You know that blogging has arrived when....
Actually, while still tiny in the grand scheme of things, bloggers are having impacts in a lot of areas. While we have seen bloggers on both the Right and Left receive serious courting from politicians and advocacy groups in terms of influencing those that can influence others, there are also those in other areas of interest earning some serious coin (e.g., PrerezHilton.com, a celebrity blogger in Hollywood is asking $18,000 for 1 ad on BlogAds - for one week! To be fair, there are no takes right now, but he does have 13 ads sold at $4K each. He also gets about 52 million views during that time period [sigh, we get about 42K - such is the "long tail" of blogging]).
Anyways, beyond the advertising networks, we can get insurance!
I'd love to see the actuarial tables for blogging
Apparently, I can now purchase "blogging insurance:"
Premiums for the policy, underwritten by Axis Insurance, start at about $500 and increase depending on a list of risk factors.
For example, bloggers writing about local government or the pharmaceutical industry will have higher premiums than those writing movie reviews or just musing about their day.
The policy includes a $2,500 deductible and covers up to $100,000 per claim.
Axis offers a similar policy in Canada called CyberLiability, with premiums starting at $2,500 (Canadian dollars). Americans get the cheaper rate if they pass the association's media law course.
and join a bloggers advocacy group!
I would recommend membership in the Media Bloggers Association.
The MBA is non-partisan - its members, board and history are ample proof of this. The MBA is, to some extent, the institutionalization of a dynamic that is anathema to many bloggers: Joining organizations, agreeing to standards (not standardization), bestowing a limited quantum of representative proxy, and interacting cooperatively with people like the MSM, the courts and others whom many bloggers consider sacred cows.
There will always be the ACLU, the EFF and many fine organizations — not all of which are conservatives’ first choice of whom they’d want to call in an emergency — and individuals who are out there fighting the good fight. But right now the MBA is the only grouping of bloggers across the spectrum that is in a position, and is formed for the sole purpose, of protecting the rights bloggers have, to the full extent of the law, to express themselves in their chosen medium to the full extent of their constitutional rights to do so.
If you’re as afraid of an Obama Administration and how it might go for bloggers as some of you say you are (which is a lot more afraid than I am, notwithstanding the scare links in my first paragraph), you’ll consider joining the MBA or perhaps replicating what it has done in a manner consistent with your own tastes — “while you can”!
And yes, with the documented thuggery shown at a radio show at WGN, Law Enforcement officials that were going to go after, with the full weight of the law and threats of broadcast license removal, people who expressed anti-Obama sentiments, and the like....well, maybe ideas that have come at the right time.
