Markos Moulitsas
February 27th, 2008 John Posted in Books, Interviews |
Markos Moulitsas might be considered the Cinderella of bloggers, though midnight has not yet appeared.
Moulitsas is the creator and head blogger behind the phenomenally successful political blog Daily Kos, which he began in 2002 as a personal way to blow some steam off about the Bush administration — steam supported with facts, research and expertise. He assumed it would be read by a minority of people, but six years later it is one of the most read blogs in the world, with up to a million hits a day. Not only that, but Moulitsas frequently writes for publications such as the British newspaper The Guardian and Newsweek, has authored books, worked as a political advisor for Howard Dean and co-founded the sports blogging network SB Nation.
The rise to prominence was entirely unexpected. Moulitsas was attending Boston University Law School after graduating college and doing a stint in the Army. In 2002, he was living in Berkeley, Ca., working and living.
SB: Why did you decide to start the blog?
MM: It was in April of 2002 and it was at the tail end of the Afghanistan War and the beginning of the war mongering against Iraq. As a progressive, it was really frustrating to see that not only did the progressive voice not really exist in the media, I mean, but the few that were were marginalized and shut down. If you wanted to get an anti-war perspective, the only one you could get on TV who would be taking that line would be someone like Janeane Garafolo. They would purposefully marginalize by putting a comedian as the voice of the anti-war left. There were a lot of people like me who were looking at the facts, looking at the rhetoric, looking at what was happening in Iraq and feeling that it simply did not add up. What the Bush administration claimed Iraq was doing did not match reality, but these were voices and points that were completely absent in the daily media. I started Daily Kos just as a therapeutic way to get this off my chest, never thinking that it was ever going to be anything more than my own little sounding pad for my family and friends.
SB: Did you have any previous exposure to blogs? Why did you decide to go with that format?
MM: I ran a blog while I was in law school called the Hispanic Latino news service and then, I actually edited the HTML every single day. I’d spend five hours to do the daily updates, because I had to code actual HTML and then move the old dates, yesterday’s material, into the archives by manually building a new archive page. It was pretty brutal. I was in school, so I had extra time to do things like that, but once I started my day job, there was just no way in hell I could keep that going, so I shut it down.
That was in 1999, and 2000, 2001, that’s when blogging tools first came on the scene, so by 2002, I think that’s when Blogger just came on, it had only been around for a couple months. I actually had a Blogspot site for about a month that I didn’t tell anyone about, not even my wife, where I just practiced to see if it was even something that I would be able to keep up. I have a really short attention span sometimes, that’s why blogging is so perfect for me, because I do a little work and I’m done and I move onto the next topic.
I gave it about a month and realized that this was fun, I liked doing this, let me make this a little more professional looking, and that’s when I got the Daily Kos.
SB: How disciplined were you in the beginning? How polished were you trying to be?
MM: They weren’t polished. Now I look at it and they’re painful. I’ve gotten much better, it’s pretty funny. I guess like anything else, practice makes you better. The initial stuff was pretty bad. I balked a couple times because I got a day job, so I wasn’t able to necessarily dedicate significant resources to it. I remember, when people started reading the site a couple months into me writing it, I remember I used to take weekends off, and one Saturday I got a really angry e-mail saying “You call this the Daily Kos, but you haven’t updated all day!” Oh my God, the pressure went way up. I could just picture this guy saying “What the hell? He says this is the Daily Kos!”
So the growth trajectory was pretty fast and over time it became my real job, my day job. In those early days, my world definitely did not revolve around the site.
SB: What was the process of noticing that more and more people were looking at the site?
MM: What happened was that there were two big bumps fairly quickly. The first was the 2002 election. I was writing about elections and it was a niche that at the time was only really covered by a couple other bloggers. We cornered that market fairly quickly and my traffic grew accordingly. Now, by market, I’m talking about a couple thousand people, it was a tiny market, but nobody else was discussing House and Senate races, the midterm elections, they just did not exist at the time, period.
The second big bump and the one that really catapulted me was the Iraq War. I’m a veteran, I served in the Army, I can talk about military issues intelligibly from a position of knowledge and authority, so that gave me an advantage with most people. There are so few people in media who have actually served in military, and I had a perspective on those things that wasn’t shared by many other people, so I cornered that market in talking about the run-up to the Iraq War. That was probably my biggest.
