A couple of months ago, when Amit Varma first sounded me off on the idea of putting together a slate of columnists for Yahoo, the attraction was obvious.
I had just recently joined Yahoo; in my short stint there, I had just enough time to understand the organizational architecture, to scope out its basic strengths and identify pain points that needed to be addressed.
Aggregation is something we do well through an eclectic slate of content providers/partners that at this present point number 30, and rising all the time. And content, clearly, seemed to be what people came to the site for [in surprisingly large numbers, I must add: it startled me at the time, and it still gives me pause, when I learnt via Comscore that Yahoo, besides being the second most visited site in India, topped all other sites in categories like News, Entertainment and, glory be, Cricket].
That learning was not just startling — it was also in a way sobering. As a journalist, I’ve always been a votary of “original content” as the key attraction; I’d always believed that a newspaper or, since I joined Rediff in late 1995, a website, lives or dies by the quality and frequency of the “original” stories it does.
Gradually, I am finding out different.
Not that original content does not work — but that the average reader is not too worried about where the content originates from, as much as he is in finding it in front of his nose when he wants it.
So the first step in the process of assimilation into Yahoo was to swallow my personal preference, to put aside my dream [purely temporarily, note — the dream is postponed, not abandoned] of creating a crack team that would produce compelling original stories, and to devote my attention to fine-tuning the aggregation play.
The numbers continue to rise, so somehow, we seem to be doing something right. Yet Amit’s point was well taken: Yahoo was an anonymous ‘aggregator’, albeit a good one. It didn’t have a face, a resonant voice with which to engage the audience.
Creating that voice has been Amit’s preoccupation these past two months. He selected the slate of columnists, the over-arching idea being to resist the temptation to pick “names” and instead, to pick voices that are eloquent and individually compelling, and that together create a mosaic of thought and opinion that collectively address all of our preoccupations. The list speaks for itself.
In his inaugural, scene-setting column, Amit speaks of the hazards of column-writing:
The act of writing for an audience is an act of hubris. When you set out to fill an empty page, you assume that the words you write will have some value, that your thoughts will move readers from one paragraph to the next, and keep them turning the pages (or scrolling down). How presumptuous is this? What leads me to imagine thatΒ mythoughts are worthΒ your time?
Reporters who write for the news pages can plausibly claim that their writing has value because they are setting out, as is often said, the first draft of history. The facts that they report are the essential raw material from which we manufacture the story of the world. But columnists make claims on your time with nothing to offer but opinions; perhaps an argument for this or that; a worldview they want you to share. Why should their opinions be worth more than yours?
One conceit that a columnist might have is that his calling is to help you make sense of the world. Reality is complicated and confusing, and no one has the time or resources to figure it out on their own. To construct narratives that make it all simple and explicable, the columnist might say, does you a service — and it’s damn hard to do.
Well — yes and no.
There are a number of traps inherent in creating such narratives, and most of the opinion columns I see in the daily papers fall into them. They have implacable opinions on whatever they write about; they exude certainty; contributing to a public discourse that is severely polarized, they choose black or white. They construct simple narratives of a complex world — and when the columnist gets lazy, simple can fast become simplistic.
The point is well made, and argued with characteristic eloquence. But there is a counter-point:
There is news, the famous “first draft of history” [a draft that increasingly, in these days of sound-byte journalism, tends to sound confused, even cacophonous, but let’s not go there now], and there’s history.
And then there’s a middle ground.
Columns by definition, lacking as they do the distance, the perspective, that time lends narrative, can never hope to be definitive. But at the same time, Amit and I are convinced that considerable insight is discoverable in the middle ground that lies between journalism and history — and it is this middle ground that the Yahoo Opinions section seeks to occupy.
This is Amit’s baby — my role, other than agreeing to the original idea, has been to stand by and see this develop, go through various birth pangs [you don’t even want to know!] and finally, a fortnight or more behind schedule, finally see the light.
But it is also your baby. Over time, we hope to make this more relevant, to use these columns to reach out to you, to spark your ideas and your imagination, to move from the one-speaks-to-many model and use columns as the spark of vibrant conversations. Enhancements and larger ideas are in the pipeline — but while we work on those, we await your thoughts, ideas and suggestions.
PS: I love fish, but this past week, I’ve been discovering my favorite food’s less savory underside — a bad case of food poisoning compounded by my initial neglect of the symptoms ended up knocking me out, hence the radio silence of the last couple of days. When India starts its campaign for the T20 World Cup tomorrow, I hope to follow it on Twitter [find me here]. And to get back to work — and to the blog — Monday. Till then, be well. Eat lots of fish — the food is, I am told, rich in Omega3, which for some unexplained reason is supposed to be altogether a good thing. But be careful — as I have found out these past two, three days, a stomach bug causes problems hugely disproportionate to its size. π
47 comments
Nice. Amit’s good at this. And he’s done this before at Cricinfo as well. What he did with Cricinfo’s blogs was brilliant, introducing us to a bunch of voices that we wouldnt have known about otherwise!
