While many in MSM are afraid of blogs and are starting to bias their coverage away from the fact that blogs might be commercially disruptive to their business models, the Wall Street Journal’s Amy Schatz gives blogs their due:

Nearly a year before the first caucuses and primaries take place, the 2008 presidential campaign advertising war is under way online.

Candidates of both parties are already buying space on search engines, blogs and other Internet sites popular with political junkies and potential donors. With 18 candidates vying for the most open race for the White House in 80 years and front-runners on both sides announcing plans to forgo public financing, the 2008 election promises to be a huge revenue opportunity, not just for TV broadcasters.

“There’s a blog primary going on right now,” says Henry Copeland, founder of Blogads, a North Carolina-based advertising service which automates the process of placing ads on blogs in exchange for a 30% cut of the revenue.

We’re a long way from capturing the $1 billion that will be spent on this election cycle, but we’re making inroads.

Meanwhile, BL Ochman compares the Journal’s audience to blogs’.

The Wpost’s ombudwoman squirms. Readers are confused because they think blogs are part of the “real” Post. But blogs aren’t official because they aren’t edited. Except when they are edited, but not by someone senior enough. Got it?

Did one online column irreparably damage Post national security journalism? No. But it does show that an online column rubs off on the newspaper. Opinions on Arkin vary among Post reporters who write about the military and national security. Some respect him; others think he harms The Post’s reputation.

Arkin is no rookie. A national security and human rights fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, he has written books, spoken at the armed services’ war colleges, and been a consultant to the Air Force and human rights and environmental groups. He is a military analyst for NBC-TV and has broken national stories.

“What makes me successful is that . . . I write a blog, and a blog is a highly personal venture,” he said. “If I try to do it without a voice and without my sarcasm and without my digs and without my crazy lens, then no one would read it.”

Bloggers thrive on their opinions. Many newspaper journalists, often attacked by bloggers, think they are the “real” journalists, working in a parallel and better journalistic universe.

I’m sure journalists at washingtonpost.com see their work as the journalism of the future, while we of the dead-tree format can be seen as the past. Arkin said that “newspaper reporters would try to wipe me off the bottom of their shoes . . . if they acknowledge [bloggers’] existence.”

Arkin apologized. He said he was “dead wrong” to use the word “mercenary,” that it “is an insult and pejorative, and it does not accurately describe the condition of the American soldier today. I sincerely apologize to anyone in the military who took my words literally.”

Readers usually take things literally. And an editor should have told him to take out the word. That’s what editors are for: They keep opinion writers from making fools of themselves.

Arkin is unrepentant about two things: He works for The Post. Period. And he said he is “probably one of the best-known and respected anti-military military bloggers.”

An editor read his column before it was posted but didn’t see the problem. Jim Brady, washingtonpost.com’s executive editor, said that had he seen it, he would have asked for changes. Arkin said he would have made them.

What’s the difference between opinion writing for the newspaper and for washingtonpost.com? The writing can be similar, but the editing is more intense at the newspaper. More experienced eyes see a story or a column before it goes into the paper; The Post has several levels of rigorous editing. There is “less of an editing process” for blogs at the more immediacy-oriented Web site, Brady said.

BL Ochman, who orchestrated a super blogad campaign for Budget Renta Car last year, is doing a “best story” contest for Simon and Schuster. She’s running ads reflecting the entries. Go check out the latest/weirdest… latest/weirdest.

Seeing The Queen a week ago made me sentimental for London, where I spent a life-changing 84-85. It was the coldest winter in England’s long economic stumble. Arthur Scargill’s miners were in their last face-off with Maggie and the pound could be bought for a dollar a some pennies.

Anyway, a friend wrote Friday and mentioned he’s in London and asked for some tips. I was thrilled to advise. I’ll put them here before they disappear beneath the strata of my outbox…

Check out a pub called The Old Dr. Butler’s Head in The City. You can either have a pint and sandwich in the bar or go upstairs for more formal stuff. Also good to eat at Simpsons on the Strand. May be a tourist trap now, but fun for roastbeef and port. Try The Grapes, somewhere down by the Thames. May have gone upmarket versus 20 years ago with the Docklands. Also fun to drink (in better weather) on one of the bars with a terrace at one end of the top of the Covent Garden buildiing. Try to buy last minute tickets at a theatre — a lot cheaper than NY and often amazing. Finally, go to Portabello road on Saturday AM for antiques and a good pint in the pub about halfway down the road on the right. And if your budget is unlimited and you want to get truly electrified by bottles of ice-encased vodka, Nikita’s is the place.

(BTW, Miklos and Tamas are visiting for the next two weeks… we’ll try to post pictures.)

Jason Calacanis makes me smile.

A breathless CNN article notes that Superbowl ad prices have quadrupled over the last
20 years.

Other than computers, cars, and the minimum wage what hasn’t quadrupled in price in the last 20 years?

We’ve worked out remaining bugs in the live-linking blogads (see the top ad at left for PoliticalWire.com) and are ready for more beta users.

(Update: see top left ad on DailyPuppy.)

The text in these blogads updates automatically every fifteen minutes. Each headline is linked. The pipeline for this is the advertiser’s RSS feed.

To pull headlines into your next blogad text, put the letters “@RSS:http://etc…etc” in your text field for a standard ad and the rest is automatic.

What to call this new ad unit? Obviously, the word RSS is too obscure for most advertisers. So we’ll probably go with something like “live-linking” blogads or “headline feeds” or “auto-update blogads” or ??

If you are first to suggest the name we end up using, we’ll send you one of our new t-shirts. Speaking of which, please head over to Flickr and tell us which color combo you love or hate. (We’re going to print up more of last year’s popular brown/orange too.)

Update: Joseph Hughes experiments with the new ad.

John Aravosis does a brilliant write-up about the livelink ads. He tells advertisers, “this ad can be updated a practically infinite number of times throughout the day. You literally have your own mini-Web site incorporated in our Web site.”

Taegan Goddard directs his readers to the new unit.

More thoughts from Richard C and Pam Spaulding.

Amused by my Slacklining, Rick Bruner points to his own imbalancing on a unicycle.

Bill Beutler, formerly of the Blogometer at Hotline and now at New Media Strategies, does some very indepth sleuthing on the Hillary Clinton blogad order.

Bill highlights some questions about where/why the ads are running. My response to folks who have asked about the candidate buys: 21 months is a looooong time and there’s going to be lots of experimentation and learning along the way. The key point is that candidates — particularly Edwards and Clinton — have chosen to make significant investments in blog advertising far earlier than in advertising on other media.

Smart candidates know there’s a “blog primary.” Blogs offer a unique opportunity to connect with the insiders and activists who are the fulcrum of American political opinion and action. To illustrate this point… Bill picks up a telling detail I had missed: the HRC ads are running on Edwards’ advisor Matt Gross’s blog. This is truly advertising inside the blog beltway. (Blogway?)

Matt Gross writes:

With the primary season now upon us — or at least the netroots primary season now upon us — it seems that this is a good time to reiterate my blog ad policy.

I accept ads from any Democratic candidate or progressive organization and most private industry or public relations firms, proceeding with the assumption that my illustrious readers, being media savvy enough to find this little blog in the first place, are media savvy enough to negotiate the world of advertising and p.r. without any help from me.

…the general policy around here is laissez faire, laissez aller, laissez passer. At the going rate of $20 per week, of course.