SFist at SXSW: Part Three -- Tremendous Delirium
Oy. That Gawker party was a doozy. We're going to have to give Krucoff some credit -- we're going to have to face off in a liver-busting tiebreaker to claim best two out of three. Our place or yours, Andrew? We woke up at nine, and a cool, grey morning with a light drizzle greeted us. We went back to bed, and woke up again just to make a promised appearance at the "Bloggers vs. Journalism" panel that afternoon. Besides, Jason Kottke's one of our heroes, being a fellow unemployed blogger and all.
Dan Brown, Rebecca McKinnon and Jason Calacanis joined Kottke, with Jason Tietler serving as moderator. Since Dan and Rebecca seemed to be drinking the same punch as the two Jasons, it was more "Blog Journalism," as there was little tension between the two camps. Calacanis sang the praises of distributed fact checking, Dan Brown took a stab at defining journalism, Rebecca McKinnon took on the 'neutral voice,' and Jason Kottke spoke on community. Media consolodation, transparency, legitimacy and the market for bloggers services were all touched upon.
When it came time for audience questions, we got up to ask Calacanis about his plans to offer the same kinds of benefits and scale to his bloggers that unions have won for journalists over the years. After all, Weblogs, Inc. are doing very well for themselves, we're sure, but besides paying his writers "more than Nick Denton," we're pretty sure that they don't make anywhere kind of per-word rates that journos do, and definitely aren't receiving any benefits.
He responded by pointing out that it's something that's done for love, and pointed to the profit-sharing plan that we have with our publisher (we get a share of ads that SFist sells, although except for sixty bucks we bummed here in Austin, we've pretty much spent it all promoting the site), and suggested that blogging could serve has a half or three-quarter time job that would bring opportunities as freelancers. He also said that the organization was looking into offer some sort of pre-tax benefit spending plan with money matched by the company.
Dan Brown and Rebecca McKinnon's comments were also telling, as they suggested that the goal was to become independent, selling your work to a number of outlets, and that the traditional "staff reporter" role was going to be on the wane. That's all fine and good, but we worry about the idea of broad concept of piecework done in the home, and all negotiations handled on an at-will basis. It makes it harder for employees to take advantage of economies of scale, and to organize into powerful groups to advocate for their rights.
Afterwards, we had to hit the pressroom and get some photos posted to Flickr and send off a despatch. We left the press room for the PornMusic happy hour at six. Quelle horreur -- we had to spend our precious ducats on beer! Lame. Luckily we ran into Scott, Eddit and Srini and instead headed over to the Hilton where we picked up with the crew headed to Kevin Smokler's dinner at the Castle Rock Cafe, which was both casual and relatively affordable (once again, we went with the beef), as noted in the review we googled on Eddie's sidekick. Kevin can count quite a crew of interesting, literate friends among his posse at SXSW, and we were happy to join them.
Afterwards it was off to Bruce Sterling's party, which for the first time wasn't being held at Bruce's house -- instead, it was at the American Legion building on Veterans drive. A towering colonial atop a hill overlooking the lake, it was a splendid venue. But the drinks were standard bar fare at three dollars for a beer, not the profferred exotics from Bruce's legendary collection of liquors. So we went hunting for Austinist Ben, figuring that he'd know where the party was. As it turned out, Ben may well have inherited Bruce's party, as the six people he told turned into over a hundred people who showed up (though SFist did commit one loose-lipped party foul while leaving the scene).
The closing night party, while fun, was the point at which the folks staying for the music festivities had to say goodbye to the folks returning home (and to work). Still, it was a good chance for one more round of inebriated introductions and inspired introspections. For sure, we're gonna need to get home and mull it all over before we realize what the significant lessons are, but for starters we know that Austin is awesome, bloggers really are cool, and you'll never be able to do everything, so relax.
Thanks to everyone who was so nice while we were in Austin. Really, we felt right at home. And if you didn't get a chance to give us a business card, just email us. And no, we could not take a picture of LAist Jason without his sidekick.