Describing the political juggernaut of DailyKos, The Stranger had some clear cut advice for political leaders: pay attention to bloggers."If one looks at the entire liberal blogosphere, which encompasses DailyKos and about 70 other well-trafficked progressive blogs, one finds an apparatus that is now capable of reaching more people than the Democratic National Committee."
Founded by Markos Moulitsas back in 2002, this political site has also become a growing force in the politics of science. Stephen DarkSyde co-wrote a new book of DailyKos science essays, hoping to make the blog required reading for scientists as well.
As Kosmos: You Are Here launched, 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:
Your chose the e-book format for Kosmos. Why? What were the best and the worst parts of this format? Any advice for the fledgling e-book writer about hypertext or formatting? Who is your readership?
Stephen DarkSyde:
We chose the e-book format because of the low overhead, quick turn around time, and because that gave us precise control—since we're all computer and blog literate.
Not to mention we're scattered geographically all over the place, so it was practical.
I didn't format Kosmos, and the protocol is more advanced than simple HTML blog formatting. But the Daily Kos FAQ on formatting is a pretty good place to learn the simple stuff like how to use italics or post an image.
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. We know that most major politicians have staffers reading our posts, we know that and great writers and news show hosts are reading it.
We know there's at least a chance our email and communications are being singled out for scrutiny. You sure as hell don't want to make any mistakes or you'll be the star demon on Fox News that evening and schmuck de jour on the blogosphere until the detractors find a more useful schmuck.
» Five Easy Questions: Stephen DarkSyde, Conclusion from ThePublishingSpot
In April 2004, the flourishing political site DailyKos opened wiki-feature called dKosopedia, inviting readers to contribute political articles to this community-guided archive. Since then, over 6,000 articles have been added, including threads about ... [Read More]
Tracked on: May 19, 2006 8:33 AM | Permalink to Trackback