Stephen DarkSyde is a freelance science writer with one of the most exciting gigs in the world, writing political and science-oriented columns over at Daily Kos. In an email interview, DarkSyde explained his job at this popular blog in one nerve-wracking sentence:
"We know that upward of half a million people or more are reading what we write every single day and plenty of them hate Daily Kos more than any other site on the Internet."
Everybody has a strong opinion about his controversial subjects, ranging from evolution to science textbooks. DarkSyde and a few of his friends have just released a book of essays called Kosmos: You Are Here, creating a larger stage for his politically-minded science community.
After reading this well-reviewed ebook, I picked DarkSyde for my deceptively simple feature: Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web publishing.
Jason Boog:
Can you explain how Kosmos developed in this politically-minded community? How did you find your colleagues? How did you get this politically-obsessed readership interested in science?
Stephen DarkSyde:
Someone from YearlyKos asked me out of the blue. I was skeptical at first, but I began to warm to the idea. After a few emails and a conference call, I realized I had access to a pretty impressive pool of talent.
They had the tools and skills to develop a new publishing platform for ebooks. Those guys are the real talent on Kosmos; they formatted every picture, did every page's layout, indexed, footnoted and linked to every source.
They labor behind the scenes, while hacks like me bow on the virtual stage.
That's the amazing power of the blogosphere and a large site like Daily Kos. When you have a range in the tens of thousands, it brings together folks with a shared passion and diverse abilities. Some of them are going to be amazingly good at what they do.
I was able to infect a few others with the viral meme, like our lead artist Carl Buell and our foreword writer, Carl Zimmer.
I don't know how some Daily Kos members became interested in my posts, specifically. It was just a fluke really. I started posting there last year, and some people started reading those articles. But that readership rested on the groundwork laid by the religious right: contempt for science and a growing political influence.
That contempt set off a stampede of scientists and science students after the conservative caucus. Last December, Markos asked readers who they wanted for next year's new front-pagers, and I received a few votes.
It's kind of like winning the lottery or being 'made' I guess. But however you characterize it, the end result is in less than two years I went from an occasional reader of blogs to posting running barefoot through the front page of the largest blog on earth, despite that fact that there are so many more talented writers out there than me.
It's a bit intimidating at first.
Sometimes my email box goes off like a metronome, with a hundred emails an hour coming in. One of my fellow new front pagers wrote an email to the front-page staff saying in part "OK, I have to admit, I'm scared shitless!"
» Five Easy Questions: Stephen DarkSyde, Part One from ThePublishingSpot
Stephen DarkSyde is a freelance science writer with one of the most exciting gigs in the world, writing political and science-oriented columns over at Daily Kos. In an email interview, DarkSyde explained his job at this popular blog in... [Read More]
Tracked on: May 15, 2006 3:21 PM | Permalink to Trackback