My big bump that pushed me up to 30,000 — I went from 10,000 in daily pages views in January and February, to 30,000 in March, so I tripled my traffic — now it’s between 500,000 and 1,000,000 depending on the news cycle — at the time, it a massive percentage increase.
SB: Did you do anything to consciously build traffic?
MM: No, but what I did though, which pretty much no other major blogger does — unfortunately, I wish they would — is that I constantly evolved the technology to accommodate traffic. A lot of traffic just pops out at a certain point, because the way these things work aren’t really conducive to bigger communities. So what I did from the beginning was I was constantly tweaking the technology, once I hit 30,000, I was using a technology called Moveable Type and I decided to ditch that and move over to Scoop, which is what I am still using today. I have a full-time tech team that is constantly coming up with features to tweak the site and accommodate the growing community and now I’m at a point where Scoop’s not good enough anymore and I have a development team working on the next generation.
SB: At what point did it cross over to business?
MM: In 2003, I became a political consultant, I had two or three clients, one of them was Howard Dean. When the primaries were over in early 2004, the Daily Kos was, at that point, self-sufficient via advertising, making enough money through the advertising so I didn’t need to do consulting. So I quit consulting — Jerome Armstrong from IDD was my partner in consulting and he kept doing it, I was technically a partner in the company all of 2004, but I didn’t get a salary or anything, I was focused on the Daily Kos one hundred percent, until the end of 2004, when we could finally breathe again, and obviously it was a very busy year, we dissolved that company and officially, the Daily Kos was my sole source of income. In practice it was much sooner than that, but legally that’s when it was clear that Daily Kos was my only gig.
JM: Then you wrote books, write for different magazines and newspapers — this wasn’t in your plan.
MM: In 2002, nobody would say “You’re going to start up your own publication, spending five dollars to make it happen.”Actually, $8 is how much the domain cost. It would cost you $8 to make it happen and that would parlay into this entire life as a political writer. It would be ridiculous to even fantasize about something like that, it’s sort of all been unexpected to me.
SB: And not just a political writer, but someone with political pull, an organizer. Do you think this is the thing that people who begin to blog look at, that they think “Ah ha, that could be me?”
MM: I know there are people who wish they could make their living from blogging or expect to make their living from blogging, but I think it’s sort of like people who want to be a major league baseball player, are going to hit the big leagues — not that the big leagues in blogs is anything like a baseball player, because it’s not — but the notion that you can parlay a passion into a career. So, yes, I know there are a lot of people who do that, but I think it’s the wrong motivation. Most people will obviously be disappointed because it’s not going to work that way, it’s not that easy — and there aren’t that many people who are making a full-time living off their blogs, it’s probably a couple dozen, so the numbers aren’t there. It’s tough. In perfect world, there’d be a lot more of that — there are so many people deserving to live off their blogs, they’re incredible writers, but the economics for that simply aren’t there at this point.
SB: I wonder if younger people appreciate the shift that has happen - not that long ago, in order to get your writing out there in an independent way required going to copy shops and making a zine and all that. Blogs have opened up the possibilities.
MM: It’s democratizing media. It doesn’t mean you can make a living off of it. I started writing because it was a way for me to get my voice out in the world. There was never any expectation that a lot of people would read it. At the time when I started, a couple hundred visitors to a blog was huge. I remember when I got my first hundred visitors in a day, I thought “Wow, I can’t even fit 100 people into my house.” That was pretty exciting. But now people are used to these mega-blogs like the Daily Kos, and their perspectives are totally skewed. That, to them, is what success is, but in reality, people should write because they are passionate about writing — and even if you reach 100 people, that’s pretty impressive. How did you reach 100 people before? Like you said, you had to go to all the trouble to print up pamphlets and pass them out, it was so incredibly difficult. Now you’re able to talk to a lot more people. That’s the thing about the medium and it sort of makes me sad that the Daily Kos and the other megasites skew what the definition of success is for a lot of people, that to be successful you have to be read by tens of hundreds of thousands of people and make money. That’s not the reason the Daily Kos is successful — that’s not what makes a site successful.
