PJM Death Pool

Dead To Us

2006-05-17T07:19:00.000-07:00

Howdy, PJM Death Poolers! Been awhile since we updated this website, it's true. But that's just because we wanted to keep clear and not influence things in case Pajamas Media was about to take a tumble. And because several of you had chosen dates within the past month, we didn't want to influence things any. Here's the several:

Unfortunately for everyone, PJM continues about being not actually, literally dead. It's just dead to us.

So CGHill, Paul Hallman, Sean Hackbarth, thanks for playing. Your best hope now is that PJM actually survives (and given all that cash invested, you can never rule out this possibility) and we're forced to refund your money at the end of the year. And that wouldn't be any fun at all.

Gary Kirby (June 9), you're on deck.

I Don't Want To Go On The Cart

2006-02-15T18:42:00.000-08:00

And another one bites the dust: With the passing of Single Awareness Day, Ruth A.'s February 14th PJM death prediction falls by the wayside. Sorry Ruth, better luck betting against the next foolish media startup.

In other PJM News: Wait, there isn't a hell of a lot. They've dropped the "Mondo" from their in-house blogs and have Launched "China Syndrome", which sounds like a bad Sci-Fi channel movie, and "WMD Files". What they're about is obvious.

The Pajamanistas have become so boring that, frankly, there's nothing to even mock. Even Dennis The Peasant has dropped the All-Raj-All-The-Time schtick in favor of some substantiative posts about his experiences with the Somali community in Ohio. We'll be back more regularly if things ever get interesting. Which we doubt.

Die Another Day

2006-01-23T12:52:00.000-08:00

Two weeks and... no PJM Death? Well, that's good for the lot of you who have chosen dates outside this month. Here's how things stand today:

Not so good for us, because as we've noted lately, PJ Media has been too dull to mock. But the moment something happens, we'll be here.

See you at the next update!

Crickets

2006-01-22T20:20:00.000-08:00

This evening a quick technorati search turns up on 20 posts in the last 24 hours that mention Pajamas Media. And thusly the blogosphere was silent on the topic. We don't even have much to say, the PJM site is still lamely limping along, bleeding capital, being boring, that sort of thing.

Among the few posts is this one from the Norse trickster god himself. It is a long, rambling post that we've been mostly unable to make sense of, but it does toss in the neologism "fucktard" and talk about Dan Riehl of Riehl World View, another PJM pessimist. The post itself doesn't really have anything to do with Pajamas Media, but it is quite entertaining.

In other news An Important Message From Welch's.

PJM Goes Hollywood

2006-01-15T22:35:00.000-08:00

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The good folks over at everyone's favorite doomed media empire have opened up a Hollywood blog. Its name? MONDO HOLLYWOOD, and it even has the cute little kimono/bathrobe thing with some sunglasses. Adorable. Or something!

Apparently the "Mondo" thing is going to be a theme. Wonderful. Now we have the media-to-revolutionize-all-media insistent upon using slang terms that, frankly, we haven't heard in at least a decade. In fact, we cannot recall anyone ever using "mondo" in a non-ironic sense. That's how old it is, we're too young to remember the phrase being cool. What's even better, though, is their introductory headline:

Another opening of another "Mondo" show

That's right folks, scare quotes. Also, just a quick tip, according to our copy of the AP style guide, headlines get single quotes. Anyway, "Mondo Hollywood," which doesn't even have the advantage of rhyme, differs from "Mondo Alito" in a couple of important ways: it has comments, and there is some PJM-original content. You still can't tell which blogs are PJM and which aren't without clicking through their list, but we're sure that in a few months, despite whatever technical difficulties arise, they will have that sorted out.

Also: is this "Mondo" business something those fools got from the branding agency they hired? If so, they got one raw fucking deal.

But I Am Le Tired

2006-01-12T19:02:00.000-08:00

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Well well well, it looks like PJM has an Alito blog.

Only it isn't an Alito blog. There is exactly zero content produced there, it's just a round up of Alito coverage from around the blogosphere. And, get this, they incorporate any number of non-PJM blogs. The Moderate Voice, TalkLeft, Radio Blogger and WILLisms just to name a few. These are excerpted, presented on the PJM page, and one would never know without looking at the PJ Blogs list which blogs are actually members of Pajamas Media. Yes, the posts do include links back to the original sources but what, exactly, is PJM providing, then?

All of us in the blogosphere know how to use Technorati, a quick search for "Alito" turns up over 48,000 entries. The PJM "Mondo Alito" (a dumb name if we ever heard one) blog contains fewer than two dozen entries. Are they a filter? Sort of, but their links look like the Alito links from Instapundit or Volokh with a less interesting mix. So, again, what service exactly are they providing?

ONWARDS AND UPWARDS

Dennis The Peasant calls PJM "too dull to mock" and then goes on to talk about losing weight. Best of luck to the fat ass.

A Technorati search on "Pajamas Media" turns up 4700 entries, most of the top ones talking about their Alito "blog" and linking back to it. Nick at LGF Watch posts this list of comments from Little Green Footballs, and we have to say that many of them are pretty disgusting. We find one from "'Nam Grunt" to be particularly odious:

'Nam Grunt 1/12/2006 11:11AM PST
Oh My! Savages killed each other, so what! They do it everyday to innocents that's their 'THANG'!

We will let that speak for itself, but it seems Nick's suggestion to make PJM advertisers aware of the behavior of LGF commenters isn't a bad one.

