ebogjonson.com

BlackCommentator endorses a strain of black politics that isn't completely aligned with my own, but I still find them invaluable. It's amazing to think that while the black community numbers some 34-some odd million, while we constitute a discrete media market worth billions, no one besides BlackCommentator has ever thought to produce things like the BC Congressional Black Caucus Report Card. More amazing still to think that they couldn't find a way to monetize that kind of unique product offering, but then I know from experience that black sales people and agencies are actually even less interested in non-entertainment programming than their white counterparts are.

I wish both BC and the forthcoming BlackAgendaReport.com the best of luck. That said, I also want to offer some genuine, very basic and (I know) completely unsolicited advice to both sites:

1 - Get some kind of RSS feed - I was always baffled by the lack of feeds on BC. People want feeds. I know: tomorrow people will want something else. But it isn't a huge deal to identify and then provide for your audience's desires. BC and BAR don't exist to be technical innovators in the management and distribution of information, but that doesn't mean they should lag behind in providing near universally available widgets and doodads either.

2 - Build a reason for people to come to BAR and BC every day - I don't know what either site's ideal publishing schedule should be, but either you provide people with passive hooks into your site (see item #1) or you provide them with reasons to come back to it on a regular, preferably daily basis. There are plenty of low-cost ways to get people to come to BC or BAR on a daily basis. Blogs, headline aggregators, a daily updating comic, comment-enabled articles, community, all-of-the-above, none, whatever. Ignoring all those options and allowing your site to lie fallow for the time between weekly updates is a prescription for failure.

I understand that these solutions are either driven by the audience or by linking, both of which mean a shift in thinking for politically-motivated folks invested in the notion of providing unique, original content to an underserved audience. But unless you can afford to build the kind of shop that pushes out a number of wholly original, must-have items a day, these other strategies are what keeps you meaningfully connected to the audience you want to serve.

3 - Develop a real advertising strategy - I was always disheartened to go to BC and see the same, parallel universe ads on the site, like the button for Bob Avakian's autobiography. I can imagine that BC likely saw the lack of even google ads as some kind of proof of their integrity, but really, now: integrity isn't even going to cover your hosting costs. I don't know what Steve Gilliard's financial picture looks like, but his Alexa metrics seem to be comparable to BCs and he seems more fully engaged with the ad market and the current opportunities available for keeping himself in business.

I'd never suggest that joining some random advertising network will change anyone's life, but until a site is in the proverbial game its managers have no insight or data with which to even begin to imagine what might work for them. Maybe it's ads, maybe it's some kind of premium subscription + ads, maybe there is BAR t-shirt idea out there that is waiting to blow Cafe Press the fuck up. You'll never know until you engage and BC's ad strategy seems to be predicated on a politically motivated lack of engagement. Like I said, I understand the political sentiment, but it's a terrible ad strategy.

3.2 - also - For another comparison, look at BC and BlackSportsNetwork.com's Alexa rankings. BlackSportsNetwork barely registers, and yet which site feels more current, lived in, relevant?

How about BC vs BlackAmericaWeb?

3.5 - also also - not that you asked, but ebogjonson.com has made, like, a dime a day off of its Google ads, which means that if you are reading this, you should feel very select and avant - that and very lonely. Having put them up mostly to play with Google's ad program and tools, I've been thinking about taking them down, but man! That dime sure is addictive!

4 - Get better designers, please - The internets are full of young, black, conscious pixel-pushers who will give BC or BAR a reasonably usable and good looking site at a politically motivated discount. Please find one at all costs.

Besides cooking up a hottish site, the other thing this designer will do is hopefully convince both sites that the current BC color palate should be abolished, not just from BC, but from every black website forever:

This palate is a basically red, black and green for black nationalists who are afraid of the internet. It says "black site" without saying "website." I really hate it.

5 - Put some pictures on black folks up on your site - I know this likely strikes some folks as a costly, superficial hassle, but even Bob Avakian would click on an interesting picture of Mao.

6 - Give people something to do besides read - This is an alternate take on item #2, but it bears repeating. "Things to do" can mean traditionally defined community activity, as in posting messages or feeding you news items. It can also mean watching video or listening to a podcast. It can be a less-direct programming experience like a weekly "direct action" item where you ask the audience to write letters. Whatever it is, it should feel relevant to the audience as understood/aspired to by BC and BAR's staff. You know these folks better than I do. What would they like to do besides read?

7 - "Hottish" is a meaningful web value just like "usability" - People have a hard time remembering that when BlackPlanet.com was launched, other folks involved in the black or urban web space were convinced it would fail. "Not hip hop enough," they said. "No celebrities." And (most damning for its subconscious racism), "black folks aren't interested in that white homepage building crap." None of the folks who made those arguments are in the business anymore, and not a one of their brands survived. In fact, six years later, instead of failing Blackplanet.com has become the most-blackenest black space in all creation, so gosh darn you-know-what that it has become shorthand for a host of social relations and habits that grown folks claim to be embarrassed by. This wasn't achieved by producing an experience that was 5-10 years out of date in comparison to mainstream sites looking to forge the same type of relationship to audiences. The thing was "hot" in ways that Hookt.com or UBO were not "hot."

And, not that you asked, but there is nothing out there in the 2006 space that is as hot as BP was in 1999. It would be super-disingenuous to hold out to BAR the possibility of being that site, largely because there is a sense in which doing so will (maybe) put them in opposition to their own politics. But I think it'd be invaluable for them to think about the question of how to be that site while remaining themselves, this even just playfully and theoretically. In management mumbo-jumbo this is known the Big, Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) thought experiment, also known as the Blow Nucca's Minds (BNM) experiment and the Next Level Shit (NLS) game: If the BlackAgendaReport set for itself the Big, Hairy Audacious Goal of Blowing Nuccas Minds using some kind of Next Level Shit, what would it do? What would that mean? What would it require from a staff, technology and culture standpoint?

......

Anyway, everybody's a critic, right? Like I said, I wish both sites well. The folks involved have provided an invaluable service over the years and it would be great to see them continue.