Tonight, in my own on-line journal (it probably won't be posted until late tonight) I'm going to ask my readers to write to Entertainment Weekly, at letters@ew.com to suggest they do an article about on-line journals in their Multimedia Section. I suspect that Pamie's will be oneo f the journals mentioned, if they do an article---she's hugely popular for the journalling world, but small potatoes compared to some webcams, which is a shame. Entertainment Weekly has done articles on webcams and weblogs, but nothing about OLJs.

If any of Pamie's readers would like to do the same, send an email to the address above. There are some amazing writers in the OLJ world---you can read some of them in the journals Pamie recommends--and Pamie is one of the most consistently entertaining and deserves more exposure.

Al of Nova Notes.

-- Anonymous, October 30, 1999

Answers

You know, as much as Pamie deserves to be recognized for her phenomenal consistency and hilarious writing (and she DOES), I'm a little hesitant to encourage the break away publicity that is EW. I covet my OLJ's. I want them all to myself. Selfish, I know, but too many things have been ruined or have sold out because of mainstream exposure. Mocha, anyone? Blink-182 (grew up about a mile away from me, oddly enough)? Ummm...X-Files? Leonardo DiCaprio? Quentin Tarantino? Not to mention Hootie...

-- Anonymous, November 02, 1999

I tend to agree. There's part of me that would love more exposure ... but going from the 800 or so hits per day that seems to be the top end of online journal readership to the tens or hundreds of thousands of hits per day that would result from an EW story would be too much all at once. I wouldn't move too quickly on this idea unless you're prepared to see OLJ's change forever.

-- Anonymous, November 03, 1999

I disagree. I know there are plenty of journallers who would love the extra exposure, and I'm betting Pamie is one of them.

I've never really understood this "I want readers, but not too many" thing I've seen some journallers mention. In any case, hopefully the writers of any potential article would contact journalists to be featured who could at that time express their unwillingness to participate. If worse comes to worse they could always change the URL.

I can understand the feelings of selfishness though.

-- Anonymous, November 03, 1999

Ok, here is my reasoning for wanting readers, but not too many.

For one thing, when you have a smaller readership, let's say 40 regular readers, you probably know who most of them are. They might email you. You are pretty confident that none of them are your mom or your boss. You know, mostly, who is going to send you an e-mail every day and tell you that you live in sin or sloth or whatever.

Once you hit 100 or more regular readers, things change. You start getting too many emails, and then people accuse you of not being friendly for not answering every single one. Instead of one person telling you that you are an idiot, there are 5 or 6 of those kinds of readers. Not to mention, your link is everywhere and so then you can't figure out who most of the people that are reading are.

I don't know when it happened for me, and I would never tell anyone to go away... but it seems like I went from 40 to 150 readers in about 3 weeks. It makes me wonder who a lot of these people are.

I can't imagine my mom reading Entertainment Weekly (not that she would anyway, but you know, my cousin or my boss or my ex-boyfriend or something) and seeing my link there and reading all about me when I have no idea it's happening. I don't know. It's not like I can control who reads it as it is, but at least when the readership grows slowly, I can *kind of* keep track of who the new people are. I can't imagine having 800 readers... If I ever do get to 800, I Hope it is like one new person every day for 2 years, and they all introduce themselves. Heh.

--stasi
Look, I don't want new readers! http://www.sweetpeas.org hahah

-- Anonymous, November 03, 1999

Bear in mind, when traffic to a Web site increases that drastically, it can cost more money. Pamie may not be able to afford having that many readers. Then she'd have to post ads ... ew. Or worse yet, remove the site entirely.

Entertainment Weekly... double ew. If I were making money from my writing, I wouldn't mind having my work promoted there, but for something I'm doing out of sheer enjoyment for no personal profit, and perhaps costing me money? Do you really want to draw EW readers? Ew.

-- Anonymous, November 03, 1999

Ha! I think it's a good idea! I'd love to have more readers, myself. I've been OLJ-ing since March and only have about 14 regular readers... of course, I have no idea about how to go about promoting my site either...

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1999

I would be interested to read what Pamie has to say on this subject. Pamie, if you want more exposure, then I would be happy to send in my two cents to EW if it would help open any doors for you. But if it would end up costing you money, or taking up even more of the time that you already have too little of, then I don't know how jazzed you would be about more exposure. Word of mouth alone will continue to steadily increase the amount of faithful readers you get.

