Blogging in the Boston Globe

Two front page stories on blogging today; the first page of the Metro/Region is a story about how many major American universities are using blogs in the admissions process, encouraging, promoting, and even paying students, professors and administrators to “tell it like it is” through blogs. And the front page page of Business section titled “Blogging for Dollars” echoed the theme of enumerated blogging and quoted extensively Berkman’s own uber-blogger, David Weinberger, and Boston blogfly Adam Gaffen. Excerpts below:

From the college blog story: “Eager to forge stronger connections with prospective students and parents, MIT and other universities in the last two years have been starting blogs and recruiting undergraduate bloggers. Blogging has become one of the hottest trends in college admissions.”

The article reports that MIT is actually paying undergraduates $10 an hour to blog, and featuring the results on the Admissions web page! Wonder what the professors and administrators are getting. Somehow the Major Boston University where the Dowbrigade teaches has neglected to offer us any cash or perks for our own blogging pearls of wisdom. In fact, they have forced us to sign a blood oath NOT to mention the institution itself by name, any students, colleagues or administrators, any incidents true or invented taking place at or in any way connected to the university, or any thoughts, feelings or conjectures involving any of the above. Maybe we should call the Globe.

From the “Blogging for Dollars” story: “As a few star bloggers have made six-figure salaries or million-dollar deals off blogs, more and more people have been tantalized by the prospect of making money online — even though the vast majority of the blogs are little more than online diaries.

Still, Barry Parr, analyst at Jupiter Research calls the blog ad market “a rounding error” in the total advertising budgets.

“Like anything else, you’ve got a pretty steep curve,” Parr said. “There are a small number of incredibly successful bloggers, and it drops off pretty quickly.””

The Dowbrigade has long ago given up on making any money off of our blogging. For one thing, it would sully the artistic purity of the act of blogging. For another, we have tried all of the popular paradigms – joining a group or guild of bloggers, attracting theme-based advertisers, prominently mentioning certain products or people in our postings, photos and links, promising to NEVER mention certain products or people in our postings, photos and links – and none of them worked.
However, we are nothing if not flexible, and are always willing to admit new possibilities. All offers will be considered…