilities, even my stomach starts to heave when I look at posts on content farms. I won’t belabor it too much, posts about them abound, but the nutshell version is that content farms are based on looking at “things” people search for on google, i.e.  ”best restaurants in Dallas”, “how to put a worm on a fish hook”, “How tall was Abraham Lincoln?”. Then these “things” are posted in a list, and anyone, I repeat, anyone can write about them.  The posts are then sent in to the content farm, someone hits a button, and up it goes. The writer gets $1. Maybe.

The obvious problem is this: you don’t have to have ever put a worm on a fish hook to write that post. Your post on Abe’s height could be a complete guess, and best Dallas restaurants could be based on the first 5 restaurants that came up in a Google search.  

If you don’t believe me, search the content farms for something you actually know a lot about. It’s fairly horrifying.

So there’s the Chicago Tribune in Chapter 11, and there’s content farms, what’s in between?

Quick Content Production

Our issue is this: if a writer spends 8 hours researching a post, plus 2 hours writing it, we will generally compensate them about $10/hr. We post every day, which means out content expenses alone would be $700 a week.  We’d go broke.

But what if … someone had a basic concept for which to start research, and researched for 2 hours. Based on those findings, and a discussion with the editor, a draft of a quick introductory “survey” post is created in draft form. And based on those two hours of research, more interesting questions get posed. Thus 4 more hours are spent exploring those issues further, and those findings are broken into 2 shorter posts.

In a nutshell, you can say it’s a longer article broken up. Well, not really. One critical difference is that when you work for a magazine, you’re told to explore a very specific story and the story is pretty much set. You do your work and fill in the blanks, making the point they tell you to make (that’s been my experience). With this method, you “go where the road takes you” and write about what you find, rather than what you’ve been assigned.

 After just 2 hours of research (and working with writers who are smart as hell) you know enough to know the issues that are being discussed. Take zombies, within minutes of delving into the zombie-movie-fanbase-discussion sites, you’ll know about the war that rages between fans of fast zombies (the latest zombie incarnation – “28 Days” is a fast zombie movie) vs. slow zombies (seen in classic zombie movies, like “Dawn of the Dead”).

Ok, let’s play the zombie example out, and how I would do that in QCP. As an editor, I want a cool piece about zombie movies. Within 2 hours, my writer comes back and explains the controversy above.  (And “lines in the sand” pieces are always great fun to write about. Every community, without exception, has “camps” and lines in the sand (in clay, the potters hate the sculptors, printmakers vs painters).  Us vs Them is human instinct and humans inevitably divide into camps . Therefore, you can always find “divided into camps” articles that everyone loves.

So within 2 hours not only do you have your slow vs fast topic for zombies, your writer has probably figured out who the grassroots, outspoken experts are. Then out goes the email – write one set of questions, send it to a bunch of people. Unless they’re a star, stick to email. 

By work-hour 3, a few days later, the emails have come back. Now you have quotes and experts. The experts add a new layer to the discussion – new, interesting information is brought to the table. By now, your writer also knows all the good sites that the zombie debate devote visit (because that was one of the questions)

Now the experts bring up some interesting ideas – that leads to the final 3 hours. In hour 1, you’re drilling down, laying out the most interesting of the thoughts.  Hour 2-3, you’re writing to new people, asking for resources and sources, and following up with the first batch — asking what guy A thinks of guys B’s idea.  Remember, every single person who ever wrote a book on the topic is just dying for press – no matter how long ago the book came out. You’ll always be able to contact them, they’ll certainly have a site.

Two hours to finish stamping it all out.

Based on the 6 hours of research, 2 hours of writing, you can create the following:

• An introduction about the topic, the controversy, the leaders and where the fights take place
• A roundup of Zombie sites (those will drive more traffic than all the other articles combined)
• 2-part post – An “in-depth”, 2 part story about that elaborates on two major issues in the community. You can especially do a two-part thing if you got “thought leaders” that really drive a crowd, are true authorities on the subject, or really have something amazing to say.

Voila. Say you pay the person $10/hr, total cost $80. Four article – cost per article $20.00

The trick is to keep articles to 700 or so words and put in lots of pictures.  Between the content in your links and all the posts combined (which should all be linking to each other) – it’s really about as much information of the topic of slow vs. fast zombies as anyone is going to want.

Also, keep in mind, you could double the research time, which we are doing in another series, each article is $40, but they’re fairly detailed, and excellent resource articles.