Moxie says that by 2006 she'd have expected something, anything interesting from Pajamas Media. She mockingly calls out Aubrey Chernick, primary PJM backer. Also, she gets the word "douchebag" into her post, for which we must certainly applaud her.

Th-Th-Th-That's all for now, folks.

Death Would Not Come

2006-01-08T13:19:00.000-08:00

Well folks, it's a bit of a sad day here around PJM Death Pool -- we must announce our first losing contestant: MDHatter, who selected January 2nd for the demise of the stillborn WWW-domination project currently known as Pajamas Media.

Stillborn isn't quite the right word, thanks to the cool million or so keeping it on life support like an unoved Terri Schiavo -- and one only slightly more self-aware.

Apparently they've been aware enough to spend some of that money on spiffy new headline graphics, which is kind of like moving the vegetative patient to a room with a slightly better view. Say, from the parking lot side to the parking lot side with trees.

Anyway, consider this a reminder that the PJM Death Pool remains open to entrants until 2/16/06. That's a bit more than a month. If you haven't entered yet, you may want to act fast and click the button above right -- the patient might not have that much time.

Death Pool Status: Just Resting

2006-01-04T05:29:00.000-08:00

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In comments to the last post Jeff Jarvis wondered when the PJM Death Pool Death Pool starts, well, feel free to start one Mr. Jarvis.

In other news, your humble narrators have been busy earning their livings and with New Year sorts of things. It's a busy time of year around Death Pool Central.

Anyway, the status of the pool remains the same, at $18. Dennis The Peasant points to Ten Predictions About Pajamas Media, our favorites:

6. John Cole will at long last realize that whining is not the same as debating, but don't hold your breath on this one.

7. By years end, ALL of the Scintillating-70 will have operating ads. By years end, ALL of the Scintilatting-70 will become overwhelmed by the shame of taking an investors money only to be part of the worst thing to hit the internet since Al Gore took credit for inventing it.

Hang tight, gang, we'll be back to regularly scheduled updates soon. One would hope this afternoon or tomorrow, but for now it's back to the salt mines for us.

In The House

2005-12-28T23:27:00.000-08:00

We now interrupt our regularly scheduled break to comment on the PJM ads which have finally (sometimes it takes a month!) appeared on some but not all of the member sites. (What, you want everything up in a month?! Do you know how long it takes to send an e-mail these days?!?! (You know how it is, with all that spam out there!))

Of course, they're all still Doubleclick, none of them are clearly targeted toward a blog-reading audience (unlike, say, those highly compelling ACLU-are-communists blogads you see all over the dang place) and quite a few are still in-house ads.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, PJM remains PJM's most loyal advertiser.

But anyway, while sitting around with the family this week, bored out of our minds and so letting those minds wander elsewhere, we realized something not quite profound but still worth sharing: those idiotic in-house ads are more telling about why PJM is likely to fail than we first realized.

Let's start with an easy one:

"Where else can someone write unedited in third person as an antlered mammal?" -- Bull Moose

How, in the name of all that is good and sacred, does this appeal to anyone BUT somebody who is already sold on blogging? Why would an advertiser care? You know what an advertiser might actually care about? The fact that this unexplained "Bull Moose" fellow is actually Marshall Wittmann, former Christian Coalition guy, current DLC guy, always a McCain guy. Think he might get a wide number of readers? He just might. But then again... Mr. Wittmann isn't a PJM blogger.

Here's two just demand to be considered together:

Look, we all think the bloggers won the argument over Rathergate, and Charles Johnson deserves as much credit as Buckhead and the guys at Power Line. But the gloating has got to stop. Maybe it seemed for awhile there like bloggers were going to take down another media figure every other week. After Eason Jordan, heck, the future was wide open. But that isn't quite where we're at now.

What's more, we think Ms. Bruce is oversimplifying the then vs. now she sets up. Information has been democratized somewhat, but let's not kid ourselves: the blogs with the most readership and most prestige are the ones run by professional journalists, professors of law or economics or you-name-it, business executives, established writers, etc. Of course a few "nobodies" have risen to become elites... but even they aren't representative of "the people." They still tend to be a bit better educated, a bit more libertarian, and a lot more politically obsessed. The "core of American people" don't read blogs. The political obsessives who once contented themselves to read a lot and write vituperative e-mails to each other are now writing those posts for the public at large. But the vast majority of the public hasn't tuned in.

"Opinion I can handle; it's biased narrative posing as objective reporting that really needs to stop." -- Jeff Goldstein, PJ blogger

Agreed! But so what? It's a bit of a non-sequitur unless you're already of a mind for media criticism.

And aren't you actually PJM, or as RLS puts it, PJMedia? Maybe this is nitpicking. But it still shows the organization's identity isn't terribly clear. Obviously those "branding" folks they hired awhile back weren't any good, but you'd at least think they'd tell them to pick something and promote the hell out of it. Pajamas Media? PJM? PJMedia? PJ? For crying out loud, you need one.

In all, the above quotes remind us of how self-centered -- and self-aggrandizing -- this whole Pajamas Media project has been. Simon and Johnson seem to think everyone has the exact same view of the blogs as they do, or maybe they just don't care. It's a big inside joke and they think everyone's laughing along.

Sorry, we're just laughing at you.

