At the beginning of the year I predicted that 2008 would be the year of the editor. In that post I said:
“There is so much great stuff out there, but so much more crap. Up until now the model (gawker, weblogs inc, etc) has been to hire some of the best creative talent and pay them to be staff writers. As far as I know, these writers are their own editors. MusicCityBloggers.com has a slew of unpaid writers and then a couple of people who are scheduling and providing some minimal editing. I think we will start to see more editors in this brave new world of conversational media.”
Today, Ivy and Ginger have announced that Music City Bloggers is moving to an editorial model. I think the structure they (and Newscoma) have created is brilliant and simple.
“We’ve tried a couple of ways to keep the quality of writing up at MCB, and we think we may have hit on a winner. Props to Newscoma for the idea. Instead of having one person be responsible for the bulk of all the writing, we have decided to piece it out to several people. Each person will cover a topic that they either have some expertise or a great interest in.
Ginger and I sat down and talked about who we wanted, who would be our dream writers. We asked the people to join with a commitment of 5 posts per week and we’ve come up with a group of people we think will be excellent editors for each subject area we have defined.
So far we know that Rachel Walden will be the health editor. It has not been announced which editorial positions will exist, but I imagine it will follow along the lines of newspapers. If this structure is productive and effective then I think we will see a fresh round of blog-hating by area papers. This model could be the nail in their coffin. MCB classifieds anyone?
update: Surprise! I am the Business & Technology editor.