One last thought – some writers appear out of our league for this kind of writing, yet most writers need work, cash and flexability. Because this isn’t their strongest work, the option of not putting their name on the posts may be a solution for a serious writer who doesn’t want to be associated with “bloggy”, loose content.

So here’s a sad thing I didn’t realize until I experienced it. People troll Craig’s list and “flag as objectionable” any post they don’t like – for any reason.  If your job offer doesn’t pay enough, if someone is selling the same thing, poof, off it goes. No questions are asked of the flagger and there’s no recourse to get it back up there.

And it happens all the time. A guy looking for actors for a short project for just $20 for a couple hours work – zip. Gone.

Our post, looking for a theatre research person, got “flagged as inappropriate”. We’re we looking for a hot, nude research person.  Now, just someone who would work from home, doing a short project for pay. Graphic design RFQ, flagged, and I got an email from a graphic designer calling us “sleezebags” because we’d like to see a mockup before we pick a designer.

Craig’s list doesn’t monitor, nor care. You can’t dispute or re-post, the content is tagged.

Craig’s list, on this page,  they link to this “unofficial FAQ page” (yet, if it’s unofficial, why are they linking to it?)

http://www.eskimo.com/~newowl/Flagged_FAQ.htm#001

Consider that having your free classified ad taken down is hardly a big deal. It’s not like your dog came down with herpes or your (now) ex-roomie skipped on the phone bill AND scored your favorite Flaming Turds CD. It’s just an ad. Cost you nothing but a bit of time. If you are getting a big emotional reaction over it stop reading right about now. You have emotional issues. You need a therapist, not a FAQ. The authors of this humble document cannot help you. You could post a flaming “suggestion” in the FeedBack Forum filled with passionate references to Flag Nazis, unfairness, censorship,Freedom of Speech, injustice, etc., etc. Many people do. Perhaps it makes them feel better. But nobody will care except for a few trolls who will be mildly amused at your distress. So get Help, really.

 Wow. Except my half hour spent writing it up, and money I have to spend to post on another site.

(And here’s someone else complaining about it.)

http://albany.craigslist.org/rnr/1798768407.html

Q: “Several of my posts in the for-sale section got flagged, i have no clue why, they were not offensive at all, and were in the right category…The only thing I can think of is that there were people who were selling the same item, and did not want the competition…But I was under the impression that one person, using the same computer and I.P address, can only flag once per ad? So, how is it that one person can flag multiple times the same ad, and get it deleted? anyone know”
——————————————————————————————————-
A: I cant speak for the for-sale section, as I have never posted there or anywhere else on CL except R&Rs [rants and raves]. I have had several non-offensive posts flagged. On R&Rs, your opinion gets flagged if it does not conform to the majority(generally racist) point of veiw.You dont have to use offensive language, swear or name-call to get flagged. You just have to object to the racism, and you get flagged, and the powers that be will delete your posts. Yet the racists rants are allowed to remain posted. This speaks to the mind-set of the majority of the people who post here,and those in control of deleting posts. Complaining about these posts to Abuse does no good- they never respond to or act on the complaints. What does that tell you?

Oh, and here’s the funny loophole: the paid spots never get pulled down. So you ultimately are forced to pay $25 to Craigslist for “post protection”.

A lot has happened since May 1. It’s hard for me to get out as much as I should — and need to if I’m going to be an art publisher, as the artworld is a pretty handshake/air kiss place.  So I was going to play catch-up shmoozing, and sell some ads. Then  I got a call and needed to fly out ASAP.

I missed most of Art Chicago, and with it, imagined myself with stacks of business cards, good impressions and verbal agreements.

I came back, the site was in shambles, and once I caught up, I looked at the advertising calendar:

Nothing.

May was blank. June. Blank.

So I began a largely solo trudge up the ugly hill known as cold calling, getting more bitter with each step. Everyone the same answer, “we have no budget” and worse, “we never buy advertising” .

And then this statement was always followed by a predictable pause and a sudden brightness as the assistant would say, “But you should come see the show! It’s going to be great!”

And funny how the truth just sometimes pops out of your mouth.  When the hundreth gallery assistant said, “we don’t believe in advertising”, … it just came out, I said:

“well I don’t know if I believe in giving free editorial to people who are committed to never supporting us.”

And in May, I proceeded to take 5 galleries off the critic’s pick list. About 10% of the list.

And then I micro blogged about it on Facebook and of course I got a lot of heat.  And it did get my thinking. And thinking and thinking. I thought about it so much that when I went to the grocery store I came home with a bunch of random items and nothing for dinner.