We've Been Busy

2005-12-24T09:00:00.000-08:00

Here at Deathpool central with day jobs and Christmas plans. We'll be back on Monday with an update, and return to regularly scheduled PJM-watching next week. Updates will resume full-force after the first of the year.

For now: Happy Holidays.

Daily Report

2005-12-20T20:07:00.000-08:00

Not much to report.

Therefore we will direct you to this piece of short fiction. Our resident literary critic and poet-at-large, C. Martin Rhone, found it a touch long and nearly incomprehensible. We, however, think he is a pretentious ass and enjoyed it. Of course, we were drunk at the time.

A Very Special Weekend Update

2005-12-18T17:12:00.000-08:00

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This weekend's pool standings are the same as last week's, so we're going to actually post a bit of content today. Shocking. We know.

Via Ms. Althouse and That Loveable Peasant, we see PJM Bloggers John Cole and Jeff Goldstein acting like petulant junior high schoolers. Cole:

Since it is my website, and I have read your tedious and relentless criticism of PJ (came here via Atrios, your new compadre), and I am fully aware that Althouse is the one who started (mostly) the Open Sores bit, I lumped you two together (in the etc. you can throw in Don Surber, Steve at Hog On Ice, the Commisar e at Politburo, and whoever else you would like- although they have testicles and it doesn't support your sexist thesis). And I told them I didn't want to read any more links to the crap you and your clique of PJ bashers have to say. I really am tired of it.

Goldstein (In reference to other commenter Elmo):

I don't want your respect. I don't need your respect. And you'll never have my respect. And I mean that.

You saw your opportunity, you backed your horse. And as far as I'm concerned, you picked the wrong pony. Live and learn.

But do me a favor and stop mentioning me. It creeps me out.

Cole again (responding to charges of sexism, which we think are cetainly overblown):

would argue they have been behaving like bitter jerks, for whatever the reason, but as they are not female, and the two people I singled out (for the above mentioned reasons- you were linked and Althouse is responsible for the emewrgence of the Open Sores bit), shrew was fitting. But because a descriptor is more appropriate for two women than men does not make the comment sexist.

Had I known that the 'Carnivorous Conservative' would sieze upon the lefty feminist playbook, I would have just stuck with the unisex "Axis of Asshole." It fits nicely.

Dan, when you guys call one of your PJ bashing links being 'Althoused' (ask Moxie)it leaves you open to suspicion that this is nothing more than an attention getting enterprise. There is at least as much evidence (and actually, more) of my throway remark than your charge of sexism.

And this, gentle readers, is what passes for public relations in Pajamaland. Critics are haters, or jealous, or immature, or any number of other things. Look, let us put this as clearly as we can: we read and enjoy many PJM member blogs, but we think that Simon and Johnson are running an ill-conceived enterprise with very little in the way of a plan. That's why we're here, and that's why we're running the pool.

RELATED NEWS: Cole posts, in a post headlined Blog Fights, his version of the Moxie/Peasant/Althouse/Cole/Sexism dust-up.

Anarcho Syndicalism.

2005-12-15T07:00:00.000-08:00

In email correspondence, Tim Worstall points us to this post of his about Pajamas Media, syndication, and what he feels they should be doing. Yes, we're aware that it's two weeks old, cut us some slack, we're only pathetic humans, after all. From Mr. Worstall's post:

The answer lies in that word "syndication". From what I see now the PJM guys are taking this to mean syndicating bloggers and blogs to bloggers and other online readers. Which while it might be both fun and could even, given sufficient traffic, be profitable, isn’t what I thought they were first talking about when the subject was raised.

Isn't a blog-to-blog distribution network pretty much like an RSS feed? Except with PJM you can only get their 70 subscriber blogs...hrm. We're not sure how successful a model that could prove to be. Syndication to newspapers could prove valuable for all involved, but that doesn't seem to be the direction that PJM is moving.

Meanwhile, Mr. The Peasant points us to this Moxie post where she takes a look at the mysterious mystery of Michelle Malkin's ad situation. She also points out that PJM spent big dollars on an advertisement for Drudge today:

This morning I saw that Raj and Rerun have placed ads on Drudge. Ads on Drudge don't come cheap, my friends. Did they get a discount for idiotic conservatives? I doubt it. Matt Drudge HATES blogs.

My friend Andrew Breitbart (Drudge's right hand man) was the only one I heard good things about from the Pajamas Media mis-launch -- and as nice as he is -- I highly doubt that Breitbart worked a deal for them. If he did talk Matt into this, I hope Matt is awash in shame.

That's a lot of dough to be dropping without a revenue stream. Who was it with the "slow capital burn rate" theory? Because a Drudge ad, eight staffers, and 70 bloggers to pay sure seems to put the lie to that hypothesis.

Let's Do The Time Warp Again

2005-12-13T20:06:00.000-08:00

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Our favorite asshole (we mean that as a term of endearment, for we know he is truly a delicate flower) has something most interesting today. If true, then, it would seem that our earlier altercation with Dean Barnett is par for the course. His source, Jesus's General, has this to say:

It seems that Pajamas Media is influencing some of its more Euro-minded boardmembers for the better. I understand that no less than two of these quasi-Frenchman are emailing their critics with threats of utter ruination.

It's good to see the duo taking cues from the White House on how to handle dissenters. It's even better that they're doing so surreptitiously by email rather than in their blogs--it's so much more Rovian that way. The Nation certainly needs more people like them.

First of all, cudos for the apt turn of phrase.