By the way, I loved your Ally McUpdate. I actually didn't catch on that it was yours when I read it, and when I saw on Squishy that it was your first one for that show I realized that's why the Ally recap was so damn funny (not to insult whoever did it before - everyone at Mighty Big TV is pretty much hilarious). I should probably go post this on MBTV, but I always get Error messages and booted completely off the internet, so I thought I'd just let ya know here. I don't watch the other show you review, but I'm sure your recaps are great for that too.

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1999

Let me put it this way: I would not mind writing a daily column that attracted thousands of readers, particularly if I was getting paid for it. I do not want to keep an online journal that gets thousands of readers. I did, for a time, keep a journal that got over 1,000 hits a day, and as a result, that journal crashed and burned. When you have 10 or 40 or even 100 readers, you can connect with everyone who wants to connect, and there's a sense of intimacy that comes through in the writing. When you have 500 or 1000 readers, you can still connect, but you can't possibly answer all of your mail, and you start feeling a little naked when you reveal too much emotion and suddenly have 200 heartfelt responses. A person can't have 100 or 1000 close personal friends; it's just not possible. So the tone of the journal changes, because your purpose and perspective have changed.

If I had tens of thousands of people reading what I wrote everyday, I would write differently. I think I'd write well, or at least as well as I do now, but it would be different. I'd worry more about revealing the specifics about where I go and what I do; I'd never be able to write about family or friends without asking their permission; I'd never be able to allow myself an off day. At that point, I'd damn well better be getting paid for it.

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1999

Okay, here's my opinion on the subject:

I wouldn't mind getting mentioned in EW, or any other large magazine. I was supposed to featured in an article in Self magazine about a year ago, but they ended up dropping the article for space reasons.

I am trying to make a living as a writer and a performer. Any publicity for me is good publicity. Squishy may not be the vehicle that gets me money, but it does open doors for me as it is a very large portfolio of the kinds of work that I do. In that respect, I certainly wouldn't mind a large readership. I share what I want to share here in Squishy. I've done a one-person show with some of the entries. You wanna talk personal? They see me in person when I tell these stories. I try not to write about people that wouldn't want to be in here and I've never tried to be malicious in my journal.

This is a journal for entertainment. I write it to entertain me, my friends and all of you. I would love to have a large readership. I'd like to go to web conferences and teach high school kids how to make a journal of their own. I want to encourage creativity on the web. I want great content out there and to say I only want so many people to read and then it becomes fake would be a lie. Because the truth is the more people I have reading and writing and posting on the forum-- the more I believe that what I'm doing is making a difference. I wouldn't do it if it didn't have a purpose. I stopped keeping a paper journal because I felt that I was only writing for myself and I wouldn't always be honest and I'd slack in my writing. By four o' clock if I haven't written something on Squishy I start feeling guilty, like I've let the east coast down or something. It keeps me going. It motivates me. It has been an amazing experience that I would never change.

And if there's a chance that even more people could be aware that I'm here and then maybe offer me more work? Well, that's what it's all about for me.

I'm not trying to say I'm making Squishy corporate or anything. I heard some of your hesitancies when I asked about demographics. That was mostly because I do recommend things on Amazon.com and I wondered if any of you bought books or music online and because I was thinking of making Squishy related merchandise (t-shirts, panties, tiny wooden hands) and I was trying to figure out if it would be worth the effort.

This site costs me money. I don't mind it, but it is a couple of hours of my day each and every day and if I can get a little back for it to cover the costs then I can continue to write Squishy and call it an e-business and make myself a stronger voice on the web.

Does that make sense?

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1999

Someone needs to post a generic form letter on the subject, so I can copy and paste it to an e-mail, and send it to EW that way. I can try it if no one minds waiting for me. But if someone does it sooner, then it makes it that much easier for me to send it out.

This is just my personal opinion, but I think everyone should put out an OLJ, regardless of audience or entertainment value or income potential, simply because everyone receives information differently, and innovation generally comes from troublemakers.

If anyone ever catches the last episode of The Day The Universe Changes on the Learning Channel, Burke uses the famous "duck/bunny" drawing as an analogy for how we see the universe. Depending on how you shift your focus on the drawing, you see a duck or a bunny. He also uses the "young woman/hag" drawing as another analogy.

