I love Welch when he’s mad at pompous torch bearers for mediocre corporate journalism. Here Matt dissects LAT columnist David Shaw’s assertions of journalistic privilege to shield laws versus the blogger rabble:

the culture of newspaper jobs is a culture of scarcity, over-editing, editorial circumspection, office politics, and both the good and bad tradition of modern-day newspapering. The culture of blogging is one of abundance, lack of editing, exuberance of expression, home offices, and both the good and bad “tradition” of a new and dynamically evolving medium. Are the differences between the two camps enough to deprive a journalism-producing weblogger the protections afforded a journalism-producing newspaper columnist? [Shaw writes]:

When I or virtually any other mainstream journalist writes something, it goes through several filters before the reader sees it. At least four experienced Times editors will have examined this column, for example.

Now there’s a walking advertisement for newsroom cuts…. Snark aside, it is not “filters” that make something “journalism,” it is the work itself. I can only speak for myself, but the act of writing without filters makes me much more careful in the treatment of facts and the truthfulness of words, because there’s no Copy Desk or Legal Department ready to vet the danger and check spelling. I’m slightly less careful only in the quality of the writing, and even then I assume that vomiting out verbiage sometimes produces net style positives compared with agonizing over every verb. Also, as someone who has written for a dozen newspapers, I’ll let the filter-awed readers in on a little secret: In every publication I’ve written for more than once, I’ve had final drafts published without so much as a moved comma. Some errors (few, thankfully) have passed through undetected, others have been edited in. Copy editing and especially fact-checking, at least in my experience, are the most overrated and wasteful aspects of modern journalism.

Read the whole thing please.

Meanwhile, academics are researching the personalities and demographics of bloggers. “We know that bloggers are not representative of Americans in general in certain respects,” Halavais says. “They tend to be younger, more urban, more educated, more technologically adept. They’re also early adopters and more willing to speak publicly about certain issues than other Americans, most of whom do not blog or even read blogs,” he adds.

A number of bloggers and readers have been asking “what the heck is up with those Virgil Tatum ads?” One reader called him “an obnoxious egomaniac.” A magazine writer inquired about profiling him. An agent asked about representing “Nisha,” the art theft recovery expert linked by another of the ads. Well here’s one gamer’s overview of the context of “Heist,” the Audi A3 advertising narrative that weaves it all together.

We here at ARGN prefer to see this particular instance of “blog advertising” for what it really is: the tip of the ARG iceberg. Props to Audi for joining the ranks of those who realize the potential of Alternate Reality Gaming. In true automotive spirit (as it is in Alternate Reality Gaming), the ride’s the thing, so get behind the wheel, buckle yourself in, and get ready for a trip you won’t soon forget.

Or as another gamer put it, offering a compendium of all the pieces to date

Heist is what we like to call an Alternate Reality Game (ARG). Simply put, it’s an interactive story told using real life events, character interactions, and Internet websites. We know that Heist is sponsored by Audi, but don’t think of it as a marketing campaign. Take it for what it is – a very fun and enjoyable game which you can participate in for free.

This campaign reminds me one of those four page ad fold-outs you get in the New Yorker or Vanity Fair that invite you to imagine yourself within a slightly Daliesque alternate universe inhabited by exotic brunettes, fast cars and melting clocks. Only in this case, the ad can be folded out to hundreds of pages and the reader can actually live a little of the fantasy both online and, even, offline.

But it goes beyond the individual’s experience, the solitary pleasure of reading a magazine. What is amazing about this multi-ad campaign is its synchronization with the blogosphere’s collectivist approach to information gathering, its unique ability to piece together a narrative. This is an ad campaign that is best experienced with others.

An interesting aside for bloggers — this is the biggest single blogad campaign yet, representing as much revenue for bloggers as the entire Q1 of 2004. (Don’t worry, with total US ad spending at $250 billion, there’s still plenty more growth ahead.)

Some broader context: I drank the blog CoolAid nearly four years ago late one Thursday afternoon, but am more convinced every day that something fundamental is happening here that exceeds our current rational understanding of community and social engineering. The point isn’t the individual blogger. It’s the collective, known to friends and enemies as the blogosphere, wired together at the speed of light for the first time in history.

Folks are repeatedly amazed that these “disorganized” “unemployed” “biased” “untrained” bloggers are regularly thrashing corporate media at its own game. (Need more fuel? See Ed Morrissey’s scoop that has set maple leafs aflutter and CampusJ‘s upending of a NYT story.)

The fact is that top-down organizations are vastly overrated and don’t stand a chance about organically evolved multi-party collaborations. The best MIT engineers have never come close to building a structure as elegant and efficient as the hive that 10,000 bees, with an average IQ of 22 and no boss giving directions, can build together in a week. Why doubt the enormity of the hive that 10,000 humans, with an average IQ of 125 and empowered with some new tools, can imagufacture together? What are Google’s 10,000 servers compared with the collaborative mind-power of 10,000 humans, each with at least 100 billion neurons?

Blog advertising got some nice mentions in the press earlier this month that I didn’t highlight. The WSJ included a nice graph of some data we provided and this overview:

For bigger advertisers, finding the right blog is critical, which is where Blogads.com comes in. Blogs that have been in existence for at least six months and have a dedicated readership can join Blogads.com’s database, which currently lists about 750 sites. Advertisers use Blogads.com to find blogs with suitable content (technology, media, fashion) or political slant. They can purchase ads through Blogads.com by the week or the month. Prices range from $10 to $3,000 for better-known blogs. Marketers can chose which sites to advertise on and bloggers can accept or reject the ads.