SB: Your story is talking about sitting down and honing your craft, giving yourself a vehicle to do something practical with them, rather than just write in a little journal that no one ever sees.
MM: Like I said, I have gotten a lot better at writing since doing this, but another factor is that I know a lot of people and publications who won’t hire someone based on a resume anymore. It’s sort of like “Let’s see what you do” and a lot of times that blog becomes a working showcase of your talents. I know a lot of people who have gotten jobs based on their blogs, whether it’s in politics or journalism. There’s no better way to showcase the fact that you know what you’re talking about and to write about it. I’ve noticed that with the sports blogs. We have a Portland Trailblazers blog and we lost our blogger to the Portland Trailblazers, they hired him to their communications department. They saw that he knew what he was talking about, he’s a good writer, he’s passionate about the team, they hired him. It’s a great way to showcase your talents. The blogging proper may not necessarily make a living, but it could lead to something.
Me, as a so-called business person — I still find that title hard to stomach, because I’m not very good at it, I have a team of accountants and people who know what they’re doing to manage the business side of what I do — if I want to look at hiring somebody, I look at their damn blog and see what they write about. That’s important to me.
SB: You’ve brought on other writers to the site — some of them were commenters.
MM: All of them. That’s the only way you could become an editor. All of them had over a year of time and service where they were doing diaries at Daily Kos and they proved that they had not only the talent, but the proper temperment to deal with this kind of gig, which is very high pressure — and also that they could work with a community, because at the end of the day, Daily Kos is a large community and you have to keep a certain balance to manage that community, like any other large social group.
SB: Did you find that you had to ease anyone in — or were they fully realized when you brought them in?
MM: My track record for the last two years has been pretty good, but before that I made mistakes. I’ve gotten good now at identifying the traits that work. That wasn’t the case in the beginning, so there was a bunch of flame outs, people who couldn’t handle the pressure or the profile — or even the ego boost, because there’s an ego component as well. There were a bunch of people who flame out, but it’s mostly good. It’s a big stage, it’s the largest progressive media platform in the country right now, in terms of people reading you. Some of the radio shows get a little bigger, but it’s a pretty massive platform, so I got really scared at first, but at this point, I’m good enough where all the people I have picked in the last few years have eased into it fairly smoothly.
SB: With you — and other people in the same arena — this is the first time it’s been done, this is the introductory experience to this medium. You’re figuring it all out.
MM: One of the drawbacks of being the trailblazer is that there’s nothing for us to look to as a guide, we’re trying to proceed. We basically flying blind. We’ll make our mistakes and I don’t mind making mistakes. I find that whole process quite fun, trying new things, and if it works, great, if it doesn’t work, whatever, it was worth a shot, I learned from it, I’ll try something else.
SB: That’s one of the beauties of blogging.
MM: The stakes are very low. And it’s easy to turn — it’s not like a big media institution where with any sort of decision, you have to have big meetings with committees, a lot of money, if it fails, somebody looks really, really bad. If I try something — oh, well, that was a disaster.
SB: Have you removed things retroactively?
MM: Yeah, lots of things, like the open threads. One time, I had an open thread that was always at the top of the page and it was refreshed - at a certain point, it would refresh to a new open thread. Didn’t work at all.
SB: It seems like the tide has changed with the so-called real press. Five years ago, there was a lot of defensiveness against blogs and bloggers in general and the higher profile bloggers like yourself. Now, every newspaper is scuttling to get their own blogs on papers. Is this something you expected of the news media? And do you think that in taking the format and the medium, the mainstream news media is falling short of or living up to the promise created through independent bloggers?
MM: All blogging is is a tool. There’s no judgement into what the content is, it can be anything, all it is is an easy way for anyone to publish, it’s a democratizing sort of tool. There are different ways to blog. One of the side effects of blogging has been the shortening of the news cycle, so you used to read a newspaper for yesteday’s news — now I read a newspaper and I’m thinking that this is ancient stuff because I already it online shortly after it happened. That’s not necessarily a blogging thing, but the blogging as a gatekeeper, as a filtering tool, now we’re pretty much used to instant delivery of information, we’re not used to waiting a day with the newspaper anymore, and I think blogs have pushed that along.
