Seven sites worth writing for

This column appeared Jan. 26, 1999, in the Online Journalism Review. Here’s the version on the OJR site.

By J.D. Lasica

First of two parts. See Part 2.

The Web has opened up new landscapes for writers. Where major newspapers like the Miami Herald pay all of $200 for an off-lead, front-page travel story including photos — I got the check Friday and spent it Saturday — online publications sometimes pay considerably more.

While Salon and Slate remain cyberspace’s best-known outposts of original content created by staffers and freelance writers, the Web today is flush with a host of online publications offering quality non-fiction. Indeed, this might be the best of times for freelance writers with some online savvy.

In a two-part series, we’ll look at an admittedly arbitrary sampling of Web sites that specialize in health, entertainment, finance, technology, teen, travel and crime news. Most of these sites require first-time publication rights, but a few may insist on retaining all subsequent rights, while others may agree to reprinting an article that originally appeared elsewhere.

Part two chronicles freelancing opportunities at seven additional sites.

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Can the mainstream media resist being dragged through the mud?

This column appeared Jan. 7, 1999, in the Online Journalism Review. Here’s the version on the OJR site. Drudge has taken his articles down, but you can still read them here. To track how the Clinton paternity story infiltrated the media, see A cybersleaze timeline: Anatomy of a smear.

By J.D. Lasica

Matt Drudge and Larry Flynt — who would have thought them soulmates?

Drudge, the enfant terrible of online journalism, has been ratcheting up the hysteria volume this week over his latest “world exclusive”: that Bill Clinton may have a 13-year-old son, the result of a tryst with an African American prostitute who’s seeking to prove paternity through DNA testing.

Flynt, publisher of Hustler magazine, is planning to reveal the marital infidelities of one Republican U.S. senator and as many as a dozen GOP congressmen in the coming days, having offered a $1 million bounty to women who came forward with evidence of congressional sexual philandering.

Drudge and Flynt have more in common than an appetite for sleaze. Both are ideologues: Drudge is an admitted Clinton hater, Flynt is a Democrat who’s seeking to purge the moral high priests from their pedestals.

Both purloined other publications’ stories and claimed them as their own: Drudge hijacked the “Clinton’s secret son” story from the supermarket tabloids; Flynt borrowed the idea of “outing GOP hypocrites” from others, most notably Salon (his remark “Desperate times deserve desperate actions” echoed Salon’s clarion call, “ugly times call for ugly tactics”).

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The following dispatches from the Drudge Report are being reprinted under the fair use doctrine for educational purposes in cooperation with the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California.

WHITE HOUSE DNA CHASE: TEEN DOING ‘WELL’ AFTER NEWS OF ‘NO MATCH’

**Exclusive**

He had been told all of his life by his mother that Bill Clinton was his father, but late this week, 13-year old Danny Williams of Arkansas learned the truth: He is not.

A stunning DNA showdown came to a dramatic conclusion this weekend when it was learned that STAR magazine was in posession of lab results — results that ruled out Bill Clinton as the father!

The DRUDGE REPORT was first to reveal the DNA chase that captured the attention of official Washington in a series of exclusive reports.

TIME magazine, in fresh editions, confirms many of the details first reported in this space:

“Using the Starr Report’s FBI analysis of Clinton’s DNA as its reference, STAR paid former prostitute Bobbie Ann Williams and her 13-year-old son for their story and blood samples.”

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Editor and General Manager Michael Rogers discusses Newsweek’s online strategy

This column appeared in the January 1999 issue of The American Journalism Review.

By J.D. Lasica

Newsweek has joined the future.

Newsweek.com arrived on the Web Oct. 4 [1998], and unlike the first wave of mainstream media news sites that reinvented themselves every five minutes, these folks don’t seem to have an identity crisis.

The streamlined site has a spare, minimalist look, featuring all the content of the print magazine alongside a handful of daily features and breaking news provided by others. With a 10-person editorial staff, the Web site has both a modest agenda and realistic goals.

In short, Newsweek.com doesn’t pretend to be all things to all Webheads.

“What we’ve seen with Web news is a rush for everyone to become a wire service,” says Michael Rogers, the site’s editor and general manager. “As the first blush of enthusiasm over immediacy begins to fade, we think people will find more value in a newsweekly that serves as a smart guide to the Web.”

Since the early ’90s, Newsweek has had a long run on Prodigy and America Online, where its staff gained experience in interacting with users and dealing with the demands of daily journalism. Why, then, was it so late in coming to the Web party? Because its parent corporation, The Washington Post Co., considered the Web to be “a more immediate threat” to the Post than to Newsweek, Rogers says. (An added inducement may have been the Matt Drudge imbroglio, which prompted Newsweek to post Michael Isikoff’s blockbuster story about Ken Starr’s expanded investigation on the Post’s Web site.)

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