Hot political blogger Andrew Sullivan is moving his Daily Dish to Time Magazine’s web site. Time magazine is aiming to get into the blogosphere and they see Andrew Sullivan as the way to do it.
Sullivan posted on his blog about the announcement:
THE DISH RE-LOADED: I’m glad to say that in the near future, this blog will have a new home. We’re moving to Time.com’s home-page and will be hosted by their server. My invaluable business partner, Robert, who has managed all the technical and financial aspects of running a blog for over five years will be able to focus on other things; and I will continue to be able to concentrate on the writing. The blog has gotten far bigger than I originally believed possible – and much bigger than I want to handle on my own. Time.com, with all sorts of internet links, technical support and a huge potential audience, will, I hope, make this blog more accessible to more people, bring more advertizing and marketing to the site, and take the blog to a new level of exposure. We have plans to add new features to make the site more interactive and more easily read and searched. As for my new home, I’ve been a contributor to Time for a while and think the world of their editors. As for the deal, I can simply assure you that I have retained exactly the same editorial control as I have had since the beginning. This is a blog. I won’t be running posts before any editors before they appear. I will continue to write simply what I believe or think, however misguided I may be. I will continue to correct any errors in the full light of day and change my mind if new events demand it or new facts compel it. I will try and air counter-arguments as often as possible. In other words: the essence of the blog won’t change. You will still like it for the same reasons or hate it for the same reasons; or, as many of you keep telling me, both.
Time will receive all advertising revenues from the Sullivan’s blog and Sullivan will be paid a fee for his services. MediaPost mentioned Time’s traffic figures about 3.5 million visitors a month according the Nielsen/NetRatings. They also say, according to an analytics tool Sullivan uses, he gets roughly 60,000 hits a day. Multiply this times 30 days and you’re looking at 1.8 million readers a month. It will be interesting to see how much more traffic this will generate for both Time and Sullivan. Regardless, this does validate Sullivan’s 5-year-old blog.
As blogs of various kinds grow in strength, they are becoming more and more of a major media pull on the Internet. While they still don’t have the “household name” level of acceptance yet, they are getting there. And in the meantime, many blogs provide an excellent source of inside information for the media and others.
John Stith is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