But I did have a conclusion:

The reason we can’t get advertisers is because we do reviews.

Think about it. If you’re great, we’ll cover you. And everyone else has to pay because they’re not “good enough” to get free editorial.

Who the hell is going to sign up for that?

Here’s a metaphor:  Imagine a group of women standing outside a nightclub, waiting in line, ready to pay a cover to get in (read galleries ready to buy a sponsored post). Then a bouncer comes and picks 5 attractive women out of the line, and escorts them for free into the building, cutting ahead of the line (read galleries that get reviewed). How does that make every other women in line feel? Pretty lousy.

So what would happen is that I would get on the phone and try to sell a sponsored post to a gallery. They would tell me flat out that I should just give them free ink.

Now I can safely let them know that there is 0% chance of getting free press about their exhibit.  If they want ink, they have to get a sponsored post, no exceptions.

And it’s a deeper issues than all that. The review pick process has gotten fairly skewed, it’s not as diverse a group of critics I had dreamed of (diverse in ethnicity, age, geographical interest, and type of art interest), and we started to slant towards the same galleries New City was reviewing.  And the same galleries over and over. This was on the road to remedy with bonuses for never-previously-covered venues, but .. well, reviews are tricky on lots of levels.

So for the time being, until we get finances in order, we’ll suspend gallery reviews of CAMag.

The next post will be about the editorial we’ll have in its place.

What’s the Matter With Chicago?

and Seattle and New York and Boston…?

July 9, 2008

With some exceptions (features), we’re back to unedited content (gallery reviews) until we sell ads for May June. We’ll start the boiler room teams Monday and Thursday.

I had a flash of thinking about what a total drag it would be to work for the magazine at this point. And my husband’s mother’s day gift to me was letting me spend the morning in bed, feeling depressed and anxious about the magazine’s finances.

But the bright side is that I deeply believe that more than making a magazine, we’re working to fix an infrastructure that’s been making art publishing in Chicago prohibitive for the last decade. The biggest issue being that galleries don’t advertise.

So the first goal is to teach – yes, I said teach – galleries about the value to themselves and to their peers when they advertise. Don’t blame a lack of press for the art scene not being stellar, blame a lack of support for the press from the art scene.

Second, it’s back to sitting down with each gallery and crafting a marketing plan, something that can not only raise awareness to their exhibits, but actually help sell the art.

So here we go – 2 days of boiler room = 10 hours. I think we could do 100 emails and I could make 60 calls.  Or until we sell out May and June.

Thank you Leslie Hindman Auction House, Addington Gallery, Peter Fetterman and 57th Street Art Fair for your generosity.

Everyone else – stand by. We’re coming in.

K

• A cheap microphone and free software is all you need to make an online instructional videos to teach someone how to work the software. Wish someone could just show you how to create a photo slideshow instead of directions? They’re quick to make and always available for a refresher. See an example here: http://vimeo.com/user1854735/videos

• Time-Shift Editorial Meetings – editorial meetings are recorded and made into downloadable podcasts.

• Skip the rent, but rent a conference room – they can sometimes be found on a cheap, hourly basis. We meet at this “co-workspace” http://www.ravenswoodcoworking.com/, so we’re not all gathered around a tiny kitchen table.

• Google Docs as 2-person bulletin boards – each staffer has an online document that serves as a communication sheet with their supervisor. Freelancers can log in, see what’s on the list, and get to work, regardless of who else is working.

• Slow payment (or non-payment) is a plague for freelancers. When writers and editors start, we do “PayPal-Per-Day”, which allows the starving writer to buy dinner at the end of the workday.
  
  
• “Find a real job while working for us“. We can’t offer benefits or a salaried position, but we can help you find an excuse to meet someone whose radar you want to be on.

• If you’re not going to get paid much for a piece, make it short. If it gets long, make it into two posts and get paid double.

• “Ask not what you can do for the magazine, ask what the magazine can do for you.” – with our pay, we’re not a final destination for our writers. The most critical question is to find out what the writer wants to do, and allow our freelance opportunity to help them be better positioned for their next step.

“My suicide mission’s been canceled. We’re replacing it with a go-for-broke rescue mission.
In a way, I’m almost glad that flood interrupted us,  because I didn’t like the toast I was giving.
I’m gonna start over.”