Secondly, this makes us wonder if we've all suddenly migrated back to middle school. A clique has formed in the blogosphere, a pajama/bathrobe-clad clique, and they've decided that those of us who aren't particularly impressed with their attire should be called "fags" and given swirlies after gym class. Or something like that, anyway.

Are the Pajamadin roaming the hallways of the interweb simply looking for poor outsiders to torture? Will they threaten critics with "utter ruination" or, worse yet, DELINKING? It seems unlikely that it'd be worth the time of most of the PJM bloggers: most of them are professionals in some other field who blog in their spare time, usually blog reasonably interesting things, and get decent traffic; it's a waste to bother trolling like 13-year-olds on IRC.

That said, between Simon & Johnson's treatment of Mr. The Peasant, our interactions with Dean Barnett, Johnson sending sending his commenters after Anne Althouse, Tim Worstall not being able to get a response from PJM Marketing, and assorted other weirdness around the blogosphere, somebody at PJM corporate needs to get a leash on that dog.

We're loath to give out free advice to an organization whose failure we're counting on for our entertainment; but any first-year public relations intern, nay, anyone who's ever worked a single day in customer service, will tell you that each employee interaction with the public influences perception of the brand. Jeff Jarvis gave a lesson to Dell about exactly that, and the PJM folks need to learn the same thing.

Tom Troja was quite sincere, polite, and forthcoming with us, unfortunately the rest of PJM's representatives to the internet hoi polloi don't understand positive branding.

Thgir-si-Ecirp

2005-12-12T19:42:00.000-08:00

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We've had a long day at the office, and simply don't have it in us to post a major PJM-related update, although we promise more is on the way tomorrow. For now, to tide you over, we have a rules update and clarification.

In the event that PJM closes up shop on a day that nobody has picked, the winner will be the person who picked the next closest date after the date of close. Whoever was closest with "they'll be closed by X" will be the winner of the pool. This will be appended to the original rules post.

That's all for now, thanks for playing.

Death Pool: Weekend Entries Update

2005-12-11T12:16:00.000-08:00

Click here to enter the PJM Death Pool

As has become our tradition, here are the current entries into the PJM Death Pool as of this posting. The current pool balance is $18 and growing, so remember to click the link above and get your entries in before February 16, 2006.

MDHatter: January 2
Ruth A. : February 14
Ben F: February 17 [Updated]
Michael S: March 10
J Kenefick: April 11
Tony B: April 14
CGHill: April 19
Paul H.: April 29
Sean H. : May 12
ScoopStories: May 15
P Neeman: May 22
Gary K: June 9
Rebecca: July 15
Sally E: August 1
Patrick J: Email Us Your Entry

Current Balance: $18

In other news: The ever-watchful peasant has gained insight into the secret world of PJM Board Meetings.

What TV Tells Us

2005-12-08T15:52:00.000-08:00

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"Buy Tide" and "kill your parents", that is.

As promised, finally, this is our take on how a recent Variety piece relates to the PJM model of advertising. From the top of the Variety article:
But as broadcasters struggle to connect with a fractured marketplace, marketers are rethinking their approach to the entire TV spectrum. That includes such blockbuster broadcasts as the Super Bowl and the Olympics, even the Oscars.

All three events will be held in the next three months, and advertisers are being offered a wider variety of multimedia packages and ad formats.

On Super Bowl Sunday, ads will come in 15-, 30-, 60- and 90-second varieties. A number of advertisers are buying around the game -- in the pre-game or post-game show, on ESPN radio, in ESPN magazines and on an Internet service called ESPN Motion, which streams game highlights to your PC. Many are investing in retail promotions, sweepstakes and elaborate product placement deals on other ABC shows.

It's arguable that PJM is trying to tap into the "fractured marketplace" and service a particular subset of the populace that way. However, with even traditional TV advertisers realizing that a one-size-fits model is dead, why on Earth is a "new media" entity trying that out.

We suppose there's an argument to be made for taking the smaller power of each individual blog and brining them together...but that's clearly not working for PJM. As Dennis points out, their main page is boring and doesn't really add any value. Further, the services advertised (Victoria's Secret, Circuit City, etc) aren't really niche for the readers of political blogs. And they're things we already know about. Eventually, and we're betting by the end of next year, those advertisers will realize the futility of their effors and go back to more traditional media outlets. Or they'll switch to some other, more direct, form of internet advertising where the demographic data is easier to get and more in their target.

Pajamas Media Advertising Update

2005-12-06T16:38:00.000-08:00

Today we received a reply to our inquiry from Pajamas Media's own Tom Troja. The following is reprinted, with his permission, although his cellphone number has been omitted because, well, unlike some other internet luminaries he was actually quite friendly to us. Here's Tom's first reply:

We are in the process of putting together the media kit with the new numbers of all the blogs. The results really are great. Preliminary numbers from Nielsen project around 16 million page views a month and we are just getting going. We are trying to be extremely accurate with all this as we want to be based on solid reporting at the beginning. That is one of the key reasons we are using Doubleclick. They are only serving ads for us and Dart for Publishers is providing reporting. They are not tracking data, nor are they reselling us nor are we part of their network. We went with them because they are arguably the best in the business for ad serving and reporting.

