America's Newest Profession: Blogging

We've all heard of the oldest profession ... one unemployed young journalists will thankfully never be forced to consider. That's because they now have the newest profession: blogging. The Wall Street Journal says that there are now almost as many people making a living as bloggers as their are lawyers in America. A striking fact for the most heavily lawyered country in the world. A quick search of wikipedia says that there is about one lawyer per 265 people in the U.S., and the bloggers aren't far behind. Check out the April 21st article by Mark Penn with E. Kinney Zalesne. 

I first heard something about this article in the form of an NPR factoid. the announcer said there are now about as many bloggers in the U.S. as there are bartenders. That got my attention, since almost everyone I know has done that job at one time or another to make ends meet between starting college and beginning their career. I thought to my self, 'now everybody needs blogs as much as they do beer?' Wow. 

That's when it hit me that I am really in the right place (USC Anennberg) at the right time. Where else could be better to weather the storm of the economic downturn, the transformation of journalism to an online medium and my own personal evolution from a low-tech news hound to a multi-media online producer? 

Now, I'm not sure that I want to devote my entire life to sitting in front my laptop cranking out blogs. After all, blogging, when usurped by corporations will end up being just as oppressive as a nine-to-five job. And that's not what I went into journalism for. I chose the profession for idealistic reasons, including being a part of upholding democracy, but also because it offered the possibility of a certain degree of autonomy, creativity and adventure and of course, constant learning. 

I think it's great that blogging has gained legitimacy, but my secret hope is that it remains mostly a free-for-all, haphazard, brainstorming bazaar where we go to search out intellectual trash and treasures. But no doubt, from this year forward it will remain an integral part of journalism as we know it.

What I found really striking about the WSJ article was the figures. Check them out:

* One out of every three young people reports blogging

* 2 % of bloggers do it for a living

* It takes about 100,000 unique visitors a month to generate an income of $75,000 per year

* Bloggers can get $75-$200 for a good post

* It takes about $80.00 and 35 months to get started

* Pros who work for companies are typically paid $45,000 to $90,000 a year for blogging

* One percent make over $200,000 and work 50-60 hours per week

Take a look at this blog which discusses the numbers further.

And this is the one that really blew me away ... Pen and Zalesne write, "as bloggers have increased in numbers, the number of journalists has significantly declined. In Washington alone, there are now 79% fewer DC-based employees of major newspapers than there were just a few years ago. At the same time Washington is easily the most blogged-about city in America, if not the world." Penn and Zalesne didn't say it outright, but they drew a correlation between the decline of journalist in the capital with the rise of bloggers. Pretty interesting stuff.

Citizen Foreign Correspondents?

After a bout with the flu I am now re-joining the bloggosphere. Thanks to our classmate Nikki Usher for sending me a link to Nicholas Kristof's recent blog about a new citizen journalism website where we can all become foreign correspondents. In his blog Kristof introduces us to a site called Demotix. Demotix, which set up shop in January 2009, is essentially an online, international, multimedia, newswire service. The site is named after 'Demotic,' the form of writing used and most easily understood by the man on the street in Alexandrian Egypt in 200 BC. The word Demotic meaning, 'of the people.' The people behind Demotix say they hope to open up journalism to the people in the modern age, just as the demotic script opened up writing in Ancient Egypt. They say they're filling the void left by the death of newspapers and old-fashioned on-the-ground reporting. With only four U.S. newspapers maintaining a foreign desk, they may be onto something. Their goal? To provide a place for anyone -- freelance journalists, citizen journalists, and people who just happen to be at the right place at the right time to upload world news photos and video, search for it and comment on it. The good news for freelancers is that they pay you. It works like this; you retain the copyright, they broker the photos and videos across all platforms for you and then Demotix and you split the fee, 50/50. They say they can get anywhere from $50-$3,000, depending on demand. And if you just happen to get something really hot, like say a great photo of a historic moment, they claim the pay could potentially range into the $100,000.00 range! Demotix also has an interesting blog where they invite people to discuss the pluses and minuses of citizen journalism. I was only down with the flu for about a week, but it feels as if in that short time the fault lines of journalism could have made some massive fundamental shifts. And Demotix might be ahead of the game.