The new grass roots: in which five bloggers, based in Seattle, Philadelphia, Portland, Washington, D.C., and New York, provide an inside look at the growing presence of art writing online

Art in America, Nov, 2007 by Peter Plagens

Jahn: I agree with Tyler's pamphleteering association, since cultural writing in the U.S. always seems to require some sort of activist initiative. Consider how arts writing and education are disappearing and how many of our most cherished cultural institutions confuse their missions with those of entertainment venues. Nobody should really be surprised that a grass roots arts-writing militia has emerged. But we needed an economic model because PORT isn't just an outlet for my views. It is a platform for a community of voices. We're more like the National Guard than like a volunteer fire brigade. We have greater structure and require currency to better equip our little cultural militia.

We have sponsorships which are basically low-key ads. No color, blinking or movement is allowed. The grayscale ads at the right side of PORT's screen all cost between $50 and $200 per month. Each ad links to the appropriate site. We keep sponsorships affordable because it's partly a community service. PORT is selective about who can sponsor us, too. The largest-sized ads contain images for specific shows, and are popular with museums. All of our ads are priced below market rate for a site with as many readers and the highly targeted audience we have. We pay all of our staff and are working hard to pay them more now that we have a large readership. Though it is a labor of love, the fact that we pay makes what we do possible.

Fallon/Rosof: We have chosen to have advertising. Our advertising rates are low because we want to make sure everyone can afford to advertise with us. We charge $100 per month for all banners in the top and left column, and $200 per year for small, rotating squares. If you want the complete rate schedule, go to the Web site and look up ad rates. The revenue helps us pay for someone to run our advertising program and to pay a technical expert, our videographer and, occasionally, ourselves, too. We post videos on the blog of the two of us going to galleries and talking about what we see. The videos are called "Look! It's Libby and Roberta." The most recent one has us at the abandoned Eastern State Penitentiary, and the two previous ones are of us at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, looking at the "Notations" exhibition (Richter, Polke and Kiefer). The artist who videotapes us, does the editing, and proposed the project to us is David Kessler.

Our blog is a niche publication--visual art--so 'making dough is hard. The question is not if blogs can make enough money, it's whether art blogs can make enough money. Yes, we're "in business," but we're rather bad businesspeople. We make some money but it's not enough to call a living, and we barely cover our expenses. When we have the choice of thinking about how to make this business grow vs. how to make the blog grow, we invariably put our energy into the latter. Our first concern is covering Philadelphia's art scene in the manner it deserves, and placing it in a global context.

Hackett: I get a salary from the newspaper. It's the same salary I had before the blog.