Ted Nesi’s got a good story on the “business” of blogging in the current Providence Business News. One thing that didn’t quite make the transition from my conversation with him to the printed word is the significance of the ethos of blogging.
In a word, if something comes of this, great; if not, well, we’ve got lives. If this were to become a (more) profitable enterprise, that’d be wonderful, but an advanced business model following traditional design would tend to shift the focus. Just as bloggers have been doing something new with media itself, they’re bringing a different emphasis to the business of media.
That has yet to translate into careers for all but a handful of the extremely successful among us, but to the degree that the business model of blogging isn’t but so “advanced,” it’s because a developed model would be something new — something that hasn’t been invented yet. When it has, I suspect, first, that it will seem obvious in retrospect, and second, that it will help to revive the news and information industry.