archy

Archy - the magazine
The Talent Show started it. Unsure how the new FEC rules concerning blogs will shake out, Greg decided to take preemptive action (or "to be proactive" now that he's a businessman) and change his blog into an online magazine. After all, no is quite sure what the the rules and labilities of being a blog are, but the legal position of being a magazine are well established. The transition was remarkably painless:

In order to avoid any potential pitfalls, let me use this opportunity to announce that this post will be the last one on The Talent Show blog. Starting either late today or tomorrow, I will relaunch (without any fanfare whatsoever) my new web magazine, The Talent Show. I will still be the primary writer around here, but the traditional blog posts will be replaced with articles of varying lengths and topics. I will also be replacing the comments with article specific message boards. The look of the site, the writing style, the subject matter, the content, and the technological back-end will be identical to what I'm using now, but the change (as least as far as the FEC is concerned) will be drastic. Starting tomorrow, my days as a blogger are ending and my days as a writer begin.

Some of the commenters (as they were still called yesterday) suggested some refinements. Rather than be a mere writer, Greg could be the Editor-in-Chief or Editor/Publisher. After all, those titles get to be capitalized. Also, instead of "article specific message boards" he could have "letters to the Editor."

By this morning, Atrios, Americablog, Crooks & Liars, Sadly, No!, Swing State Project, Law Dork, Dispassionate Liberalism, Chaos Digest, The Political Forecast had all jumped on the bandwagon. Though i think Atrios has set an impossible standard for himself as a magazine. While promising all missing-white-women coverage all the time, he has also promised no unhappy news about Iraq. What if a white woman goes missing in Iraq, an Italian reporter say?

Should I join them, or should I remain a blogger and face the consequences? besides, what are they going to call themselves collectively? Magazinotopia? The magazinosphere? Left Magazinistan? Besides I've never been very proactive. I'm more of a proinertia type.

What do you think?