In Business Week today, Sarah Lacy gives a good overview of the challenges bloggers and Blogads face right now. To recap what I’ve said several times recently: with the lowest overheads in the media industry, bloggers and Blogads.com are here to stay.

Will post election blogads work for everybody? Absolutely not. But the US advertising market has turnover of roughly $250 billion a year; to keep a lot of bloggers in the clover, we just need to please a tiny portion of the market… folks like Mark Bennett and his clients. Back to BusinessWeek: “Certainly, the role of bloggers in the political season has caught the attention of some ad agencies. ‘Initially it was something we suggested clients try, and I think the results surprised them,’ says Matt Bennett, creative director at San Francisco ad agency Call & Response. ‘Now they’re coming to us and asking us to run a campaign solely on blogs to generate discussion.'”

Great lede about blog advertising: “The odds of making a living by writing a blog are a lot like the odds of a garage band turning out a hit album: It can happen, but you better enjoy the music and hang on to your day job in the meantime.” Lou Dilanar goes on give a complete run-down on blogads in Newsday today.

Some very kind words about us: “the economics of blogging have shifted rapidly, thanks to a simple but brilliant idea called Blogads, which allows bloggers to outsource the equivalent of a newspaper’s business and advertising departments, and focus solely on writing. You report! You decide! Blogads sends check!”

And more blog demonizing in the NYT: “If the Internet has been the source of vicious blogs and half-baked rumors, it has also often been a worthy watchdog on the mainstream media, a direct route to the candidates’ records and official Web sites and a means of instantly checking their half-truths and evasions through nonpartisan outlets like FactCheck.org at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Center.”

Ben Hammersley gave us a nice plug in the Guardian, calling Blogads “a very simple way to sell space on your site.” And Nic Howell gave us a good mention as he chewed on the nuances of thin media in New Media Age. Unfortunately, it’s password protected.

Ironically, while Nic quoted me correctly, I’m wrong. Here’s the relevant extract: “Blogads customers are typically entrepreneurs, says Copeland. ‘Testimonials from advertisers say we have exactly the 500 or 5,000 people they’re trying to reach,’ he says. But despite opening up a new channel to customers, Copeland hasn’t had interest from ad agencies. ‘They’re part of the whole ecosystem of people which we’re trying to disintermediate,’ he says.”

OK, I’ll eat those words: we’ve seen some good interest from ad agencies in recent weeks and are realizing Blogads can fit well in their ecosystem.

Entrepreneurship is like ice-sculpting, right?

Matt Welch pummels the press poobahs who are busily creating a “publishing mini-genre” lamenting the dire state of American Journalism.

Reviewing books by Bill Kovach, Tom Rosenstiel, Leonard Downie Jr. and Robert G. Kaiser, Matt is nauseated by the “factually uncluttered hyperbole,” unctuous “Statements of Concern,” and, most of all, the whiny poobahs’ self-congratulatory bias against other people mucking around in a business that THEY feel entitled to control by committee edict and academic fiat.

Written by people suckled on and situated in America’s news behemoths, the books fret that there aren’t enough behemoths and take this as a sign of impending doom. They either ignore the explosion of other news resources — niche magazines, blogs, cable channels, “fingertip access to 10,000 faraway newspapers” — or see these as negative.
Go read the whole review.

The CSMonitor reports: “Since May, 12 police departments ‘ in locations as diverse as Ozark, Ala., and Caddo Valley, Ariz. ‘ have signed up for the offer:” placing ads on police cars.

A critic says, “We’ve already tracked the rise of ads into every area of life from urinals to golf holes. I think this will diminish respect for the whole institution of police.” (Via Adrants.)

The company’s site explains, “If your local Law Enforcement hasn’t received Government Funding for Homeland Security or if your tax base is insufficient to provide the Vehicles your Department needs, your Local Government may be a candidate for our program. We have a virtually unlimited amount of capital available for Brand New, Fully Equipped, Local Law Enforcement Vehicles. Our Sponsors will require recognition on the vehicles. The Vehicle Theme can be your choice of very creative or conservative.”

Tackling the view that an Internet-powered glut will make words worthless, Nick Denton argues “even if bandwidth and publishing systems are free, talent and marketing critical mass will always be in short supply.”

John Motavalli interviewed by IWantMedia: “For the most part, editors at the big magazines stayed away from [the Internet]. So the major DNA that went into producing the magazine didn’t have much to do with the Web product. When I worked at Hachette New Media, I never once saw an editor from any of the magazines set foot on our floor.”

After visiting the Jeff Jarvis writes: Internet World trade show yesterday, “This year’s show is only a quarter the size of last year’s. It is pathetic. It is a physical embodiment of the word ‘nevermind.’ The show can’t even fill one room. AOL has the biggest booth and it is small; Real and Sprint are there; Microsoft has a small booth just so they can say they have one; Yahoo has a booth smaller than a Silicon Valley cubicle.”

Ironically, the show’s tagline, “Grow Your Revenue and Operate More Efficiently through Internet Technology” has never been truer than today. It’s just that the companies who best benefit from the Internet are too new or small or cheap to pony up for a ticket at the “low price” of $995 and are instead busy learning online.

Clark G. Gilbert, protege of disruptive technology guru Clayton Christensen, has been scrutinizing how newpapers operate online. He says, “the most disturbing thing is that newspapers now appear to be focused on replacing their high-margin business of print classifieds with the lower-margin business of online classifieds. If that’s all they’re doing with their online operations, we’d suggest that they shut them down tomorrow. The more important segment to tap is the area of new growth that the Internet has made possible, populated by new customers altogether.”

Surveying the evil swap that killed two newspapers yesterday, Ken Layne writes “I really, truly hate the newspaper business. Too bad I don’t have any other skills. Maybe it’s time to join the dockworker union and make $150,000 a year for scratching my ass and wrecking U.S./Asia trade.”