Jeremy Schoemaker, alias “Shoe Money,” made his way through the BlogWorld exhibits and attendees in his markedly nonchalant manor. Shoe is a blogger, yes, but his true ability is his wizardry with affiliate marketing. While even highly trafficked bloggers struggle to earn even $100 per month through their monetization schemes, Shoe’s “skills to pay the bills” earn him more than $100,000 per month.

After he raided the HackerSafe exhibit for beer I had a brief chat with him about blogging and journalism. He said more and more people are dropping print news subscriptions for the blogosphere. The core of this, he said, is the sheer mobility of bloggers.

“The editorial process is a big hurdle in Journalism,” said Shoe. “A blogger can post quickly and just update with the correction if they need to.” He said while journalists are searching for credible sources and sending their stories through edits, bloggers freely pour stories onto the web at will.

“You can get faster news from Digg or TechCrunch,” Shoe said. “A blogger is agile. They can just write.”

He also said there is more loyalty in the blogosphere than in print media.

“Newspapers have lost trust with readers, whereas blogers have their following,” said Shoe. He said bloggers care about their reputation as much as any journalist and risk losing readers if they screw up too badly. Many bloggers are proud of their biased stances. Indeed many bloggers are zealots for whatever their chosen topic or position. The blogosphere can be very harsh if it turns on someone. Right alongside that fast free flowing information is the potential for sudden and massive damage to one’s reputation. There are tens of millions of blogs out there and it’s nearly impossible to slap a successful libel suit on one. Be careful who you piss off.

I imagine most people would give most blogs the same consideration they might a tabloid written on a more specific subject. You don’t read it like an encyclopedia, but it gives you an idea of what’s going on. With all the information we have access to these days, many seem to find it difficult to narrow down any one issue and dig deeply into it in a factual and substantiated manor.

The press was idolized after what it did to Nixon in the 1960’s. Journalists proved just how far they could dig and were revered as protectors of the downtrodden masses.  

Well what the hell happened? Just last month Harvard University released a study that said 88% of Americans think the press coverage of the 2008 campaign focuses on “trivial issues.”I would tend to agree with that. There are far more pressing matters out there than a damn lapel pin.Thanks for the stalwart reporting, FoxNews.

The National Study of Confidence in Leadership’s 2007 Leadership Index pointed out some scary trends. The press ranked the lowest out of the 12 sectors of American leadership studied. On a confidence rating of 1 to 4, the Press ranked 2.26 (page 5). The military ranked highest, with a 3.15. Big surprise there.

Why do newspapers, television anchors and magazine editors ignore the criminality of so many of the powers that be? Well I have a maxim for this. Anytime you find yourself wondering, ” How can this injustice be?,” there is a simple answer: Because someone wanted to get paid. For the sake of my career I’ll leave it at that.

Bloggers may not have the credibility or resources of journalists but the few out of the masses that manage to become popular tend to have one thing lacking in much of the modern Press: passion. WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg said “passion in content” is among the most important ways to stand out from the “deluge of mediocrity” in Web publishing.

The print media are banding together and honest reporting jobs are dropping faster than discarded bottle caps at a Sox game.  The dinosaurs cling to each other, befuddled and afraid of the impending cyberjournalistic revolution. Rest assured my gray-haired literati, it will come.

And all the top executives can do is think of new products. As Jeff Jarvis says, “Our job is not to deliver content or a product. Our job is to help them make connections with information and each other.” At least the Times learned after the failure of that silly “Times Select.”

The press had better learn the number one rule of success in the online world, and it goes back to Mullenberg’s words. Enable people and you will have an online success. Filling pages with bland copy written by overworked reporters and editors in the hope of attracting advertisers will not work. The solution to this is not eliminating jobs; that just makes the copy even blander.

Bloggers may not be pros at what they do, but their passion sparks a loyalty of readership that the news industry - save but for a few - has all but lost. Only by rekindling that passion in writing and excepting the new depth of information they need to connect readers with will the media continue to survive.