Well, okay. Maybe mainstream America doesn't consider blogging to be "normal" just yet. However, blogging is definitely within the bell curve of things that are no longer weird.
Back in September, CNET's Webware reported that bloggers are now creating nearly 1 million posts per day.
Webware notes that the mainstream media is using blogging as supplementary and complementary to normal online news reporting. Evidence for this is easily found on my two most visited news sites, nytimes.com and washingtonpost.com. The Times has its own index of Times staffer blogs. The Post even has its own blog subdomain. These news blogs seem to be comprised mostly of not-quite-newsworthy news or, more fascinatingly, subjective analysis of the threads and trends that tie news stories together. They are all themed and just browsing through the Times blog index is a good way to unintentionally double your feedreader's subscription count.
A Technorati survey of 1,000 bloggers found that the mean advertising revenue was $6K per year, with some bloggers making over $75K. Watching blogging mature from pure narcissism to legitimate media has been fascinating. Everytime someone makes fun of Twitter (I have a Twitter account, see left), I think to myself, "Hey, this is exactly how blogging was first received.".
Still, the medium deserves a healthy skepticism. Blogging, and internet-based media in general, have a long way to go before they become sources as trusted as magazines and newspapers. There is no Audit Blog of Circulations. You can't rely on frequency of posting and most bloggers don't post their web traffic.
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