Blogging for a living

According to a recent MicroTrends column by Mark Penn in the Wall Street Journal, there are now more people blogging for a living than there are firefighters or computer programmers. Reportedly, there are over 20 million bloggers in the U.S., with 1.7 million of those reporting some income from their blogging and 452,000 using blogging as their primary source of income. And at the same time that the numbers of bloggers is increasing, the number of traditional journalists is decreasing rapidly. The implications are varied, with many unknowns...

"It is hard to think of another job category that has grown so quickly and become such a force in society without having any tests, degrees, or regulation of virtually any kind..... But for how long can nearly 500,000 people who are gradually replacing whole swaths of journalists survive with no worker protections, no enforced ethics codes, limited standards, and, for most , no formal training?"