Link: Six Apart Gives Journalists TypePad Pro Accounts for Free | The Blog Herald.
Link: TypePad - Why Blog - Journalist Bailout Program.
The TypePad Journalist Bailout Program
Because your Tumblr and Tweets, while clever, will not pay your bills.
Hello, recently-laid-off or fearful-of-layoffs journalist! We're Six Apart (you know us as the nice folks who make Movable Type or TypePad, which maybe you used for blogging at your old newspaper or magazine) and we want to help you.
We're a company founded by bloggers, and we've supported online journalism from the beginning. During a time when so many great journalists are worrried about losing their jobs, we want to do what we can to help. So we've put together a program to put you on your first steps towards independence.
Wow, this is wild. I knew there were many reasons I've always got on so well with the folks over at Six Apart, since back in the early days, but here's something amazing. Turns out my old acquaintance Anil Dash is behind it. I love his post about the rationale behind it, here.
As demoralizing as all the newspaper, magazine, and media layoffs are, and despite Tina Brown over at The Daily Beast trying to scoop up all the laid off journalism talent she can snag away from Arianna Huffington over at Huffington Post (What, are Daily Beast and HuffPo going to become like the Elephants' Graveyard, the place where old journalists go to die?), good old Six Apart, makers of Movable Type, Typepad, Vox (and do they still own LiveJournal?) is opening the door to journalistic self-publishing.
What a relief! The problem I had with using Typepad with the sometimes technophobic journalists that I built blogs for (not all) is that they often have trouble setting them up in the first place, putting up the basic design. On the other hand, Typepad usability is the best (I think) for handholding noobs, and its interface still after all these years FEELS the most friendly.
When I was teaching my journalism seminar at the University of Montana, I could have gone with a free service, like Blogger (WordPress wasn't really a player yet at that time), but I forced the students to use the paid Typepad service, and because of it, got them up and running in the shortest time possible.
And the moral of this story, imho, is never underestimate the amount of handholding new users may need.
And at the same time (from Typepad's POV) it may also attempt to hang on to a professional user base that is being increasingly lured away to module, online magazine-style themes that are increasingly becoming popular on WordPress.
I'm looking forward to a new slew of journalists taking control of their profession from the corporate publishing interests, dictating better story selection, sounding off about the state of the field, with this terrific move from Six Apart for Typepad!
Link: Six Apart Gives Journalists TypePad Pro Accounts for Free | The Blog Herald.
Six Apart Gives Journalists TypePad Pro Accounts for Free
Six Apart has a clever “program” up to get recently laid off journalists to start blogging. They’re calling it the TypePad Journalist Bailout Program. Basically, it gives journalists these things for free:
- A TypePad Pro account for free. Usually costs $14,95/month.
- Enrollment in the Six Apart Media advertising program, to get the ad dollars rolling.
- An extra push on blogs.com.
They also offer support and whatnot, all for free. The only thing the journos need to do is send a link to their last piece for a newspaper or similar. And according to the post, there’s been an overwhelming interest in this, so they’re lagging a bit behind on setting the accounts up, but no word on closing the program.
You know what? This is brilliant!
My hat’s off to whoever on Six Apart that came up with this idea. It’s a great way to get journalists blogging, since most of them (or us, in some cases) just need an economic incentive and a set platform to get started. The pure notion that you’ve got everything set up, and ads rolling right away, well, that’s bound to attract a lot of people.
Me included, actually. I’m a bit curious to this, but since I haven’t been sacked from any of my writing gigs yet, I don’t think I can apply. Too bad.
Great work, Six Apart, and a great PR stunt as well!
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