This makes the relationship between PJM and DoubleClick a little bit more clear. PJM is apparently using DoubleClick solely to serve ads, and hasn't entered their network. As big a problem as many folks on the interweb have with DoubleClick, it's fair to say that they're quite adept at data gathering and reporting. And, if the projected 16 million page views come through (We'd be interested in seeing the core data along with the method used for the projections, but that's likely secret for good reason), that's quite a traffic number. How many people that actually represents is another issue, and one addressed in the post just below this one.

At the very least Tom is a Pac-10 alumn, even if he did go to USC, so he understands the plight of west-coast teams in the damnable BCS.

In other PJM-related news Dennis The Peasant posts his take of Pajamas' news he missed over the weekend while dealing with the passing of his father-in-law. With that heartache fresh, it's also good to know that he still has his day job.

More On PJM Advertising

2005-12-05T16:25:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend we emailed PJM Corporate about why their ads are hosted by doubleclick. As of this writing we've gotten no response. If we hear nothing by the end of tomorrow we'll likely bother PJM Principles Roger L. Simon and Charles Johnson, as well as blogger-relations PJMer Baldilocks. We'll keep you posted on any new developments.

It appears that Simon and Instapundit are still running the doubleclick-hosted PJM ads as last week. LGF, however, seems to be running two different Flash ads, one for SBC and one for Circuit City, through the PJM network. Both ads, best we can tell from out limited HTML skill, seem to be hosted by PJM rather than doubleclick (If we're wrong please feel free to correct us in comments). If this is indeed the case, it would mean that PJM is not exclusively piggy-backing off of an already established internet advertising system.

This adds another wrinkle, in that PJM could be positioning itself as both a reseller of ad-serving and an ad-server. This would make PJM fairly similar to DoubleClick's old format, before they spun off their marketing arm and focused exclusively on ad-serving from a technology stand-point. We still, however, question exactly why anyone would need this service.

If Jeff Jarvis is right, and small is the new big, one must wonder exactly what good a one-price-fits-all top-down advertising scheme for 70 blogs of varying interest and traffic is supposed to accomplish. There's a reason the New York Times and the Lake Oswego Review have different advertising rates: even were they owned by the same publisher that would no doubt be the case. If those two papers joined forces in some bizzaro universe, would it be to their benefit to set one advertising rate? Definitely not: using the NYT's rates would bankrupt the LO Review, because nobody is going to pay premium dollar for advertising in a local weekly, and by the same token using the LO Review rates would bankrupt the NYT because local weekly rates aren't going to cover their operating expenses.

PJM strikes us as the same sort of deal for blogs. Instapundit, Roger Simon, and LGF get far more traffic than YAYsports!, Solomonia or Swanky Conservative. Charging the same rate to advertise on all of those blogs seems madness. Now, there is the argument that hitting all 70 blogs for one low rate is enticing, and it's true that some people will find that appealing; however, there's no guarantee that the reader demographics are in the target audience, or that there's sufficient diversity in readership to warrant such expenditure depending on the rate. That is to say: the readership of Instapundit, Swanky Conservative, The Volokh Conspiracy, Vodka Pundit and Tigerhawk probably have a fair to high amount of overlap. Meaning that the "combined traffic" of each, in terms of unique individuals or households, is probably greatly inflated.

On the whole, this reminds us of the "we're all going to get rich through micropayments" excitement that once swept the on-line comics community, and the dot-com-era feeling that traffic = $$$. Remember, it took Amazon, one of the most successful on-line ventures of all time, five years to make it into the black, five years after the dot-bust of 2000, how likely is it that an internet start-up will be able to get five years worth of working capital out of anybody?

Tomorrow: How this all relates to TV.

UPDATE: Instapundit is now featuring ads for Victoria's Secret and Circuit City.

Death Pool Weekend Update

2005-12-04T13:01:00.000-08:00

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Ruth A. : February 14
CGHill: April 19
Paul H.: April 29
Sean H. : May 12
ScoopStories: May 15
Gary K: June 9
Rebecca: July 15
MDHatter: January 2
J Kenefick: April 11 (Thanks to commenter TripleJ63 & J Kenefick for the email)

Total Pool Size: $14

~~J Kenefick and~~ [Update Above] P Neeman: We still can't find your entry dates, and we've sent you an email to make sure that everybody's dollar goes along with a proper date pick. Please respond, thanks.

And, Finally, Some PJM Advertisements

2005-12-01T16:19:00.000-08:00

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Roger L Simon, head cheese in charge of PJM, has finally put up an announcement of Pajamas Media advertising. From Roger's post:

I'm sure everyone has noted that Pajamas Media-served ads are now appearing on this site, as they are on Instapundit today.

That's pretty much the entirety of the announcement. In comments Steven Den Beste points out that the PJM ads are hosted by doubleclick, which is apparently the ad-serving company PJM is using for these ads, and Roger explains that they'll be looking at other ad-servers moving forward.

A brief search of the PJM site returns nothing on advertising other than the advertising information page with contact info for the PJM conglomerate. No announcement that the ads are now live on the main site, an unceremonious announcement on Roger's page and the sudden appearance of the large, unsightly PJM ad on Instapundit.

Strangely, the ads they started with are ads for...Pajamas Media! Apparently this whole closed-to-the-public blog advertising thing doesn't yet have anybody interested. And why would it? There are already BlogAds, a well-established blog advertising which any blog can join and set its own rates. GoogleAds are also effective, and hit a wide-range of targeted segments based upon the content of the pages on which they appear. Perhaps the PJM ads will evolve over time, but it seems as if their first order of business is becoming some sort of blog DrudgeReport. We already have that, it's called Instapundit. See also: HuffPo.

