West Seattle Blog's Tracy Record is right: A lot of what she told me during our interview about the death of PubliCola got "left on the cutting room floor."
Constraints of the paper.
However!
Record had a lot of interesting things to say, and the internet has no length constraints, so here's some more of what Record told meâalong with some words in response from PubliCola founder Josh Feit (who's now been brought aboard Crosscut as a freelancer).
âIâm always personally sad to see somebody independent go," Record told me, speaking of PubliCola. âCrosscutâI donât know that that really melds [with PubliCola]. Crosscut has always seemed to me more of a loftier, 'Here, weâre going to look at issues' thing, rather than a more down and dirty thing... I would have personally rather seen Crosscut merge into PubliCola than PubliCola merge into Crosscut.â
Record said the writing at PubliCola seemed more âlivelyâ than the writing at Crosscut, and âcertainly had a voice.â
PubliCola, she concluded, âwas closer to vibrant.â
Just like PubliCola before its death, West Seattle Blog currently operates on a staff of only two full time writers. How does Record make that work financially?
"We have never had investors, we have never had grants, we have never had savings, we donât have rich relatives, we donât have side-jobs," Record said. "Basically, we have lived entirely off our advertising revenue for going on five years now.â
She wouldn't give out exact numbers, but said the site brings in six figures annually and is in the black.
âTheir content model was different from ours," Record said of PubliCola. âFor us, one of the things that has had our community find value in us is we never stop. We donât take the weekends off, we donât take the nights off.â Of PubliCola, Record said: "I noticed that it kind of had a nine-to-five schedule.â
Record explained that constant posting is key to her site's 1 million average page views a month: âEven with politics, thereâs something happening at night⊠Something that keeps people coming back. If youâre going to do this, you want to be a little more 24-7 about it. And itâs tough. Itâs tough.â
In response, Feit told me this afternoon:
"All you have to do is look at our site to know that Tracy's observation that we were nine-to-five is not correct.
"For the past three and a half years, I've been getting up at five in the morning, for example, to write Morning Fizz every day. And hey, just in the last month, as The Stranger well knows, we covered their evening political candidate forum in the 36th District, went home, wrote it about it at length, and published our take the next morning. There were plenty of late nights in the last year. Erica and I were typically leaving the office at 7 o'clock, 7:30âand heading off to an event, by the way.
"You do have to be crazy to be in this, and Erica and I are pretty crazy. Dude, I haven't slept in almost four years."