Nobody reads serious writing on the Web.
It's all online auctions, Amazon.com, and Ms. Kitty's Play Palace, right? Someone should tell the burgeoning readerships of Salon, Slate, Nerve, Feed, and dozens of other online magazines and news sites that they should go back to shuffling paper.
It won't be freelance journalist Amy Gahran, the creator of Contentious, a spunky webzine launched early this month and aimed at online writers, editors, and content planners. Contentious was born out of "total frustration," Gahran says, at the lack of networking resources for those who are committed to putting meat on the bones of the Net.
"I'm an innate networker, and I was finding listservs and forums for people who do design, HTML, Java -- anything but writing," Gahran explains. "I would start talking about writing and people would look at me like I was from Mars."
You won't find tips on cascading stylesheets or the latest browser bugs in the first issue of Contentious, which is a monthly. You will find an interview with Bill Belleville, a freelance reporter and scuba diver who developed an engaging series of dispatches for the Discovery Channel Online, about the first major American diving expedition to Cuba in four decades.
Contentious also delivers a manifesto on "cutting the fluff" when writing text for corporate Web sites -- a field, Gahran points out, where professional-caliber writers can hope to earn a piece of an expanding market.
Gahran doesn't shy away from specific examples. A page on Public Citizen garners a "meaty-but-lean" rating, but a gust of self-congratulatory PR-speak from paper giant Georgia Pacific earns Gahran's scorn as "fluffy nonsense." ("At Georgia-Pacific, pollution prevention is a broad-based program that encourages proactive approaches to address a variety of environmental challenges ... incorporated as a routine practice to identify environmentally sound projects and activities that are technically workable and add value to the company.")
Gahran also offers musings on the evolution of writing on the Web, from the heady days of 1994, when a few clued-in writers realized that a cheap, global, self-publishing medium was suddenly there, to the reality checks of 1998, as content pioneers like Word shut down.
Contentious has struck a nerve. A related project, an online mailing list for writers and editors launched on Monday by Gahran and Steve Outing -- a columnist for Editor & Publisher online and interactive media consultant -- has taken off at a fast clip. In its first week, it has attracted more than 500 subscribers from the worlds of media, academia, and publishing.
Topic A on the Online-Writing list to date? Whether or not writers should be willing to work for nothing for up-and-coming Web publishers, in the hopes that real money will be available once the publication, and the writer, establish themselves.
Outing, who has been writing almost exclusively for the Web for two and a half years, was impressed by the number of writers on the list who are carving out niches for themselves in the online world.
"I thought there weren't that many people who have been able to do it," Outing says. "It seems there are a lot of writers who see the possibilities ... [and] are looking for an online community -- a forum -- for people who want to write only for this medium."
A very few previously existing online resources, notably the "byline" conference on The Well, have long been schmoozing grounds for wired journalists, but Contentious and the Online-Writing list don't cost a monthly membership fee.
The May issue will serve up Q&A with Randy Cassingham, whose "This is True" -- an email zine of the strange -- has tapped into a healthy revenue stream for its creator. Future issues will tackle such matters of interest as micropayments, contract tips, and electronic rights.
Contentious will be a one-woman show until Gahran can find sponsors. "I don't believe in asking people who write for a living to write for free," she says.
Gahran is looking into accepting advertisers as a way of supporting the publication, which has already snagged her some extra editing and writing gigs. She is also planning to apply for grants from foundations such as the Freedom Forum.
Though online writing is its own discipline, with its own rules of verbal economy, presentation, and pacing, ultimately, Gahran observes, writing well for the Web comes down to a set of skills that work in any medium. "Can you interview someone? Can you take good notes? Do you know how to find the right sources? And can you do it on deadline?"
Building community among those who are putting those skills into practice is one of the major ambitions of Contentious. "In the next year, I think there is going to be a really solid professional writing community forming on the Web," Gahran says. "That will raise the bar for the expected level of content, and make conditions better for writers in this field."
