One of the hardest decisions a writer makes is “who to write for,” also known as your audience. For this blog I have chosen to assume that my readers are smart rather than dumb, well-educated, and interested “good” stories (not controversy and bad-mouthing).
Sarah Lacy wrote an interesting piece on the audiences that both the Huffington Post and Bleacher Report have catered to. Made even more scintillating because both blogs are the only ones to sell for hundreds of millions of dollars:
Huffington Post bifurcated its site between very high end content — celebrities who didn’t blog anywhere else, and more recently very highly paid poaches from organizations like the New York Times– and the rest. Pulitzer Prize material and photos of kittens. The two might seem like they don’t belong on the same site. But having high notes and low notes, is far more effective (and only half as soul crushing from a journalism point of view) than a site that maximizes just for the middle of the spectrum– which is far more common in professional blogging.
I like to think that I come down somewhere above the middle, just short of Pulitzer Prize material.
Does that mean I need a few more animated gifs of kitties?