We'll be back with a Pool-related update either Friday or this weekend. Hang tight.

Keepin' It Riehl

2005-11-30T19:59:00.000-08:00

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Dan over at Riehl World has a nice reaction to yesterday's CSM article on Pajamas Media. After highlighting this passage:

That's what Pajamas Media hopes to find out. Backed by $3.5 million in venture capital, the nascent media company has gathered some of the most highly regarded bloggers on the Internet at one site (osm.org), hoping, as co-founder Roger Simon puts it, "to be the place for breaking Internet opinion."

That readership and notoriety is making these elite blogs attractive to advertisers. Mr. Simon and his partner, Charles Johnson, who writes the popular conservative blog "Little Green Footballs", believe that forming a group of elite bloggers can be an even better moneymaking proposition as their collective site sees its readership and ad rates soar.

Riehl goes on to say:

Amazing ... simply amazing. At this rate, by the time they're done, no blogger is even going to like them, let alone want to work with them. This is blogging - if they continue portraying themselves as they do above, bloggers are going to enjoy giving Pajamas Media a hand.

Talk about over estimating your street cred and significance, Geesh! How can they be that naive? As of now, Technorati is monitoring approximately 22,000,000 blogs - the best of which have likely yet to be discovered, if even started as of yesterday. That the best and the brightest, the heavenly seventy something, as it were, somehow coalesced in an early circle jerk based upon hating Dan Rather is feee-uckin' laughable.

This, gentle readers, is exactly why we started this endevour. If Pajamas Media is going to continue in their arrogant way, the rest of the blogosphere will eventually turn entirely against them, and their endevour will die. We're just keeping tabs on how long, exactly, that'll be.

[Tip O' The Hat: Miss Althouse]

We've Broken On Through.

2005-11-29T19:27:00.000-08:00

Click here to enter the PJM Death Pool.

Your humble narrators were mentioned today by the CS Monitor in this story about Pajamas Media. So, welcome Christian Science Monitor readers, look around a bit, place some bets, enjoy yourselves. For those of y'all new to the site, click here to join the pool. Happy hunting.

The First Casualty

2005-11-28T07:39:00.000-08:00

While we've been considering side-bets for PJM Bloggers leaving, it should be noted that Tim Blair is the first member of the PJM Editorial Board to resign. As of this post he is still listed on the PJM Advisory Board page, and there is no announcement on the PJM site. We're not expecting anything to that effect from them, but we thought we'd mention it anyway.

UPDATE:

Okay, let's do this right. Here at PJM Death Pool we're only taking bids on the end of the actual PJM enterprise, but that doesn't mean we can't cross 'em off the list as they go. We start with one refugee from the pre-launch memory hole and today's too-amicable-to-be-realistic bow-out by Mr. Blair ( however a man about whom we hear entirely amicable things):

Michael Barone
Austin Bay
Adam Bellow
~~Tim Blair~~
Tammy Bruce
Marc Cooper
David Corn
Richard Fernandez
~~Luke Ford~~
Jose Guardia
Jane Hall
Larry Kudlow
Michael Ledeen
Clifford May
John Podhoretz
Claudia Rosett

So who's next? Larry, you've got a TV show to do, you don't have time for this nonsense. David, we know you've been under a lot of pressure about this whole project -- Wolly getting to you? Same question for you, Marc. Barone, don't you have The Big Book of Politicians to start editing?

Maybe a better question is -- who's the last (besides Roger and Charles and the VCs) left holding the bag?

PJM Death Pool Weekend Update

2005-11-27T14:17:00.000-08:00

The picks are rolling in, and while we have a couple submissions to iron out, here's the early board as it now stands:

Ruth Anne Adams: February 14
CGHill: April 19
Paul Hallman: April 29
Sean Hackbarth: May 12
ScoopStories: May 15
Gary Kirby: June 9

Note to J. Kenefick and P. Neeman -- we can't locate your picks! Please email us ASAP!

We'll probably update again Monday, so make your picks known -- click here to find out how. We've also had questions about doing a separate pool for the first person to leave. If there's interest (let us know in the comments) we can organize that as a separate pool. You tell us!

But about TA/PJM/OSM/"OSM"/PJM: How about that vibrating kimono hanging over the new-old page, eh? A small improvement? Up to a point. Not to mention the "lively debate" amongst the celebrated elite of the PJMosphere (only one of whom is actually best known as a blogger!) is easily outdone by the message boards at -- wait for it -- pajamasmedia.isfullofcrap.com. And oh yeah, what Althouse said.

We Are Bitter, Pathetic Losers.

2005-11-27T12:27:00.000-08:00

Dean Barnett of Soxblog isn't particularly impressed with the PJM Death Pool. First, he sent us this lovely gem:

Pathetic that you would care so much about another's failure. Sad as well. If they fail, it won't make you any less miserable a person than you currently are. Don't you know that?

This is after we solicited his participation. A simple "no" would've sufficed, Dean. Really, we're pathetic because we've taken the time to point out publicly what everyone seems to know? That Pajamas Media is a ship without a course, or even a navigator, and seems unlikely to find either any time soon. Our response was short and simple:

It's called schadenfreude. This is like watching fat people cry, or midgets on bicycles: pure comedy.

