I’m thinking about a new project for myself.
There’s a lot of content that I create- I try to keep re-blogging here to a minimum, and leave it for specific cases that I believe warrant it: Required Viewing and Research posts. Even still, there’s a lot of good content that I create and find that doesn’t make it’s way onto this page- maybe it’s spread across the other platforms I use, maybe it goes into one of my notebooks, maybe it’s left in the back of my brain. I’ve been looking for a better outlet for that data.
I made the deliberate choice a few years ago (around the time I started tweeting) to not spend much of my time aggregating information publicly. I viewed my role primarily as a creator of entirely new content. What’s been a little tough is that I’m prone to personal aggregation, and it can be frustrating to not share some of my best finds.
To that end, I’m looking into some options for producing a subscription-based “premium” feed from me. It’d include the content here (as a matter of convenience for readers, primarily), though I’d be expanding somewhat from my normally short-form writing in some cases. In addition, I’d be cherry-picking the very best of my finds and including them- a sort of ongoing annotated bibliography of what I’ve found. While the blog posts would share some of their content with my blog, what you will be able to read here will serve as a jumping off point for the content of this new project. It’s the stuff I couldn’t/wouldn’t post here. It’s the reasoning behind (and the thinking about) the Research List, instead of just the list of the links. It’s a closer look inside and. It’s less filtered and more experimental, and if you’re itching for more new ideas and sources of inspiration, it’s where you’ll find them.
What I’m not sure about is where to host it, and what to charge for such access. This represents a significant investment of time and resources for me, and I can’t offer this publicly. I have limited time, and where I spend time impacts other aspects of my life. There isn’t much in the way of “free time” for me, and as much as I’d like to offer this all free to everyone, those hours cost me.
I’m looking at the possibility of an iTunes-based magazine model, but I’m never sure about the intricacies of that. I’d rather stay device agnostic for something like this, though I’d like some ability to format and include some small amount of media in these releases. HappyLetter is a neat possibility, but I’m unsure about the formatting options it offers. I’m looking at weekly releases right now, and I think it’s unlikely that I’d go any more often than that- but I want each issue to be full and not have any fluff- and that may mean that every two weeks becomes more reasonable.
I dunno. I worry there’s not enough of an audience to justify the time and money. This blog doesn’t exactly generate massive view numbers (to say the least…), and I can’t write a magazine once a week for three people. I suppose it’s possible I won’t due this at all- though I’d like to, as I genuinely think it’d be a useful resource for progressive educators.