February 15, 2006

OpinionJournal.com’s “Federation” Will Reach Deep into the Blogosphere

Filed under: News from Other Sites — TBlumer @ 1:02 pm

This was announced just after midnight this morning (link added by me):

See the Sites
Announcing the OpinionJournal Federation.

PRINCETON, N.J.–OpinionJournal.com, a free web site from The Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Page, announces the launch of the OpinionJournal Federation of top political Web sites and blogs, which will offer daily content to its readers. OpinionJournal.com editors will select at least one article each week from a Federation member site for publication on OpinionJournal.com, which will also feature overviews and links to all Federation members.

Charter members of the OpinionJournal.com Federation include RealClearPolitics.com, the American Council on Science and Health, The American Spectator magazine, City Journal from the Manhattan Institute, the Claremont Institute, Commentary magazine, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Federalist Society, First Things magazine, the Heritage Foundation, Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, The New Criterion magazine, the Pacific Research Institute, the Property and Environment Research Center, and the Reason Foundation.

Political blogs also will participate, including Dynamist.com, Eduwonk.com, Instapundit.com, Overlawyered.com and Volokh.com. All participating members will provide articles for publication on OpinionJournal.com.

“The OpinionJournal.com Federation will be the premiere gateway to political commentary on the Web,” says Tony Lee, publisher, OpinonJournal.com. “This Federation will offer viewpoints and commentary that will enhance the observations of our editors and columnists.”

My immediate reaction is that the people at The Wall Street Journal are (sort of) getting it. They’re expanding their free offerings while keeping the heavy news behind their subscription firewall. They do occasionally open the wall up a bit.

I’m tempted to comment on who is and isn’t in it, but I suspect that “The Federation” will be growing in the coming weeks and months.

I can’t help but wonder if this might be an indication of a weakness in the Pajamas Media enterprise, as Volokh and Instapundit (at least) are current PJM members.

Also: As of 1 PM ET, no announcement of Federation affiliation can be found at Instapundit or Volokh. Hmm.
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UPDATE, Feb. 16: Volokh posted an announcement at roughly 12:30 Pacific Time yesterday, with a fuller listing of the Federation’s lineup:

The current list of members is Council on Science and Health, City Journal, Claremont Institute, Commentary, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Dynamist, Eduwonk, First Things, InstaPundit, Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Overlawyered, Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, RealClearPolitics, Reason Foundation, Property and Environment Research Center, The American Spectator, The Federalist Society, The Heritage Foundation, The New Criterion, and us.) Right now, the Federation page links to all the sites, plus a featured article from one of them; I’m not sure what more OpinionJournal plans for this, but I look forward to seeing.

Naturally, OpinionJournal exercises no editorial control over what we post here, though of course they’re entitled to choose which, if any, of our posts they’ll specially link to.

That is some serious intellectual firepower.

1 Comment

  1. Volokh posted a link (too lazy to look up the timestamp.)

    WSJ.com is one of the few paid content sites I would consider paying access to (as I’m a dead-tree WSJ subscriber anyway) — but my company pays for access, so I need not spend my own money. They’ve also got OpinionJournal and CareerJournal, most of which are free, but which also include some paid content/services. I wonder how that business model compares to the TimesSelect model…

    Comment by meep — February 16, 2006 @ 6:25 am

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