If you have to have the comedy value of midgets on bicycles explained to you, well, you're certainly beyond our help. What followed was an extremely personal attack on your narrators. Dean's second response is even less friendly:

Yes, we all fall victim to schadenfreude sometimes, but that's a failing, not a strength. Thus, most of us have the good sense to keep such moments private. You probably know this, which is why you choose not to attach your real or known blogging name to this enterprise.

PM/OSM may well fail, but at least its founders will be able to say they attempted something grand at some point in their lives. Will you?

I doubt it. Such pathetic bitterness could only emanate from an individual whose frustration with himself/herself runs very deep indeed.

DB

That hurts us, Dean. It really does. First of all, we'd like to know where Dean picked up sufficient psychological training to deduce such things from our postings here. Secondly, we'd like to make this clear in case Dean has a reading comprehension problem: Timothy Dreier of The One-Handed Economist is administering the pool funds, and also posts updates to the PJM Death Pool site. He's an analyst at a bank in Texas if you're too lazy to read his about page, finds his job satisfying if somewhat stressful at times, and is just a decent GRE score and application fee away from starting an MBA program locally in San Antonio. This is his girlfriend, she's still in school back at University of Oregon where Tim was once editor of The Oregon Commentator.

Is that good enough, Dean? Or are you just a stiff without a sense of humor who got sucked into what he thought was an advertising program that has totally failed to deliver and feels embarassed about that fact? Project much, Dean?

Happy Thanksgiving! But Don't Expect Us To Let Up On PJM.

2005-11-24T07:35:00.000-08:00

Click here to enter the PJM Death Pool

Here at PJM Death Pool we'll be spending the day eating a delicious dead bird with family and friends. At some point there will likely be football watched and naps taken. Roger L Simon will also be taking the day off from blogging, although it's likely that he's still playing Corporate Genius Pretend. However, he may be helping his daughter live-blog the Macy's Parade. Their post makes promises, but I doubt they'll be kept:

Does the sight of a lurid, 50-foot-tall inflatable Mr. Potatohead fill you with existential dread? Us too. Follow along as Protein Wisdom's Jeff Goldstein and Hillary Johnson of Jack & Hill play Regis and Kathy Lee, providing blogalicious live coverage of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Mystery guests will also stop by to comment as the debacle unfolds.

The entirely unfunny live event can be found here. What we don't understand is when a bunch of bloggers turned into CBS. The Macy's Parade is possibly the dumbest Thanksgiving tradition, and it confuses the bejesus out of us that they'd bother to live-blog. Maybe PJM was hoping this would be entertaining, but it comes off quite forced. Further, they've not even bothered with pictures or screen-caps from the TV coverage, so the rest of us have absolutely no idea which float they're talking about. Happy Thanksgiving guys!

Tulip Mania

2005-11-23T19:03:00.000-08:00

Click here to join the PJM Death Pool.

Over at his place, JeffG has some fun with Pajamas Media, albeit in a way that deflects any serious consideration.

Down in the comments, someone misses the joke (Jeff's self-applied Andy Kaufman comparison is apt) but otherwise underlines one horrific possibility about PJM:

Respectfully, I don’t see how this is good news. Nor do I understand how someone as smart as you doesn’t see this as well. Here is the business plan: bloggers like you are the commericials. The advertisements. You round up the listeners/readers. They watch a show of old media types. The big guys make the money. And you are a sucker. You are Pajamas Media’s ads. And you do it for free. (Or come at the cost of the difference between what you’ll make from them on ads and what you’d make with Blogads.) Now, you can rebut, a rising ship will bring me along. Maybe. Or maybe they’ll throw you overboard. But if it gives you satisfaction being linked to Barone/Corn, no matter how tangentially, then do continue. Althouse, for all her warts, ain’t a sucker. She ain’t an unpaid billboard for Simon and Corn. Ultimately, maybe there are better ways to promote the blogosphere. And you.

Even if that's not what Simon/Johnson intended, it's a heckuva point, and not unlike the one collaboratively arrived at by Pablo, Colin W. and Ann Althouse in the comments at her blog. Here's the main thrust, edited for clarity:

Pablo: "It's entirely clear that [OSM] isn't the same business [as Tulip Advertising]. DTP relates discussion of an advertising company for bloggers. PJ/OSM, particularly in it's current incarnation, is in the news business."

Colin: "That's only because nobody actually knows what PJM/OSM is supposed to be....I'm sure Roger and Charles still have designs on providing advertising for blogs...their OSM site is set up for it. It's purely incompetence that has held them up so far. Roger and Charles sold all of the bloggers there (and attempted with Ann) on the idea of an advertising network, thats pretty close to the project that DTP and the S&C were working on no?"

Ann: "Great point! Maybe their lawyers are telling them they've got to change the plan to make it different enough from what was planned with Dennis. But then what's the point?"

If true, wow. And even some of the lizardoids are starting to ask some tough questions. Here's Beagle in the comments to this post:

Charles,

With dozens of lawyers at LGF you guys went out and hired a 'branding' company? Sounds like it would involve cattle.

Seriously, you should get your money back. They encouraged you to TM a generic term which nobody (not even those who claimed you stepped on their name) could defend in court.

Moreover, you could have held an open source contest to come up with a name. Don't forget your roots, man.

Why do we join in the anti-Pajamas vitriol? Despite numerous ridiculous suggestions, it surely isn't "envy," let alone "sour grapes." Schadenfreude is certainly closer, but now that we think about it -- this one's personal. For those of us who have been blogging for several years and have been excited as the blogosphere has grown in prominence and readership, Roger and Charles announced the blockbuster deal of the blog age, and then produced a dud. And it's a black mark upon us all.

