Blogging your way to the big time

Brian Stetler started his blog, TVNewser.com from his dormroom at Towson University, Maryland in 2004. Mediabistro, picked it up soon after and recently announced that Stetler had been hired away, by none other than the New York Times.

Getting plucked to cover business at the Grey Lady right out of college is no small feat. Stetler's stellar rise is a testament to his own talent and vision and he gives us an exemplary story for today's transitioning world of media. It has gumption, bootstraps, and all the other goodies of a Capra-esque kid-makes-good fable. But it also contains some important lessons for publishers, writers, and everyone in the media. And I am not just talking about Old Media, the lesson is particularly important for New Media publishers and bloggers.

I've been chatting in the hallways recently with my colleagues about what blogging is and what it means for us. Many in the old guard fear the blog like it is the stuff of a bad B movie... perhaps The Blog that Ate Journalism or The Bride of the Blog that Killed Print Media. We fear that which threatens us or what we don't understand, and it is common to lump all blogs into one category of shoddy journalism that blurs the line between church and state, blends opinion and news where objectivity should be pure, or deals with unsubstantiated rumors instead of fact.

But all blogs are not equal, and apparently, quite a few bloggers are very good journalists. So what is it that draws our attention to blogs?

I argue that the freewheeling and interactive platform is the reigning turf of the cult of personality, which is the inestimable quality that has catapulted so many great publications and programs to interstellar fame. And the great blogs embrace and reflect the great personalities behind them.

Let's consider some of the great magazines of yore, when the flashy and splashy pages created a clique of readers who sought to emulate the lifestyle sold under the pretty covers. These products were married to their larger-than-life editors and publishers, such as Jan Wenner's Rolling Stone or Graydon Carter's Vanity Fair or Andy Warhol's Interview, Gloria Steinem's Ms. or Hugh Hefner's Playboy. They were deeply personal extensions of gutsy, charismatic, and opinionated people.

But the titles lose their personality in the mainstreaming and drift into corporate publishing. Will Playboy be the same when Hef goes? Newspapers have faced this as well as corporate ownership and clustering have taken the big families out of the business. The New York Times is still thick with family, though, and it remains iconic.

Today, the blogs that win have that same deeply personal feel about them. Take a look at the top 100 at Technorati and you'll see blogs like BoingBoing and the HuffingtonPost that have that magic spark of hip counterculture and personality. Blogs offer that connection in an even more interactive and personal way, taking the "did you see that" cocktail party conversation to hyperspace and turning the readership into a bonded community.

Ana Marie Cox, the original Wonkette, departed the wildly successful blog she founded to take a buttoned-down gig with Time. While the intrepid and very successful blog hosts at Gawker network soldiered on and filled Cox's high-heeled shoes with another writer, the faithful readership eroded. It wasn't so much what Cox had to say, it was how she said it and who she was that made it special.

So here's the payoff for my friends over at MediaBistro, who have a fabulously larger-than-life personality behind them in owner and cyberhostess Laurel Touby - you may just want to kill the TVNewser blog brand and start over than let the blog jump the shark with someone new. It is a tough piece of new territory to be in, and I don't envy you the challenge of managing a micro brand transition within your larger umbrella network.

And for all my other friends out there who are trying to figure out this whole blog thing: Meet Brian, he's a blogger who made the big time... or did he leave the best thing he had going for him?