Pajamas Media is trying to build an association of political bloggers, creating one of the largest business association for bloggers to join and make money. Here is the story for I wrote for Wired.
But here are some details I had to leave out. First off, from my personal interactions with him over the phone, Roger Simon seemed very passionate about this project. While I think its a good thing to try and empower bloggers, I came across a few in the blogosphere that think this is the first step towards the corporatization of the blogosphere, not its empowerment.
Blogs are set to evolve. Pioneers like Nick Denton of Gawker Media have paved the road (and us geeks have made him succesfull at it), but I think in the near future we are going to see a wide variety of platforms all trying to create corporations out of blogging. Pajamas, which will soon change its name, could be a successful one. It certainly has a strong blogroll and is already looking to expand.
One aspect that I find most intriguing was Simon’s intent on actually syndicating blogs to main stream media outlets like the Times. Would the New York Times or a Knight Ridder newspaper actually print material from a blogger? We will have to wait and see.
