[original post at switched.com by Warren Riddle]

To wit I ask – do we really spend waste that much time reading blogs?

As more and more major newspapers fold, in the face of dwindling advertisers and subscribers, bloggers are usurping their roles in record numbers. According to The Wall Street Journal, over 20 million people now blog in the United States. Of those, 1.7 million earn money doing so, while 450,000 primarily earn their livings through the blogged word.

Those statistics indicate that there are now more professional bloggers than there are computer programmers or firefighters. Career bloggers now also rival attorneys in number, which leads us to a question. When bloggers outnumber lawyers, who is going to file all of those libel and slander suits?

The authors, Mark Penn and E. Kinney Zalesne, investigate some intriguing aspects of this journalistic shift. For instance, they ask whether or not bloggers deserve an official union, along with health and unemployment benefits. They also manage to throw in a few condescending and elitist shots at the blogosphere, accusing bloggers of having “limited standards and, for most, no formal training.” It must be humbling to lose readers to the unwashed, untrained, and ethically-challenged masses.

Maybe, the unemployed, professional journalists, with their high standards and firm grasps on ethics and morals, can go back to law school to even out the attorney-blogger numbers. Regardless, our primary concern is with this blogger’s union becoming a reality. We’re ready for our union-mandated break. [From: The Wall Street Journal]

Nonethless, it’s pretty indicative of the way things have gone, the power of the social media and the possibilities of the future.  With several regular jobs, I find it tough to make time to even post once a week (obviously) but then again, I don’t get paid for it either.  I think it would be pretty damned interesting to know what that would be like.  Do pro bloggers whose primary income comes from posting have the same worries about hitting deadlines as traditional journalists?  Or does the laissez-faire attitude change that perspective as well?

In the meantime, inasmuch as I would love to be able to post on a daily basis here as Jen does on her blog, I guess I don’t really have much of a point in doing it except to keep exalting the virtues of good web design, better user experiences, and DRM.  I must be kookoo.