Pajamas Media, briefly known as Open Source Media, is a startup company founded in 2004 by mystery writer, screenwriter and blogger Roger L. Simon, and Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs "with the intention of... aggregating blogs to increase corporate advertising and creating our own professional news service." Pajamas Media's name is derived from a dismissive comment made by former CBS news executive vice-president Jonathan Klein during the Rather Memo-gate affair: "you couldn't have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of checks and balances [at 60 Minutes] and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas".

History

Pajamas Media completed its first round of venture capital funding on November 14, 2005; its launch and official rebranding as "Open Source Media" took place November 16. Launch festivities included a keynote address by former New York Times journalist Judith Miller.

Pajamas Media Board members include many prominent bloggers and journalists, including "Instapundit" Glenn Reynolds, CNBC's Larry Kudlow, Michael Barone of U.S. News & World Report, David Corn of The Nation and Claudia Rosett (who helped break the United Nations' "Oil for Food" controversy).

Now over two years old, Pajamas Media has correspondents in 48 countries and is beginning to syndicate original content in the manner of a news service, one of the first new media companies to do this. It has also added a list of PajamasXpress bloggers including historian Victor Davis Hanson, journalist Ron Rosenbaum and the actor Ron Silver.

Missteps

Seminal blogger Luke Ford had been signed up as a PJM/OSM pundit but was dropped the next day when it was discovered that he had resumed blogging the adult film industry.

When the Open Source brand was launched, it claimed that the Open Source radio program had allowed it to use its name and an Internet subdomain, opensourcemedia.net, that wasn't in use at the time. Christopher Lydon, founder of the Open Source, said that wasn't true despite revised text on OSM's site. Further investigation revealed that the production company, Open Source Media, Inc., had in fact already applied for a trademark on the name. To avoid further conflict, OSM returned to the name Pajamas Media, on November 22, 2005.

Logos

The Open Source Media logo

Some critics noted that the OSM logo was similar to that of Lucent Technologies and that used by The Philadelphia Inquirer for philly.com, its Web portal. The logo now is a stylized bathrobe.

Criticism

Starting in October 2004, Kenton E. Kelly, who blogs as Dennis the Peasant, entered into discussions with Roger Simon to begin a venture called Tulip Advertising, an arrangement terminated by Kelly upon learning that Simon had launched Pajamas Media on April 29, 2005. Since then, Kelly, a Certified Public Accountant in Columbus, Ohio has been highly critical of Pajamas' business plan or what he feels is the lack thereof. He claims that Simon and Johnson have not even begun to consider how they will attract advertising to the site and that they seem to think they won't need to, based on his observation of a lack of strategy, missed deadlines, and "general sloppiness." He also questioned whether OSM would attract real readership when the readers of many of the blogs to be aggregated could already read their favorite bloggers at their own sites for free. Roger Simon later responded on his own blog, noting that there was never much of a partnership between Kelly and himself, stating "no contracts were ever signed. No investment...made. Nothing happened."

A further blogger, Jeff Jarvis, himself a principal in another blogging startup, questioned the demand for advertising on the sites of "mostly conservative political bloggers."

When law blogger Ann Althouse also aired a public critique of the OSM business model, Johnson responded by directing his commenters to her post, provoking a flame war which lasted the better part of a week.

Pajamas Media began running web-based straw polls for the 2008 U.S. Presidential race in early 2007. They have been criticized for their policy of excluding candidates who gain less than 1% support in the most recent Gallup Poll (Ron Paul in particular) while including non-candidates such as Al Sharpton and Al Gore. Like other on-line polls, Pajamas Media has reported efforts to stack their polls in favor of Paul. Pajamas founder Charles Johnson's Little Green Footballs website has likewise taken a similar stand against Paul's Candidacy.