-The Fantastic Mr. Fox

So the good news lies in the self-help saying that one will go from “surviving” to “living”.  The first six months of Chicago Art Magazine and Chicago Art Map really were just about surviving.  In January, we were just hemorrhaging cash and it’s been a tough cash situation all the way.  I won’t give the whole history, but Art Talk Chicago, which was part of Chicago Now Network sponsored by the Chicago Tribune didn’t pay beans.  And I wanted to pay writers, I wanted to have a posse of professional working writers and make what I call “the big magazine theory.” (LINK) and have a robust press presence– even if it wasn’t perfect, even if it was grassroots and ragtag, I wanted something big.  So we did need to fund it because I wanted to pay writers. 

            As a result, I left Art Talk Chicago and then we went independent.  On a side note about money, the first day we were independent we sold $300 in ads– so we knew that an advertising model was going to be a possible thing for us.  But it’s been a hard road to hoe.

            The situation got so bad we were going to call the galleries and say, “Why aren’t you advertising with us?  You can say ‘no,’ to us but you need to answer some questions why you’re not advertising.”  We were feeling  mean, ready to sit down and do this.  And then we got on the horn and everybody said, “yes,” and we sold out the ad spots on the site in a day.

            So, what’s exciting is that at least we’re not losing as much money. We can see that we’re on a good path as we build the magazine and we sell all these sites –we now have 27 spots a month and, with each of the four sites having nine spots at $300 an ad, that is helpful revenue; if we sold them all out we would all be getting a little bit of a raise.  So, that’s the money in an extreme nutshell and the bottom line is that it let me stop hyperventilating enough to say, “Here’s April, here’s our break in August, how can we reach these goals from where we are today?  And what will that mean, what will be good?” 

            I don’t want to be a total tyrant with editorialization, and sometimes I do tend to be. (I have a world view on things and sometimes pieces can come in and if they meet my world view then they get in, and if they don’t, then they don’t. That has to go at some point.)

Chicago Style

            But for now, I’ll tell you my world view, for which there has been an endless discussion in Chicago over, “Is there Chicago art?”  And one unique thing I bring to the discussion is that I’ve actually been here my whole life, so I feel comfortable talking about this issue.  I always felt that, no, there is no “Chicago art”, there is no “Chicago style”.  We’re a largely homogenized country with a homogenized mass media, so it’s all the same. 

            And actually, doing this magazine and looking at New York and looking at L. A. and looking at Europe, I’m starting to feel like there is a “Chicago thing” and it is summed up in one word, one very unexciting word– “sensible.”  That we’re sensible people here, and we have good common sense.  This goes along with the idea that Chicago becomes the testing ground for movies because we are sort of the middle of America.

            So how does this idea of what is sensible apply to an art magazine, especially in the context of what the Internet provides for people – which is information; concrete, solid information.  Should the shorter reviews have more information?   An example is the debate surrounding New City.  Brian Hieggelke , who runs New City, said, “Well, [based on traffic, we can see] people are coming to us because they want reviews.”  And I said, “Well, are they Googling the artist name and want to see their work, and they want information, or are they really searching for a review, the nitty-gritty of someone’s opinion of the show?  And do artists really care what the review says, beyond thumbs up or thumbs down?”

            It comes down to the Chicago sensibility that there is desire for the pragmatic, for logistical information, and also desire for some interesting, unique, matter-of-fact information. 

            Along those lines, there is a great article in which the guy talked about innumeracy.  http://www.tvo.org/podcasts/bi/audio/BL_Lecture_20090329_838191_MMosher_0x0_40k.mp3 We are all familiar with literacy and illiteracy, but he says that innumeracy describes a person who, as opposed to someone who can’t read, is completely mathematically ignorant.  I’m interested in what this whole issue of innumeracy means. It kind of ties into Duchamp dropping out and studying chess.  I would wonder, “What’s the deal with Duchamp just putting it on, doing chess?”  And now I kind of get it.

            I recently bought an economics book called Economics for People Who Hate Capitalism, and, because of my thinking of things so mathematically, not knowing this math that I really should have nailed in high school bothered me.  And so I got a math book and I literally studied algebra again because I needed numercy.  So this idea of numercy is one of the themes in the magazine. 

            Another example that relates to numerousy came up in talks about taking some of the personal narrative out of pieces and getting more practical, asking, “how can this piece about art process and medication become a resource piece?”  We said, “what if the reader is someone who’s struggling with some issues, they’re thinking about taking medication for bipolar but they’re worried they’re not going to be able to create art.  How can this piece provide some fairly informative first-person testimonial of these issues?  A piece that could say, “well, this was hard, this was easier, this was a drag, this wasn’t, this was a side effect.”  This is a discussion of numercy-based writing – getting factual and data-driven, even if still on an anecdotal scale. 

