Is there money in blogging?

A top editor at my newspaper told a colleague this the other day:

"Nobody's every going to make any money blogging. Most who try it won't be able to sustain it for more than a couple of months."

At a time when newspapers should be embracing the Internet, it's amazing how many people still think blogging is nothing more than a flash in the pan. But that is wrong.

People are, of course, making money RIGHT NOW by blogging! There's a guy right here in our readership area named John Scalzi who conrtibutes occassional features for our Lifestyle section and who is paid to blog for American Online. And there are whole businesses being built around corporate blogging. There's a guy named Wayne Hurlbert who writes a blog called Blog Business World that gives advice for how to build a blog-based business.

Blogging, in some form, is going to endure and its going to be an important tool for journalists -- maybe not every journalists, but many. More journalists should be trying it, learning about it and experimenting with the online form.

Our industry is busy trying to attract more "light readers." Where have our readers gone? Many of them have gone, and are going, to the Net. We need to be there with interesting content and connect them back to our websites and print products if we want to endure. And yet, too many times we flat ignore the Internet when building survival strategies for the future.

Well let me say this -- no company has ever survived by sticking with the old way of doing things in the face of competitive pressure form new technology.