One’s been following these guys on twitter & on their personal blogs for a long time now, but for the rest of Yahoo’s readers, this will be a good start. Congratulations to ya’all!
Precisely — he is brilliant, which is why I am happy as heck to have roped him in to shepherd our effort to find a voice of our own.
Great Idea! Looking forward to reading all of them.
Would a consolidated RSS feed be too much to ask for here?
For now, for various reasons too complicated to go into, we are using a fairly archaic tool. The consolidated feed thingy, we’ll try and push through once we move out of this and into the final platform, which should be about a month away.
Prem – This is great Idea. However, I need a clarification. Is there a main sub-site where these columns can be found with a direct RSS feed? As of now, there is 1 article of Amit and the links given in his article point to the websites of the individuals. Linking all these via individual Rss’s in google reader is a pain. So, I’m kinda hoping that you will have a consolidated link created – something like http://in.yahoo.com/opinions etc..
Once all 10 columnists have filed their inaugural pieces, we will bring them altogether into a columnist’s home page, with its own feed. Didn’t want to start with ten blank pages just now, hence.
In addition to the individual columnist’s homepage, it would be nice to have all the columns updated under one sub-site as Anand suggests.. I’m pretty sure there would be readers like me who would like to subscribe to all the columns under one feed..
cannot wait to read the columns. Best wishes
Thanks, working on several of these things but will take a while. Meanwhile, spread the word — the idea is to get people to read, and talk back — writing in a vacuum is the hardest thing to do π
This is great. Been reading most of them on their blogs. But as people have already said an RSS feed for all opinion columns will help.
also, any extensions proposed for Firefox and/or Chrome? Cricinfo came up with one for Chrome and it is very good. A similar extension for yahoo India authored content (I don’t think we need one for the aggregates stuff) will help.
Great idea, and loved Amit’s first column. A suggestion: is it possible to enable comments on the site (can be moderated), so that greater user interaction is there? for example, i’d love to comment on Amit’s piece maybe just to compliment him, or ask something.
Yeah, that is coming, too. Like I pointed out in response to an earlier question, for various reasons this uses an archaic publishing tool. We are moving to a better one, within a month from date — at that point, we’ll create feedback mechanisms et al. In the meantime, feel free to post here — actually, I think I’ll create a daily slot for each column, for readers who want to leave comments, and pass them on to the columnist concerned. Clunky, but will have to serve till the final solution materializes.
Prem,
The advice on eating Fish should be followed by the caveat that do not cook in oil or add coconut. It should be steamed only. Oil(ALL oils except flax-seed oil) has Omega-6 and Omega-9 and other saturated fats, which will negate the benefit of eating fish. Coconut(cooked/processed) directly contributes to worsening the cholesterol situation inside the body.
That is an impressive panel, and I look forward to reading the columns. However, I find it disheartening that there is not one female columnist in the panel, and there is just one South Indian (who is really playing comic relief).
First up, we didn’t pick columnists with quotas on women, South Indians, West Indians, whatever. We picked topics and looked at interesting names to fit. Secondly, we had one of the best women columnists in the country on this lineup — not because she was a woman, but because she was one of the best writers Amit and I know. A week before launch, she hit a snag that prevented her from contributing regularly, so her name had to come off. And finally, this is a first list — Opinions is a property that will grow over time — and we will keep adding great names, irrespective of age, sex, point of origin or whatever.
You and your team might have already done some research , So these suggestion that I am giving you are probably aware of.
You can have a Magazine section within your website the http://www.theatlantic.com/.
The Atlantic should work out to be a good role model for you. They simply provide a blog platform to their columnists . These columnist take away from there and excercise their own editorial control. For example Andrew Sullivan decides on his own, whether to allow comments inside his blog. Andrews blog has become so popular that he now some staff/assitants working for him. If you provide this level of freedom to your columnists you would attract good talent.
I think I had mentioned this in an earlier post, but anyway — blogs are on our development anvil. Not quite in the Atlantic mould, but hopefully in an equally compelling fashion.
Hi,
It is a great idea. As you have separate section for different areas, something in education might be good. Not trends or happenings in the education industry but insights by professors, research organisations’ work and their findings. Something like NYT’s Opinionator’s weekly column on mathematics. Just my two cents.
Thanks, Badri — will keep this in mind as we look to expand the lineup, after first stabilizing the ten columnists we have signed up as first cut
Prem,
I am trying to understand what’s your role going to be at Yahoo. Would you be writing regular columns, managing a specific section or topics or managing all these columnists? It’s just my curiosity, but if you can share, would love to know more about the exact mandate you have?
I am Managing Editor, Yahoo India, with responsibility for content. That does not mean I sit and write and/or edit content. My primary mandate is to fashion an overall content strategy for Yahoo, then work on the architecture so the various elements of the strategy fall into place. I am working on the first part — of which columns is one small piece, but we decided to kick start it anyway even before the whole strategic template fell into place.
Sounds very-very exciting! Wish you best of luck!!
