As some of you may be aware, in addition to my own site, I write an occasional freelance piece for healthinsurance.org. The only problem is that both that site and mine have pretty narrow audiences, comprised mainly of those who are already actively seeking out analysis/opinion about health insurance matters, as opposed to the general public.
I also cross-post my diaries frequently here at Daily Kos, of course, where the ACA Signups project originated.
I'm therefore pleased to announce that this morning I've had my first publication on a non-healthcare-or-political-oriented website: Cracked.com.
I've attempted to fully explain how absurdly complex the U.S. healthcare system is (and thus why it's so difficult to make major changes to it) in a way which is easy for the average Joe to get (with a few poop jokes thrown in to keep within the Cracked tradition).
Anyway, I'm a long-time fan of Cracked, so I'm pretty geeked about this. Check it out!
UPDATE: I see there’s a lot of confusion in the comments about what exactly the deal is regarding Cracked, since those of us over 30 remember it as a second-rate MAD Magazine rip-off. Cracked actually went through a rather surreal and complete reconstruction, and has virtually nothing to do with the old magazine beyond the name and logo:
Cracked.com is a humor website with over 300 million monthly page views. The site was founded in 2005 by Jack O’Brien and is currently owned by E. W. Scripps. It is descended from Cracked magazine, which dates back to 1958.
Cracked was founded as a magazine in 1958. In early 2005, then Cracked owner Dick Kulpa sold the magazine to a group of investors who announced plans to revive a print version of Cracked with a new editorial focus and redesign.
In October 2005, Cracked.com launched as a separate website under editor-in-chief Jack O'Brien, a former ABC News producer. Although the magazine folded soon after launch, the Cracked website gained popularity and was purchased by Demand Media in June 2007, setting off Cracked's rapid growth period.
On April 12, 2016, it was purchased by the E. W. Scripps Company for $39 million.
In 2007, Cracked had a few hundred thousand unique users per month and 3 to 4 million page views. The site fit well within Demand Media’s network, with Jack O’Brien noting “They understand the web, and they made us nail down a voice”. The editorial staff includes original editor-in-chief Jack O’Brien, Jason Pargin (under his pen name, David Wong), who was added as an associate editor later in 2006, and Oren Katzeff who became Cracked.com's General Manager in November 2007 after running business development for Yahoo Media Group. Cracked.com publishes 2–4 articles daily (2,000 – 3,000 words each), along with video content, short-form content, and contests. The feature articles are the most popular, usually pulling in around 1 million views in their first week.
...In 2010, Cracked drew over 1 billion page views. By 2012, Cracked.com received 300,000,000 page views per month and 7.3 million unique monthly users, making it the most visited humor site in the world, ahead of The Onion, CollegeHumor, and Funny or Die.
Wow. I knew it was popular but didn’t know it was that popular.
In a way, that’s a bit depressing: As of this writing, my own piece only has around 69,000 views in the first day and a half. On the other hand, that’s not far behind this piece by one of Cracked’s staff writers about that douchebag Jesse Watters from 5 days ago. I presume dry political/wonky topics don’t sell as well as “6 Seriously Flawed Moral Decisions by Movie Superheroes”, but that’s kind of the point…