            Then my third and last point, which is the new theme that I’m bringing to the table and will open up for discussion is that I think one of the problems, in my opinion, with reviews and where some of this conflict is coming from the idea that artists create art and you need a separate group of non-artists to make sense of it. 

            In writing they always say that your novel’s “a little bit smarter than you are”.  MK and I were talking about this and if there’s the idea that your novel’s a little bit smarter than you are, I always say, “Well, consider the term ‘a little.’”  I think sometimes there is meaning to our art work that we don’t totally know, but I don’t think artists are out of the ball park in understanding their art means.  I think they should be allowed some veto power to say that someone is on the wrong track for interpreting their work. I think there’s been a section of art criticism that demeans the artist a little bit when it says says, “No, you don’t understand your own work.” 

            What I was saying is that with art criticism there is the critic who is outside of it and who is smarter than the artist – doing a commentary that didn’t always include the artist’s point of view.  I think what’s changed in the last 20 years is that the  multimedia artist today is somebody who’s an artist, a writer and a curator.  I think that we’re all starting to blend these roles and you’re not just the artist making “stuff”. It’s significance that you’ve got these working artists who are starting to write and they’re starting to provide a new point of view. 

            And so one of the things I’m starting to think about, and I want to talk to people about, is when we start looking at reviews (like Robin Dluzen’s, who’s not here but she’s a painter)– how does being an artist affect the way you look at work, and can that viewpoint be a new kind of writing?

            For example, when two painters talk to each other about their work – standing there, giving feedback –  they don’t say the things that a critic says about the piece.  My question is — what does that conversation look like?  I want to study the artist-to-artist analysis of art, and then look at how that might apply to the review form. 

            That’s the kind of new stuff that I’ve been thinking about– so when we’re accused of having no editorial content and being unedited, what I say to that – is that this isn’t just a proofreading issue.  We could proofread stuff better, and do more, and we could say it’s not unedited, but to me if we are going to move ahead and we are able to freeze and study each piece better and work on it more, what are the priorities?

            We were saying, “Oh, we should just start grabbing pieces and fixing typos,” but, we’ve got to get onboard with what a theme is, and what the priorities are and what makes a good piece. 

            And for me to have every piece go across my desk wasn’t going to work time-wise, so to the writers and as the editors in the room, I wanted to talk about what we think about when pieces cross our desk. How much continuity do we need, and how much does everybody want to just figure out their own stuff.  That was my thinking.

            At this point, does anybody want to comment?

            Q: This is based on the conversation between you and Jason, right?  You and Jason Foumberg

            A:  Well, there was also Michael Thomas at Dogmatic Gallery, he wrote a whole blog post about me, which I was very flattered by because nobody’s ever written a whole blog post about me.  I wrote a comment like, “Can you give us some time here?  We’ve been at this thing for, like, six months.  Good Lord.” 

            But what Jason says is sort of symbolic.  I think Jason said what other people are feeling.  I think it’s very symbolic of the sentiment that’s out there and how people see Chicago Art magazine.

Intro: I visit Bad at Sports often, and a couple years ago I noticed something - a really big ad on the right side of the screen. I never noticed ads —  I have, what they call in the industry, “banner blindness”. But these 300 wide by 250 pixel spots… you couldn’t miss ’em. And now I see that they have flash, so now not only are these big ads, but they move, they can even be mini-movies.

These ads not only got my attention, but got me to believe that web advertising could work. The Brooklyn Museum was exhibiting Yinka Shonibare, an artist I liked who’s name I could never remember — until the Culture Pundits  spot. Then, after seeing it 18 times I remembered his name just fine, learned how to spell it, and it kept his work front of mind. As soon as I got the wordpress template for our magazine, my first question was about how to fit in the 250 X 300 pixel ads.

Yinka Shonibare (300 x 250 pixels)

The group behind this podcast didn’t rustle up that advertiser. Nor it is Google AdSense. It’s through a partnership with a company called Culture Pundits. I’ll let them explain who they are and how it works in their own words.  

What is Culture Pundits?

