Pen-Elayne on the Web

Bloggers as Viable News Sources

Well, at least one enterprising venue is taking advantage of this. From my e-mail in-box:

Greetings, fellow blogger! My name is Robert Hayes. I am the editor of a new blog news site called the Blogger News Network. BNN exists to provide bloggers with a new forum for their news stories and analysis. As the mainstream media is discovering, a distributed network of tens of thousands of fact-checkers, reporters, and editorialists provides a superior method for disseminating news and vital information. BNN intends to extend that advantage and to become a premier news destination site.

BNN needs two things to succeed: writers, and readers. I am asking for your help with both.

I urge you to submit stories that you write to BNN. Your story remains your property entirely - we are a consolidator and reprinter, not a purchaser of content. You will be paid for your story - we track the readership for each story on the BNN site and distribute ad revenues to the author of the story proportional to their stories' popularity. You can see details of our payment system - and take part in discussions ofhow it should be more formally structured - at the BNN forums.

There is no time commitment - you can send us a story once in a blue moon, or you can devote your life to creating content for BNN. It's entirely up to you.

We also need readers - if you like the idea of BNN, please give us a link either in your sidebar/blogroll, or by making a post concerning BNN. Like all networked products, the more people that know about and use BNN, the more valuable it is for everyone. I greatly appreciate your time and consideration. If you have questions about BNN, or would like to discuss how this site can be a valuable resource for the entire blogosphere, please drop me a note!

Best wishes,
Robert Hayes
Editor

I think it's a spiffy idea indeed; although I'm pretty sure other aggregators exist, I don't know of too many willing to pay for stories. This should be an interesting site to watch.