TypePad giving blogs to down-and-out journalists

Turn that frownie upside downie.  (Thanks Flickr user suanie)

Six Apart, the company behind major commercial blogging platforms TypePad and Movable Type, has launched the Journalist Bailout Program, offering to provide free blogs to out-of-work media types. If you thought blogs were already free, you're mostly right -- sites like Blogger.com, LiveJournal and WordPress have long offered instant, cookie-cutter blogs to anyone with a ... well, to anyone. 

But the "Pro"-level membership Six Apart is giving out usually costs $150 a year, and comes with enough features and customer support to allay most technical worries -- allowing the unemployed to concentrate on their real problems.

TypePad will cut you in on its ad program too. And though the program claims to feed its bloggers most of the revenue from any ads on their blogs, no one should expect to hear cash-register noises. In his announcement of the program, Six Apart's Anil Dash wrote, "While we can't promise it's going to replace having a full-time writing gig, it gets you up and running with your own site that you can start to benefit from." 

Dash didn't elaborate much on exactly how much members of this program might expect to make, but consider that the reason many writers are out of work is precisely because it's hard for media outlets to make money online. That's not going to change at the individual level.

Still, Dash's willingness to throw a lifesaver to compatriots is a friendly, forward-looking experiment. No harm can come from providing a clean, well-lighted blog to someone who could use it. And if a fresh class of experienced writers all start at the same time, who knows, maybe some collective creativity could result.  Dash wrote in a recent post that he's gotten hundreds of applications already.

"The publications [the writers are coming from] are all over the map," he explained via e-mail.  "Some are the biggest names in newspapers or online journalism and some are small alt weeklies or independents or even young folks just out of j-school."

"Frankly, the response has been so overwhelming that we won't be able to accept every application at first."  (One would hope this doesn't mean a partial repeal of the offer....)

So the agar is laid, and the plates are streaked, to use a microbiology metaphor.  Now let's see some culture....

— David Sarno

Comments

[betty]

None of the links in this story work. Typical LA Times

[David Sarno]

Thanks, looks like there was some kind of glitch between our Typepad blog and Typepad's Typepad blog. The links are back to normal.

[common Japanese words]

This is great for people who want to get into blogging. Especially since the blog will be mostly set up already, but I wonder if Typepad is struggling against the free programs.