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How young Kenyans turned to news influencers when protesters stormed the country’s parliament
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Nov. 17, 2008, 2:51 p.m.

But how’s his ground game?

FiveThirtyEight.com’s Nate Silver signs a $700,000 book deal with Penguin. When people ask me if they can make money blogging, the answer is usually a qualified “maybe” — it’s possible, but hard to make a living. But there are real opportunities to turn a blog into real money through other means — like a book deal, or like speeches and appearances. Those won’t work for every journalist, of course — but viewing one’s blog as both an outlet for journalism and a branding tool can lead to good things happening.

(And while, to my knowledge, no figures have been made public, I’m sure Nate made a decent amount from advertising on FiveThirtyEight down the campaign stretch — not to mention whatever fees he may have wrangled for appearing on MSNBC or HDNet every five minutes.)

Joshua Benton is the senior writer and former director of Nieman Lab. You can reach him via email (joshua_benton@harvard.edu) or Twitter DM (@jbenton).
POSTED     Nov. 17, 2008, 2:51 p.m.
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