I’m writing an article for ALA (A List Apart), and they said that the editors debated and thought about it, but they felt that while I did offer a good deal of evidence, it wasn’t substantial enough to be published in such a journal. Yet they still said that “the door is open” for me to find additional evidence of the idea I offer up in my article.
Now I end with the generalizations: the article is about the effects of layout-cohesive advertising. Because the major online ad distributors (AdSense and whatever the one’s Microsoft and Yahoo run are called) ban releasing data like average CTR and CPM and such, my efforts to determine whether eliminating such a middle-man and instead having the web designer create a layout-cohesive ad is more profitable were hampered. Although AOL accidentally released useful data and Facebook published theirs, I can’t get any information on the “elephant in the room,” AdSense. I’ve done tons of research and crawled through SEO paper after SEO paper for data on CTR and this is where I got enough data to at minimum create an article that could be debated.
I am launching a poll to circumvent Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. Because of all the reasoning above, I am posting this in good faith that I can buttress my argument in my article. The link is: http://www.misterpoll.com/polls/339529
Because web designers are a relatively specialized segment of the population, if you could forward this to relatives or friends who belong to a more “normal” part of the demographic, that would be appreciated. Again, mention that this poll is a scholarly effort.
[FONT=Arial]Try taking your work to another publisher. I find ALA articles rather stuffy and vague these days. They used to have really good concise articles, now they just seem to ramble on, dressing personal gripes up as journalism. There’s a definite sense of superiority in their writing style.[/FONT]
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[FONT=Arial]If they can’t get the facts dealt with in less than 10 minutes reading time, then we’re in thespian ‘I like the sound of my own voice too much’ territory. What ever you’re writing, keep it punchy.[/FONT]
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[FONT=Arial]ALA[/FONT][FONT=Arial] are currently weighing in at 10 out of 10 on my yawnomitter[/FONT]
What about Digital Web (http://www.digital-web.com/)? Do you know any others? Oh, guys, could you complete the poll, please? The data will help my article regardless of where I publish it.
Carolyn, I do not deny any goodness of the ALA articles.
But, I do protest the obscene length of every. single. article. ALA has produced.
Unless its a how-to, I don’t think producing “thought” pieces needs to be so outrageously wordy.
A lot of the writer’s main arguments are lost in the almost illegal usage of “superior wordification”.
“Lets increase our word count by 100% so that we can use larger, more scholarly words and obfuscate our readers into agreeing with what I’m saying because I sound like a professor”
this is the internet, people hate reading on the internet. Especially long, stuffy articles about someone’s opinion.
*edit: hrmm, this thread seems to be kind of forgotten about
Whilst ALA may annoy some of us for it’s overcomplicated articles, it is still a great place to get an article published. I can think of no alternative that would get you the same exposure or readership, so go with ALA in my opinion.
