Outline for UNC blogs and journalism forum

I’ve been asked to do a short session Tuesday at the UNC Weblogs in Journalism conference. The session addresses “how bloggers are disrupting traditional publisher’s role as gatekeeper.” Here’s my outline:

Blogger advantages over journalists
* link network
— 10 newspaper readers become a 100-synapse blogosphere
— expensive distribution & marketing versus free
* freedom of voice
— authentic
— niche-plumbing
* partisanship
— great newspapers were partisan, founded around war or political causes (“neutrality” concocted by AP business folk)
— most great blogs dynamized by partisans, enemies, trolls

Results
* blogs get 100 times more traffic per keystroke than traditional journalists…
* some individual bloggers equal audience of $200 mln newspaper chains
* some bloggers net $2500 (Drudge gets estimated $100,000) a month in ad revenue, growing 15%/month

Blogs open new advertising dimensions
* extra room to communicate (versus portal) means more nuances
* feedback and ricochets (versus control) means more buzz
* audience affinity (versus demographics) means more traction
* affordable (versus high overheads of publishers) means usable by entrepreneurs, causes