Kottke on advertising

Lots of people are excited that Jason Kottke is turning “pro” as a blogger.

Well, not exactly professional because he’s not getting paid by anyone for a specific good or service, he’s asking for donations, patronages, whatever. Fine. A hyper-text busker.

Heck, I sent him $50 last week and wished him luck.

But why sneer at bloggers who sell ads? Jason: “A lot of people don’t like advertising, and I wouldn’t want advertising to change what I write’you know, having to change a post because it offends an advertiser or writing posts in a certain way where it would make sure that certain Google ads appear on the page.”

Hell, a lot of people do like advertising, Jason. Craigslist does 1.4 billion page impressions a month of the sordid stuff. Many magazines are bought as much for their ads as their articles. eBay, the biggest cultural institution invented in the United States in the last 100 years, is one giant advertising factory. And some of our political culture’s most interesting scraps of 2004 are ads bought and unbought on blogs like Jason’s.

Anyway, good luck busking.