Bloggers, book deals and gnomes

January 22, 2006

Today's NY Times features a long article about David Lat, the former federal prosecutor who created Article III Groupie-- the author of Underneath Their Robes, the only gossip site about federal judges: He Fought the Law. They Both Won.

In November, Lat publicly revealed that he wrote A3G with an article in The New Yorker by Jeffrey Toobin: Scotus Watch.

As the Times article recounts, this news caught Lat's employers at the US Attorney's office by surprise, and after , Lat quickly took the blog offline.

End result, Lat joined Nick Denton's snarky bunch of bloggers at Gawker media as the replacement for Ana Marie Cox at Wonkette: Wonkette's Sex Change.

This week, life-at-biglaw blogger Opinionista revealed herself as Melissa Lafsky, who left her law firm job, got some professional photos, and signed with the agent to the bloggers in order to prepare for her big reveal in the New York Observer. Lafsky’s Last Laugh: Secret Legal Blogger Says ‘I’m Opinionista!’. Veracity verdict: Actually a woman, actually a lawyer, actually at a boutique-sized outpost office of a biglaw firm, no actual book deal. Even though this article was in the Observer, Lafsky picked up some A-list press from the Times last year.

Gawker wonders: "Is there some sort of internerd law that dictates all anonymous bloggers must eventually reveal themselves through a contorted ritual of self-referential blog posts and media publicity? We thought that crap always came after the book deal."

All the way back in December 2004 (that's like seven years ago in internet time!), Jeremy Blachman was profiled in the Times as the author of the Anonymous Lawyer and inked his book deal in March of aught-five.

Here's the short lesson:
Step 1. Write a funny anonymous blog.
Step 2. ???
Step 3. Profit.

See Underpants Gnomes

Off to write at my anonymous site…