The future of blogging

So I have given my friend the following ultimatium: For exactly one month, starting today, he post on his blog at least once a day. To get used to the routine, etc. At the end of the month, we start up a new combined site (while of course not forgetting our own personal blogs, faithful readers). It will be a general humor/ cultural commentary site, as we attempt to refine our own writing styles. He originally wanted to do a paper magazine, since he has the publication equpment, but that is much larger endevor that we will probably be better able to undertake after we get used to writing on a regular basis. Perhaps in the future it can become a dual internet/paper publication, but I think blogging is a good intermediate step.

In any case, I have been thinking about the format of such a shared blog. The following are my first thoughts on the matter.

1) We each commit ourselves to two articles a week, on whatever topic we want. I am thinking the articles should be around 1000 words- not long, but enough to actually force us to write something substantive without just phoning it in. It would be nice to get the articles to be slightly multi-media (ie, pics and whatnot). perhaps it might be better to only commit ourselves to 1 article a week each, and work our way up to two if time permits. But 2000 words a week aint much.

2) We should have a weekend special, where we both tackle one issue- either a particular subject, or something like a movie/music review or some such. My concern is that I want the page to be funny and interesting; I think Toliver is a bit too certain of his own sense of humor to even really try to make it accessible to an audience of anyone other than himself. He just needs practice writing, hence the ultimatium.

3) We should constantly be on the look out for more contributors to the site, especially if we can start attracting readers.

For the next month I will be working dilligently on the technical details of the web page (setting it up in an interesting way, etc.) So look forward to the upcoming launch of the site. It is tentatively named "Churn" (and we will be the churn monkeys), but as there is already an art magazine that bears this title, we may have to rethink it.