Great initiative. One suggestion – can you improve the copy editing on yahoo? I just read story where it should have said “agreed to sign peace” but it said “agreed to sign piece”
see this is why you need copy editors π – I meant “I just read a story”
π Yeah, one of the areas we need to focus on. Thanks.
there should be a single place for all of these columns so that i can have links to all columns with a single bookmark.
Once all ten columnists have had their debut columns out, there will be a home page for each of them, and also a central Opinions page, with its own space on the top nav, for all columns put together.
I think this is such a great idea.
Following your initial emails long time back, I firmly believed that prempanicker.com would grow organically into something like this (Opinions aggregation). That was one of the reasons I started following prempanicker.com
But it was not to be, for reasons I don’t know; rather, reasons I did not care to find. Personally, I felt that my attention was captured only by articles authored by only you; it could be bias!
I guess such things cannot grow organically into something good. It seems that it requires a different vision, planning, and execution, at the very least, to ensure a good starting point!
Best wishes!
That was my original intention, and I would still love to do it. For some reason I couldn’t put a finger on, the signal to noise ratio got screwed when I tried it, so had to stop. Maybe the time was not right, or maybe the better writers have their own blogs and hence no reason to post on this one. Not sure, but a similar initiative will soon surface on Yahoo. Hopefully, that one will work.
Fishes are our brothers and sisters; fishes are our friends. We must shake hands with them and talk to them and share notes on the everyday problems of living on land and commiserate with them on issues they face living in water, including but not restricted to fishhooks.
π sorry, had to say that. Get well soon, the grey corridor misses you!
Very excited about this, chief – some of these people I’ve followed over the years, and I think it’s a darn impressive line-up. Kudos to Amit on getting this up and running.
As regards the column on food, I’ll contribute π but I’ll maintain the “fishes are our friends” sentiment.
Hey! Yeah, we’ll get to food and other preoccupations [sex and sexuality, perhaps?] soon enough π And I’m about as excited as anyone else about this — love this slate of writers; hopefully they will in turn help us unearth more.
Did someone say “column on food”? π
Great initiative. Have followed the individual bloggers for sometime now but good to see you guys collaborating.
Would love to see it evolve over time and function like a think-tank, much to the likes of INI/Takshshila.
And finally, Yahoo scoring over Google on some aspect π
Look forward for more!
Um… I’ll leave the Google comment outside my off stump π BTW, always makes me laugh when folks say both Yahoo and Google are aggregators — they seem to be missing the point that one is an algorithm and the other, an editorial-driven exercise.
But yeah, over time we want to use these columns to spur otherwise undiscovered writing skills in the readers, trigger debate and discussion, and integrate more closely with “social media” — a phrase that’s been turned into a yawn-inducing cliche in recent times, but which we hope to properly define, and leverage. Thanks, mate
Good panel. π I follow many of them already on their blogs, so way I see it, while Yahoo India traditionally aggregated content from ‘mainstream’ providers (ANI, etc), this will be aggregating original content from blogs I already like to keep tabs on. I’ve already subscribed to the RSS feeds; here’s wishing you guys the best!
Thanks, and yeah, this is one of the thoughts Amit had when we first began talking of this initiative. Not exactly “aggregating” original content from blogs, so much as getting good voices to contribute original pieces, which will amplify on the preoccupations they already surface on their blogs.
Alright, I got confused; the “Opinion” link in Yahoo News India is still an agglomeration of content from IE/FE etc, not the Yahoo-only stuff. I do realize you’re still setting up the navigation and all that, but is there any plan to differentiate, say, IE’s editorials from stuff from your columnists?
Yes there is, we will have a page for these columnists fairly soon. Just waiting for one round of debut columns from each member of the panel, before bringing them all into a home page.
Have read Nitin Pai on Pragati,and he is also very good.Everyone in the developed world talks about Google being a cure for everything and how it leads blah blah,in Africa and many places yahoo email and hotmail are still very popular.
I am sure with this initiative lot of people would still pass by yahoo more often.
Hi Prem,
Congrats to you and Amit on the new endeavor, a definite plus for Yahoo India.
Agree with not attempting diversity gender /region/ religion-wise, but how about political balance? One of the best things Rediff had going for it was its single large umbrella bringing in all shades of opinion at the commentary page.
Do you consider the current panel balanced already (there are several names there that I dont know. Will read on and find out in course of time)… or is that not a criterion.
Thanks,
Jai
When you do something of this kind, many things come into play that are not immediately obvious: for instance, availability of the right voices at the right time; budget availability and so on. We have plans, mate — for now, I’ll just point out that this is V1. We need for these columnists to all come on board with their first columns, get some platform issues sorted out, then look at adding to the slate. Is it balanced now? Possibly not, but neither is it unduly skewed in any one direction — unless it is in the direction of high quality writing. By the time we are done, we will ensure diversity of opinion, among other things.
Thanks Prem for the response. From the first few posts the quality of thinking on display is top-notch.
Where Amit V has me absolutely is the promise to try and deliver a space where people will exhibit less certitude and more nuance; but I fear this is a big ask and will be one of the first ones to fall through π
If you do have more spectral width planned and the space can deliver on that commitment from Amit I’m already a fan!
thanks,
Jai
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