Pajamas Media

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Pajamas Media, briefly known as Open Source Media, is a startup company founded in 2004 by mystery writer and Huffington Post blogger Roger L. Simon and Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs "with the intention of... aggregating blogs to increase corporate advertising and creating our own professional news service," [1], as well as "a new method of fact-checking." [2]

1 History
2 Missteps
- 2.1 Logos
3 Criticism
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] History

Pajamas Media completed its first round of venture capital funding on November 14, 2005; its launch and official rebranding as "Open Source Media" took place November 16. Launch festivities included a keynote address by former New York Times journalist Judith Miller.

Pajamas Media Board members include many prominent bloggers and journalists, including "Instapundit" Glenn Reynolds, CNBC's Larry Kudlow, Michael Barone of U.S. News & World Report, David Corn of The Nation and Claudia Rosett (who helped break the United Nations' "Oil for Food" controversy).

[edit] Missteps

Seminal blogger Luke Ford had been signed up as a PJM/OSM pundit but was dropped the next day when it was discovered that he had resumed blogging the adult film industry. [3]

When the Open Source brand was launched, it claimed that the Open Source radio program had allowed it to use its name and an Internet subdomain, opensourcemedia.net, that wasn't in use at the time. Christopher Lydon, founder of the Open Source, said that wasn't true despite revised text on OSM's site. Further investigation revealed that the production company, Open Source Media, Inc., had in fact already applied for a trademark on the name. To avoid further conflict, OSM returned to the name Pajamas Media, on November 22, 2005.

[edit] Logos

The Open Source Media logo

Some critics noted that the OSM logo was similar to that of Lucent Technologies and that used by The Philadelphia Inquirer for philly.com, its Web portal [4].

The Pajamas Media logo was also criticized [5] for depicting what appears to be a bathrobe or dressing gown, rather than actual pajamas. It has also been criticized for lacking visual power and interest.

[edit] Criticism

Starting in October 2004, Kenton E. Kelly, who blogs as Dennis the Peasant, entered into discussions with Roger Simon to begin a venture called Tulip Advertising, an arrangement terminated by Kelly upon learning that Simon had launched Pajamas Media on April 29, 2005. Since then, Kelly, a Certified Public Accountant in Columbus, Ohio has been highly critical of Pajamas' business plan [6] or what he feels is the lack thereof. He claims that Simon and Johnson have not even begun to consider how they will attract advertising to the site and that they seem to think they won't need to, based on his observation of a lack of strategy, missed deadlines, and "general sloppiness." [7] He also questioned whether OSM would attract real readership when the readers of many of the blogs to be aggregated could already read their favorite bloggers at their own sites for free. Roger Simon later responded on his own blog, noting that there was never much of a partnership between Kelly and himself, stating "no contracts were ever signed. No investment[s]...made. Nothing happened."

Another blogger, Jeff Jarvis, himself a principal in another blogging startup, questioned the demand for advertising on the sites of "mostly conservative political bloggers." [8] Defenders of Pajamas Media responded that Kelly is simply a bitter ex-partner who couldn't get his way, and Jarvis has associations with other media startups which might potentially compete with PJM.

When law blogger Ann Althouse also aired a public critique of the OSM business model, Johnson responded by directing his commenters to her post, provoking a vicious flame war which lasted the better part of a week and prompted one LGF loyalist to denounce Althouse as a "Berkeley house whore." That in turn led to a dispute between Althouse and feminist bloggers on the left when she complained that they were insufficiently attentive to the attacks on her.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Official sites

[edit] Old media coverage

[edit] New media coverage

[edit] Feuds and flamewars

[edit] Satire/spoofs

Pyjamas Media (nee Open Sore Media) - Site spoofing Pajamas Media (formerly Open Source Media). Site claims to be "true" open source blog by allowing free, open registration to anyone.^{[citation needed]}

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