Culture Pundits is a carefully curated network of 27 leading cultural
websites and blogs covering visual art, literature, architecture, film
and design, as well as important cultural topics in the news.  It is a
joint production of my consulting company Tristan Media LLC, and
Mathes Grant, a creative consultancy co-founded by Tom Schreiber.  Our
goal is to develop long-term relationships with a group of quality
sponsors.  We don’t call ourselves and ad network, and we prefer the
word sponsors instead of advertisers.

What gave you the idea for Culture Pundits?
I have run the arts calendar ArtCal (now ArtCat) for five years, and
wanted to find some revenues to pay writers and editors that did not
involve displaying ugly flashing ads on my site, or often irrelevant
Google ads — dentists, etc.  I also wanted to find a way to spread
the word about a great group of culture writers and bloggers that I
know and read.

When did you start? How did you start? Did you approach sites?
I proposed it in March 2007, and that’s when Tom Schreiber got in
touch with me.  We launched in August 2007 with ArtCat and 9 other
sites.  I approached people I knew that I wanted to be part of it, and
over time others asked to be a part of it, and many of those were
approved.

How is it working?

We eventually reached over 40 sites, and offered a complex range of
advertising possiblities — different sizes, targeting specific
geographical areas, specific sites, etc.  That became too difficult to
manage given the prices we were able to charge, so in May 2009 we
switched to a simplified sponsorship program with about 25 sites.  We
now have a single sponsorship size on all sites — 300×250 pixels.
Sponsors can buy a share of voice across all sites in the network in
increments of 10%.  That means if you buy 10%, you are seen for 10% of
page views on each site.
 What are the challenges you encounter?
The biggest challenges are getting the word out there about this
pretty amazing set of sites, and also managing the financial and
bill-collecting side of it with such a small staff.  It’s really just
me and Tom running the whole show, although people from some of the
sites help with things like press releases and copy on the Culture
Pundits site.

What, technically, is involved for the partner? (a plugin? An ad
feeder?). Does it have to be wordpress?
Our sites run on various blogging platforms.  They just have to put in
some JavaScript code to display the sponsorship space.
How big (in traffic) should a partner site be?

 
We have a few sites with only 10,000-15,000 page views per month, but
those are certain sites we want to be part of the network regardless
of traffic.  The sites we have added over the last year have all had
at least 50,000 page views per month.

How can sites apply? What are some of the criteria to be a member?
We don’t have an application process.  If a high-quality site with
good traffic comes to us via a recommendation from a current member of
the network, we will consider them, but we are not actively adding
sites at this time.

How (vaguely) do you calculate revenue for a member site?
The network takes a 40% cut of the revenues to pay for the ad server
sales commissions, plus the time involved in running the financial
side of things. The remaining 60% is then divided among the sites
based on their share of traffic for that month. For example, if the
total Network payout for a single month comes to $10,000, and a site
represents 10% of the network traffic, they you will receive $1,000.
We make all payments to our publishers via PayPal.

To Make an Art Magazine That Doesn’t Go Broke There are Two Things You Need and  Two Things You Don’t

The two things you need are a good editor and a good salesperson.  A good editor can find and rally good writers and make an awesome magazine. A person who’s good at sales can twist people’s arms and make them support you.

Two things you don’t need is to print on paper and pay rent. Half this blog crows about the advantages of the web and the deficits of print publishing. That I feel very strongly about. Free content, ra ra ra.

Not having an office space… not so much.

It’s doable, but not always easy. I’m going to do a post about having 40 people all working remotely and how we adapt, but there is miscommunication, a lack of bonding, an inability to have someplace quiet where they don’t hand you a bill and expect you to leave after a while. And yes, coffee shops have free wifi, but never FAST Wifi. (Why doesn’t someone put that on the door – with FAST WiFi!)

But we manage, and it takes several thousand dollars off our monthly budget. There are also interesting issues of avoiding discriminatory practices. Not only do we not know the ethnic background of people who work for us, we don’t always know their gender.  So for a long time, we used gender-neutral language that sounded like transgender demarcations from the 80′s when talking about MK Meador.

We just didn’t know.

So I’m going to write posts about how we do it over here. How 40 writers are managed without any kind of space. Those will be tagged, “office”.

The only reasonable explanation was that they sent out a newsletter saying the recession is over.

Because MK and I took a couple deep breaths, got on the phone and … got us out of the red in one afternoon.

Everyone started saying yes. No idea why, really, outside of the newsletter theory above.  The only other theory is the tipping point theory – that things just take time and then they happen instantly.

So off we go.

[update: as of 3-15 all ad space on Chicago Art Magzine was sold out until 4/1]