The other thing is the notion that you don’t have to have this entire, huge, beautiful, well-sourced bit of news to publish, it could be a one-line thing. I think where news media blogs are best are where reporters use them to deliver a steady stream of rumors and gossip that they pick up that aren’t necessarily by themselves big enough to become a news story, per say, but are interesting in their own right. I remember in my reporting days, I had so much access to so much information that never made it into a story, it got thrown on the cutting room floor. This is a way to actually not throw it away, to use more of your product. But at the end of the day, this is a way for the reporter to supplement what’s in the newspaper without having to worry about layouts and production and all these other things that a traditional news outlet has to deal with. Throw stuff online, whatever strikes your fancy.
Everyone’s different. The use of a blog by a news organization is different from my use of a blog, which is different from Perez Hilton’s, which is different than Flashdot. Everyone’s got different approaches, different ways to make it work, but as an easy publishing tool, it does allow working journalists to get to work and, in a way, bypass the editing process.
SB: The push towards community journalism, where local media gets members of the community to blog for free, seems on one hand as if they’re trying to bring that spirit.
MM: Let’s get away from politics, let’s go to sports. There are people desperately calling sports talk shows on radio because it’s the only place where the fans have a voice in sports media. Now, with blogs, that’s no longer the case, with blogs, fans can have a voice — they want to argue, they want to promote, they want to talk about the things that they care about, their hobbies and their fashions, and traditional media never provided an outlet. Maybe you got the call in with the radio talk show host, maybe you got a letter to the editor in the newspaper, but those are very unsatisfying and very limited and you are still at the mercy of the editors and producers and talk show hosts. Suddenly you have a medium where the fans are in control, they can talk about anything they want and that is very, very empowering. They’re not thinking “How can I make money off my bloviating?” They’re thinking, “I finally have a way to share my voice, share my expertise and opinions to a large audience and nobody shuts me down, nobody’s trying to control where and when I can say these things.” That’s what makes it so powerful. So it’s not they’re writing on Daily Kos for free, but they’re using Daily Kos to share their views and their ideas and their passions to the rest of the world.
SB: And create a community, which is certainly missing from media these days.
MM: They’ve been so corporatized. You had an industry that had a good traditional profit margin because these papers invested in their communities, invested in good journalism, and invested in being part of the world around them, but got bought out by mega-corporations that demanded 30 percent profit margins, cut them to the bone, slapped up crappy AP copy, cut the local coverage to the bone, got rid of anything investigative or interesting, cut any promotional aspects where they were actually helping to be part of the community, and they wonder why nobody has any connection to the crap that’s left over. It’s incredible, two areas in media that are growing rapidly are online media, obviously, and ethnic media, because it’s so incredibly tapped into the community, it’s all about the community, it’s their voice, and that’s pretty powerful stuff. People feel emotional about it, so ethnic media is growing like crazy. In more traditional newspaper worlds, the papers that seem to be doing well are the ones that decide they are not going to focus on national or international news, they are going to focus very much on local coverage. And I think that’s the way it should be, that’s a niche that needs to be served. I don’t think the congolmerates can get 30 percent profit margins anymore, but it’s a product if they’re willing to take less — so maybe the big conglomerates aren’t interested in that product. I think it’s a place where if people care, you can provide a product that is well-supported by the community. That’s why people have lost any interest in their local newspapers, because they’ve become so homogenized and corporate and they’ve lost all the local flavor that made them a part of the community.
SB: The old chestnut of the family-owned newspaper is pretty rare.
MM: Long gone. Those owners were always pillars of the community, everybody knew who they were, so it was for, by, and of the community. Now it’s wherever corporate may happen to be — New York City or Sacramento, whatever.
SB: I know that local bloggers can become high profile by blogging about their local issues and providing an alternative to their local paper.
MM: It’s local, they’re not going to get a lot of traffic, so they’re not going to get money out of it, but it’s also very influential, they get to have an influence on the local scene. That’s when blogging is successful, not with the financial issue, but if you have influence in whatever you’re talking about.
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