Mickey Kaus, a former reporter for Newsweek, works out of his home off the beach in Santa Monica, California, looking at a blue sliver of ocean, drawing in the balmy beach air, his usual work attire a mismatched, rumpled sweat suit.
He writes his column between 11pm and 2am, for his 3-year-old Web site, Kausfiles, a hodgepodge of his political opinions, rants from his readers, media critiques and links to other sites.
But the best part, Kaus says, is that in the six-month period through June his Web site has, unexpectedly, become profitable. Kaus said that after his expenses (US$2,346), and considering his income (US$1,000) from his one advertiser, Contentville, along with donations from readers, he has made a profit of US$318.60.
"So call me a mogul," he said.
Kaus is just one participant in a growing journalism format now known as the "me-zine," electronic magazines that feature the opinions of one man or one woman, writing alone, often late at night and often wearing pajamas, and indulging in the opinionated wordplay they all went into print journalism for and now find is much more fun -- and sometimes profitable, however slightly -- on the Internet.
The me-zine has been around in various formats since the Internet became popular; Matt Drudge's Drudge Report, drudgereport.com, went online in 1996, with no initial thought, Drudge said last week, to make money. Now Drudge has four advertising agencies selling space on his Web site.
More than ever, writers are choosing the electronic me-zine as their bully pulpit rather than, or in addition to, a column in the local newspaper or political magazine.
Two months ago, Slate magazine inaugurated a me-zine site, which links readers to andrewsullivan.com, j-marshall.com/talk, kausfiles.com and vpostrel.com, where columnists air their opinions on popular culture, politics and practically every other subject.
Sometimes they take pride in what they do not write. "For a number of reasons, I've tried to make these virtual pages a Condit/Chandra-free zone," said Joshua Micah Marshall, writer of the j-marshall.com/talk site, although the Web site commented over the weekend about the news media's coverage.
Virginia Postrel, a libertarian who writes the vpostrel.com site and is a contributor to the Economic Scene column in The New York Times, said that she started the site in 1998 to promote her book The Future and Its Enemies. But she said that she started making money only in the last year when she introduced a tip box, through which readers donate cash in an arrangement with Amazon.com. She has received about US$1,200 in tips since February, she said.
"I think this enterprise is about self-expression," she said. "The money is an added benefit."
Visits to most of the sites are not measured by outside agencies. Andrew Sullivan, an editor at The New Republic and a contributor to The New York Times Magazine, said that since he introduced his site last year, the number of individual users visiting the site at least once had risen from 30,000 to 180,000 last month, according to what he described as unsophisticated tracking software.
Rather than depending on advertisers, Sullivan depends on his tip box and sponsors. The site has raised more than US$25,000 in donations since October -- US$8,000 from the Amazon tip box since March -- he said, and has just signed its first corporate sponsor, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a trade association.
"So far it has been pro bono, but eventually I would like to have a salary," Sullivan said, adding that the journalistic freedom of the site is its most attractive feature.
"You get to write things and you don't have to put all the substantiation you'd put in a print article in a little online posting," he said.
Sullivan said that freedom also comes with peril -- the ability to make mistakes, easily and often.
"It is a little scary because you have no filters," he said. "If you make a mistake you must correct yourself at once or else you will alienate your readers."
Kaus said that the me-zine sites can easily become profitable because there are usually no, or few, employees. He said that other Web sites were far overstaffed and that led to their demise.
"Pseudo.com, dead," Kaus said. "Feed, on ice. Inside, sold. Salon, dying. Kausfiles, profitable."
David Talbot, the editor in chief of Salon, said Kaus was wrong about Salon. "We're not dead yet, so he is getting ahead of himself," Talbot said.
David Patrick Columbia, the editor in chief of Quest magazine, introduced a Web site last fall called nysocialdiary.com, a daily column about New York social life that employs only Columbia and one assistant. Columbia has made about US$3,000 in advertising revenue, he said, and has received enough requests to run ads that he hired two advertising salespeople who start at the end of the month.
Columbia said that he was an avid Internet reader but that he is generally suspicious of political me-zines. "The only problem I see with andrewsullivan.com or any of the other serious me-zines is that it is all generally a lot of pontification without real reporting to back up the opinions," Columbia said.
Talbot of Salon added that he thinks of me-zines as "one-man vanity presses."
But Sullivan said that his readers understand his role as an opinionated filter. "They know that my job is to read everything I can and get irritated as much as I can and splutter for them on a daily basis," he said, adding that he provides links to everything he writes about.
Drudge provides links, but he does not see himself as the proprietor of a me-zine. "I don't write my opinions," he said. "I consider myself more of a network, more like Rupert Murdoch, than some solitary guy. Does Katharine Graham run a me-zine?"
"Oh, the ego," Columbia said. "The ego has landed."
Of course, there is an element of the egotist to most me-zine operators. Kaus said that although his three-figure profit does not mean he'll be test-flying Gulfstream jets, it is an opportunity for some seriously gratifying schadenfreude.
"That's US$318.60 The New Yorker didn't make this year," he said.
Kaus said that he was not sure yet how he will spend his windfall.
"I was thinking of buying a used chair," he said, adding that he understood that Kurt Andersen, a founder of Inside.com, had a really nice Aeron chair for sale.
"I figure it's symbolic," Kaus said. "The Aeron chair was the symbol of the dot-com boom, and now that it's bust I hear you can get the chairs at fire-sale prices."
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