Interview - Jeffrey Zeldman of A List Apart

A List Apart

SitePoint: Ok Jeffrey, let's get personal. What made you start A List Apart and what kept you at it for so long? What advice do you have for Webmasters who want to run an online magazine or article site? And how do you manage to procure original content each and every week?

As I've mentioned, it started as a mailing list, and a rather labor-intensive one, since Brian and I edited hundreds of participant comments and questions and packaged the best of them in a tight little digest that went out to 16,000 subscribers (the list was free and non-commercial, just like the site it eventually gave birth to).

I saw A List Apart as a chance to publish information on Web design, code, and content that was being missed by similar online publications. I also saw it as another vehicle through which I could evangelize Web standards -- not by shouting at browser companies, but by providing tutorials on CSS, XHTML and the DOM that working Web builders could understand and use.

Encouraging original content is not a problem. Weeding through all the submissions, finding time to edit and design each issue and to work with the writers when needed -- that's the problem. The site is non-commercial. Every hour I spend on it is an hour I'm not serving a client and thus not supporting my landlord or the IRS.

If the site is successful, it's because its content is by and for the community it serves ... because we're not selling anything ... because we don't force our writers to conform to a "house style" or even the house bias. I've published articles with which I personally disagreed -- but they were well written, and the views they reflected deserved to be heard.

Some of our writers are brilliant but "difficult." I don't mind. I'll argue with them in email if I have to. "Middle of the road" is death. "Everybody's best friend" is editorial euthanasia. A List Apart has a human voice: the rich voice of each individual author; the overarching editorial focus; the visual context of a super-minimalist CSS layout that tells you you're not in Kansas any more.

If you're running a Web magazine, be real, be human, be yourself. Bland corporate layouts and dully useful content don't grab anyone, don't speak personally to anyone.

Don't worry about the money. In the late 90s, the Web was filled with garbage as many people tried to get rich. If you have something to say, something to publish, just go! If every editorial decision is predicated on dollars, get off the Web, start a print publication, and good luck.

SitePoint: Often, articles on A List Apart can be classed as "controversial". Have you ever made a decision not to publish an article due to this?

I kill articles that serve no purpose: articles that shed no new light or offer no new innovations. I kill articles that contain a good point but bury it in tangents, though I try to save those articles by asking the writer to work with me and with my associate editor, Erin Kissane. I rarely kill a piece simply because its tone is ornery.

I recently said no to an interesting and potentially useful series because its author harbored a weird grudge against the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C. Valid, potentially helpful criticism of some W3C standard would be one thing. But this guy just seemed to have it in for W3C, for reasons he never explained. His bias got in the way of his message, and I felt it best to let him publish elsewhere, rather than trying to tone him down.

I won't publish attacks on people. If you dislike Bill Gates or Josh Davis or Jakob Nielsen and feel compelled to say so, do it on your personal site. It's not suitable for A List Apart (actually I'd advise you not to do it on your personal site, but, hey, it's your site).

Likewise, I won't publish free-floating rants against groups or even corporations. If you're concerned about something a corporation or group is doing and can back up what you have to say, that may be entirely appropriate for our audience -- as was the case with Chris Kaminski's concerns about Microsoft's "smart tags," which we published in 2001.

But if you simply dislike Microsoft, or Sun, or Macromedia, or Adobe, or IBM, or Apple, or whomever, the Web is free, and you can self-publish your opinions. Just not in my magazine.