Gamechanging Blogs, Future, Maturity & Pulitzer Price

Sramana Mitra writes, "with the advent of such phenomena as blogs and podcasting, a new era of democratic electronic media publishing has arrived". Excerpts with edits and comments added: Democratic new media publishing enabled at the click of a post-and-publish tab with relatively easy-to-use software wherein text, photo, and video blogs are the most popular forms.The nerds have suddenly set free the liberal arts types in droves. The phenomenon is well at work, and it will change the rules of the game for creative professionals world-wide. It will also change the rules for marketers and brand-builders. It expands the reach and ability to communicate with this universe exponentially, literally within minutes and help in monitoring trends and have other experts participate and contribute; the net effect being a richer and deeper knowledge base. With time, more people will take advantage of these democratic new media publishing opportunities. More serious writers and creative professionals will learn to market and sell their work using the Internet. Micro-payment mechanisms will mature, ad-supported business models will improve, and auctions of good work will become possible. A quality evaluation system will start to emerge as we go along. Good writers, good audio broadcasters, and good filmmakers will be able to monetize their work abundantly and creatively. She boldly goes ahead to predict that there will be the equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize for Internet content—equally prestigious, equally well respected, equally well-regarded. Quality content that's published, managed, distributed, and marketed through blogs, video-blogs, photo-blogs, and audio-casts, is a macro-phenomenonA well written note – and if I may add, with the dizzying growth of the blogsphere the distinction between the big, high-traffic blogs and the rest of the world of blogging will be increasingly sharply polarized. Somebody predicted the end of the individual blogger- though it has not yet happened in a pronounced way. There would come a day when we can see where top bloggers won’t be just viewed as mere bloggers but would be seen as doing something very different from the rest of the folks..