Henry Copeland, Blogads.com’s founder, works with marketers to create successful blog ads, which he says should be different from regular Web ads. “We just kind of shudder when we hear from an advertiser, ‘Wow, I hear blogs are cool and cheap, and I want to be on a blog,’ ” he says.

Instead, he advises advertisers to think like bloggers, and remember they are joining an ongoing conversation, incorporate links to other sites and use a voice that fits the blog’s general tone. Above all, he says, they should stop hitting readers over the head with giant logos. One good example he points to is an ad that Knopf, a publishing division of Bertelsmann AG’s Random House, designed for Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami’s most recent book. Rather than linking to a site that sells the book, Knopf’s ad joins in the spirit of blogging by quoting and linking to other blogs that discuss the book, such as MetaFilter.

And here’s what Aline Vandyun wrote the Financial Times on March 28:

If all goes according to plan, more than 1m Americans will soon be gripped
by the mystery of the missing car. The hunt for a stolen Audi A3 – a sporty
hatchback that will hit US showrooms in May – will begin next week with a
launch party in New York.

At the event, the thriller’s first scenes will be shot, with pictures and
clues about the theft then distributed on the internet. From there,
participants in the chase will use interactive tools to choose alternative
plot endings.

How will the publicity be generated? With the latest weapon in the ad man’s
arsenal – blog advertising.

Blogs, web logs or journals, which cover topics from politics to parenting,
have such enormous followings that marketing and advertising executives can
no longer resist advertising in them.

The most recent Pew Internet and American Life Project, which researches
internet use, found that 7 per cent of the 120m US adults who use the
internet have created their own blog. Assuming one blog per person, this
comes to 8m US blogs alone. The study also found that 27 per cent of US
internet users say they read blogs.

“It’s a brand new space, but when you get the right kind of messaging in
it, the results can be astonishing,” said Brian Clark, who has bought blog
ads for agencies Weiden+Kennedy and McKinney-Silver, including for the Audi
campaign.

Blog advertising came into its own during last year’s presidential
election. For the first time, political parties had budgets and strategies
for online advertising. Recognising this, bloggers sold space on their
sites.

“Blogs themselves have started to realise the potential for blog ads and
much more space has become available,” said Michael Bassik, director at
Malchow Schlackman Hoppey & Cooper, which ran John Kerry’s online
presidential campaign.

He admits that a year ago he dismissed the idea of blog advertising. Now,
he has clients spending up to Dollars 15,000 per week on blogs. “You are
reaching a very actively engaged group of people, much more so than readers
of more general web sites,” he said.

Large companies such as Sony and Amazon have advertised on blogs, and the
likes of Nike and GE are also experimenting with the medium.

For bloggers, selling ads provides income to support their hobby or even
helps them make a living.

Blog ads are cheap compared with other forms of advertising. Blogads.com,
where ad buyers can take space on blogs, lists its most expensive placement
at Dollars 3,000.

This buys you a week in the top slot on dailykos.com, which claims to be
read daily by more than 400,000 “committed progressive activists”.

Demand this year has been higher than expected.

“March blog ad sales will exceed our best month last year,” says Henry
Copeland, director of Blogads.com. “We thought it would be the end of 2005
before we got back to (presidential) election levels.”

The United Church of Christ, a protestant church with about 1.3m members,
became aware of bloggers after two television networks, NBC and CBS,
refused to run a UCC commercial showing a gay couple trying to enter a
church.

“We were impressed by the power of the blogs,” said Robert Chase, director
of communications at the UCC. “We decided to include blog advertising in
our next round of commercials. We have had such a great return that we will
now always consider blogs in any campaign.”

UCC spent Dollars 1m on cable televison ads and Dollars 15,000 on the blog
campaign. With about 74,000 clicks so far (the ads run until the end of
March), the cost per viewing of the ad was about 20 cents, Mr Chase said.

Blog ads clearly generate interest, but users say the ads work best if they
engage the reader. “In the blog sphere, a standard, loud ad is the
equivalent of yelling at a cocktail party,” said Mr Clark. “The ads need to
be designed so that the bloggers are part of the conversation.”

It is not yet clear if big advertisers will go beyond small-scale campaigns
and make blogs a regular part of their marketing strategies.

“It is still not for everyone, but it can, at the moment, work for
specially targeted ads,” says Alycia Hise, account director at TMP
Worldwide, which buys blog ads for her education clients.

In the meantime, bloggers should look out for a missing car.

The Audi campaign chase is about getting bloggers to think of an A3 next
time they want to buy a car. Not so different to other ads, after all.

One of my favorite advertisers just sent this note:

Okay, no one is ever going to understand this, but after reading this guy’s description of his site in your interface I’m going to have to buy ads on him now. Just fucking love subversives: his copy writing skills with the below make a $20 2 week slot the equivalent of tipping a clever panhandler.

The Decadent West
The Decadent West is the most visited weblog on the planet, attracting over 1,000,000,000,000 visitors a second. Fucking amazing, isn’t it? Just ignore that other number to your right. It’s completely incorrect. OK? Just remember: 1,000,000,000,000 visitors a second. If only 1% of these people click on your ad, and only 1% of them purchase your wares, you will be rich. Easy money, my friends. Easy money.