In the documentary series, he takes examples from history to demonstrate that how we see the universe is very much like the "duck/bunny" drawing, whether it's a geocentric or heliocentric solarsystem (or if the drawing is a young woman or a hag). His last line comments on how, if at any given time, the universe is whatever we say it is (ie. the duck/bunny drawing analogy), you have as much right to speak up as anyone else, because you might be the troublemaker that comes up with a new interpretation of the duck/bunny drawing (the universe) that opens the door of possibility even wider.

(Wow, why's it so much easier for me to post BS here than type up a simple form letter to EW?)

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1999

It does make sense, at least for you. Squishy has always been different from other online journals -- it's more of a daily column than an online version of a personal journal. I don't mean that as a bad thing; I think it's the main reason why Squishy is so very popular. I think Squishy would do very well with a larger audience. Some of the more intimate journals would not fare so well, however, and that's not a knock against them, either. Just different styles that work in different venues.

I'm not so sure how I'd do. On the one hand, I said before that I'd have to change the way I write, but I'm probably willing to do that -- I've already done it once. I no longer write to a known audience, and I always assume that I'm writing to the entire world. On the other hand, for a while I was writing to a mailing list of 15-20 people, and it was definitely the best writing I've done since back in the days when my journal had 30 readers. I can't write like that publicly unless I start writing fiction, and I'm not sure I can do it even then.

As my boyfriend said, though, probably the only way EW would take this on is to portray us all as a buncha freaks putting our diaries on the web. And I think we'd do better to get a couple of journalers on the Jerry Springer show, personally!

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1999

I also think the "duck/bunny" drawing analogy also applies to the "If you aren't what you own, or you aren't your job, what are you?" dialogue between Pamie and Eric. The analogy would be looking at the drawing, and saying, "If it isn't a bunny, what is it?" I think people are too intimidated by what other people think to question what others have told them about the way things really are, and they turn off the independent parts of their brains (which is a talent I can probably benefit from).

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1999

I wrote a story for the Austin paper a while back that included Pamie site. As a reporter, I found that it was a growing trend and that some of the most compelling and great reading on the Web has been on sites like this.

One of the people I spoke to for that story had some of the hesitancies discussed here -- she worried her audience would grow too large and she'd be afraid to say what was on her mind. I think that's understandable.

One of the reasons I wanted to write the story in the first place was because I wanted people to know about sites like Squishy, which are incredibly entertaining. They can also be profound and very insightful. As someone who makes a living prowling around the Web all day, it's nice to have a window into other people's lives and see what they're doing.

There may be some journalers who would lose some of their incentive to write as honestly with a bigger audience. I don't think Squishy's one of those journals -- I bug people every day to read Squishy because I think it's that good...

o.

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1999

Sooner or later, a major magazine will do a feature on us. It's inevitable, I think. If we write in asking for it, indicating we like 'em, the article might be a tad more favorable and less of a freak show or a Jerry Springer than otherwise.

Pamie is unabashedly out here to be read, as is Kymm, and some others, myself included. I don't think if an article appears that everyone will be "outed"---Ginkgo's journal was mentioned in USA TODAY and it didn't change her or the OLJ scene as a whole. Yet I do think some good writers in the OLJ community should be read more than they are. Millions read Dave Barry every day. Thoussands click on Jennicam to voyeuristically look at her life. Surely Pamie deserves more readers than Jennicam has viewers.

It's a new genre, distinctly internet. I think it deserves more mention that it has, and more general readership than it has.

Al, of Nova Notes.

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1999

I just posted this to [journals] but I thought I'd put my 2 cents here as well..

Throughout this whole thing, EW is getting trashed. It's hardly the equivalent of the New Yorker, but it isn't the Weekly World News, either. I love that magazine. I really don't think it's exploitative. :)

That said, I'm starting to have some real concerns about going for that kind of large audience, with a much larger proportion of potential wackos and stalkers, for one thing. I've seen lots of online communities fall apart under a lot less strain. No matter how people feel about it, there's going to be a division of some type in our little, carefully balanced community. I know my writing would immediately get less honest. I fear the worst.

Whoever (Kristin?) was saying that we should publicise on the 'net first probably has the right idea. Let's think this through a little more before we barrel forward in search of hits, heedless of the price we might have to pay.

M. Blue & Green

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1999