This affects all of us.

Make Your Guesses Now!

2005-11-23T09:52:00.000-08:00

The PJM Death Pool is officially open.

Here's how this thing is going down:

1. Before all else, choose a date anytime from the moment you read this up to and including November 16, 2006 that you think is most likely the day Pajamas Media goes to that great dot com in the sky, or doesn't. What constitutes "death" when a website is not mortal, in fact is not even a living organism (at least until the singularity, at any rate) and hence is incapable of irreversible death as we know it? We count:

The site ceases to publish new material, and there is an announcement at Roger L. Simon, Little Green Footballs, or at Pajamas Media itself.

The site stops updating or goes offline without comment from the above for at least one week.

The company is sold, after which neither Roger nor Charles is part of it (if one remains, that doesn't count). [Updated.]

If the Internet like, goes out of business or something, that would count too. But then there probably wouldn't be a contest website...

The contest will stay open for three months from the PJM/OSM official launch. If you haven't signed on by February 16, 2006, better luck next time.

2. Because some bloggers signed a 12-month plan and others signed an 18-month plan, and we don't know which, we're going to arbitrarily set the length of this death watch at 12 months. If you choose Nov. 16, 2006, you are choosing "success" because that's the limit of the contest. [Updated.] After which, of course, there may be another death pool! Anyway, post the date for your guess in the comment section to this post. Just for fun, include a list of the top 5 bloggers you expect to bail first. It won't count as part of your picks, as some participants may be able to select themselves.

3. Then hit the jar, and let us know which is yours in an e-mail to pjmdeathpool@gmail.com.. If you want to try for the jackpot, the buy-in is $1. If you want to contribute more, we won't stop you -- and if enough of you chip in a bit more, that makes the pot all the bigger. But since you don't know much about us and we don't want any trouble from you, we're not asking for serious money -- just enough to make it fun. The account will be overseen by a friend of PJM Death Pool willing to stick his neck out, San Antonio blogger Timothy Dreier [Updated]. With his help, we will blog about the account balance so everyone knows what's up. Sure, this is a crude method, but we don't want this to be all about the money. We want this to be all about kicking the crap out of an overpromising, underdelivering turkey of an alternative news site.

For crying out loud, it's a buck!

4. Once we've verified your prediction and contribution, we'll make sure your paying participation does not escape notice. We'll run calendars showing everyone's guesses, and tick off the days as they go by. And of course, we'll continue to follow the travails of a website that's so much fun to hate, that pretty soon you forget how you had fun before you found this hate metastasizing inside you, brooding, slithering, waiting to get out...

Exorcise that demon by joining the PJM Death Pool while you still can! The collapse will be here before you know it.

The Death Pool

2005-11-22T15:05:00.000-08:00

Pajamas Media, née Open Source Media, née Pajamas Media, nee Tulips Advertising, have we come to this? A death pool? Well, this blog is proof of it. So far, many have expressed their displeasure with the project at virtually every stage of its organization -- from its inception, to the development phase, to its eventual unfortunate launch. (Say, why didn't anybody blog about Judy Miller?) And lately the criticism has come not just from your known enemies, but usual allies, and otherwise disinterested parties.

The website is not a failure yet, but we do expect that it will be soon. Hey Roger, hey Charles: You do realize your website is inferior to virtually every other blog portal/aggregator currently available, right?

Worse than that, it makes no sense at all, even to many people who read and like your personal blogs. It doesn't have a personality. It doesn't update very often, especially considering the ~~300~~ 70 bloggers involved). The site doesn't even work -- our favorite misstep is the whole Xinhua thing (still there last we checked!).

Nobody knows what it's supposed to deliver, let alone how you'd describe it in a single sentence. The only reason to come back is to see if it's as godawful as it was the last time. (After seeing the OSM logo get X-ed out, it does, and are they trying to compare themselves to Dick Cheney?)

Perhaps most interesting, almost no one knew who Dennis the Peasant, AKA Kenton Kelly was until the last week or so. And sure, he's an asshole. But the force of his narrative has persuaded just about anybody who's read the length of it. Roger says he'd like Kelly's posts read aloud in court? Well, I doubt he'd mind. Not that it'll ever come to that. Chances are you're going to fold.

And: Where are those web ads? Isn't that why everyone got into it in the first place? Hey PJM-affiliated bloggers, have you said anything about this to the head honchos? Haven't any of you blogged about it?

Now that I think about it ... did you notice how not-concerned Luke Ford was with getting knocked out of the company before it launched? If there's a winner in all this, it's him. The rest of you? Simon, Charles, Instapundit, Marc Cooper, Protein Wisdom, Sawicky, Malkin, VodkaPundit, I do look forward to reading you extricate yourselves from this debacle.

And then there's the mostly-Acela -conservative -media bigshots who have signed on. Let's not forget about them: Podhoretz, Ledeen, Kudlow, May, Barone and Bellow -- plus, hilariously, Jane Hall. E tu, Tim Blair? Tammy Bruce isn't surprising.

Oh, and the rest of you. What's your story?

But the rest of us either saw this coming or now know it for what it is. And this whole thing is pretty goddamned fucking funny, if you think about it. So don't take it too personally.

And consider it a complement, OSM/PJMers, that this deserves a death pool.

Details forthcoming...