Categories: OLD Media Moves

Business 2.0 bloggers get first checks

Writers at entrepreneur-oriented biz magazine Business 2.0 who started blogging earlier this year recently received their first checks based on how many hits their blogs received in the first three months of the year, said editor Josh Quittner.

Quittner, who was in Chapel Hill, N.C., moderating one of the magazine’s panels called “The Next Disrupters,” told Talking Biz News at a reception afterward that the biggest checks were for several thousand dollars. The writers were paid $2.50 for every 1,000 page views their blogs received.

All of Business 2.0’s blogs received 1.3 million page views in March. That’s up from 1 million page views in January, said Quittner.

If you remember, Quittner raised eyebrows in the business journalism community last year when he stated that he was going to require all of his writers to blog on a regular basis — and that he would pay them in addition to their regular salaries based on how many hits their blogs received.

Quittner, who also said that he had withdrawn his name from consideration to be the next dean of the journalism school at Cal-Berkeley, said that there were a handful of reporters at the magazine who received checks in the area of $2,000 to $2,500.

The top blog in terms of page is Business 2.0 Beta, written by Owen Thomas. The No. 2 blog in terms of page views is the Apple 2.0 blog written by new executive editor Philip Elmer-Dewitt. Quittner said that Elmer-Dewitt, who left Time magazine, seems extremely happy to be out of New York and in San Francisco. (NOTE: This post earlier said Elmer-Dewitt was the no. 2 at the magazine. He is not. It is Adam Horowitz, and has been for the past three years. Talking Biz News apologizes for the error.)

Another blog with a high page view count is the gadgets blog called The Utility Belt written by Jon Fortt. The Green Wombat, a blog about the environment and technology by former San Jose Mercury News biz editor Todd Woody, also ranked high in page views, said Quittner.

The second tier of bloggers, which includes Quittner, received checks in the “hundreds of dollars,” he said. Further down were bloggers who received checks for less than $100. Each of the writers was allowed to pick the topic of their blog, but those who received small checks also got the suggestion that maybe they needed to pick a new topic, said Quittner.

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

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Remi says:
January 3, 2008 at 12:54 am
I remembered that Quittner raised eyebrows in the business journalism community last year when he stated that he was going to require all of his writers to blog on a regular basis â€” and that he would pay them in addition to their regular salaries based on how many hits their blogs received.