Is this guy for real? Is he anyone at all? Based on the number of comments left by readers at phoblographer.com (i.e. none), my blog, is more popular and influential the phoblographer.com, and let me tell you that's bloody well saying something.
What on earth is this doing on LuLa?
What am I missing, is Chris Gampat actually a mover and shaker, a relevant personality, a serious artist, critic, editor? Or is he just another dope like me with a dream to scam $35 grand off some kickstarter who has, somehow, gotten a plug placed on what is still a tolerably credible photography web site?
Did someone hack LuLa?
The piece starts out with this oddity, which is really what caught my eye:
Publisher’s Note: The community for providing photography based internet content is rather small. Several times a year most of the top sites owners or representatives are invited to manufactures press conferences.
Which strikes me as the exact opposite of reality.
Is it April again?
ETA: I guess I should say something along the lines of "Ok, well, more power to 'em" and stipulate that LuLa can publish whatever it likes. Maybe Chris is an incredible whatever-he-is, maybe he's a personal friend of Kevin's, and so on. Go for it, guys. And I do support anyone who's trying to get more great work out there, good for you, Chris.
It just seems inconsistent with LuLa's standards, and I am dubious about the kickstarter. Sure, it will legitimately cost $35,000, easily, to put together a high quality magazine, even an electronic one. Virtually all of which is spent keeping the editor fed. This is essentially cyber-begging and as such is disingenuous. Contrast with This Kickstarter which is up front about itself. "Send me to Antarctica, and I will write about it."
If you're doing a kickstarter to pay yourself a salary while you do something cool, just say that. Don't say, "Help me to fund a written-word based exploration of Antarctica" say "I want to go to Antarctica. Send me to Antarctica, and in return I will write about it."
It was a bizzare post on LuLa.
ReplyDeleteIt's also not behind the fee payers fire wall...
I guess youd b pissed if you though you were paying for such odd content, 'its so bad we better make it free...'
I assume the phoblographer paid for the post.
AaronL
Haha I backed Maciej's trip to Antarctica. I did it because his writing is generally excellent I want more of it:
ReplyDeletehttp://idlewords.com/
He's awesome. I didn't back him, but really thought hard about it. I don't really do the kickstarter thing, but he almost persuaded me. Almost.
DeleteFeedly indicates 94 readers for your blog and 5K readers for phoblographer.com. I do not know how those numbers are measured but maybe there relative weight means something. Under the "Related Articles" section, I see some other Kickstarters posted on Lula, so I'm not sure what's so odd.
ReplyDelete