Jason: Yep, I think that’s right. Much of the barrier to entry is gone. Individuals can now go ahead and give it a whirl, and if they’re good enough (professional enough?) they might even make a buck.

But a word of caution: the barrier is not completely gone. I found Tracy’s comment above really interesting (thanks Tracy) and what jumped out at me was that, sure, here’s someone who could strike out on her own, but look at the risk she documented! She had to take huge personal risk for just the hope of making some coin.

I think my favorite point you made yesterday was to assert the power of hard work. People can market their blogs, start a Twitter feed, hand out cards, sponsor an event. But if their blog doesn’t do a service, if it doesn’t say something new, if the author isn’t driven by a passion for the community, the community won’t respond. Not really. Not fully.

Keep inspiring. A lot of people don’t know it yet, but we need more of you out there. Fast.

Just a couple thoughts. Yeah, we might operate like a company someday. Actually, we ARE a company. State LLC, city business license, all that stuff. But having worked for both some small media concerns (small dailies that are LONG since defunct, in Las Vegas and Davis, CA, plus a 3-person radio newsroom) and some large ones (Tribune, Disney), I can say the bureaucracy is indeed generally the problem, and at some point a lack of hunger on the part of myriad employees at myriad levels, for myriad reasons. Maybe this is one of those cases where the old has to collapse to make way for the new because the old has become inefficient, non-nimble, etc. (WITH SOME EXCEPTIONS – I have said often that I admire many of the P-I’s initiatives, not just “hey, we’re blogging” but also posting breaking news, etc. – but that is SUCH a rare exception – I have hair-curling tales from the big corporate joints where I worked).

As for moving in the perhaps-inevitable bureaucratic direction ourselves: Frankly, while I look forward to hiring someone by year’s end, at least part-time, I also dread it because I am cranking so much out so fast now, I can see hiring someone and winding up with the same volume of output for WSB just because I would be tempted to “slack off” a little and let that person do the five things we would have done INSTEAD of what we do, rather than IN ADDITION to what we do. Still thinking through that one.

Oh, and last but not least. Re: who’s professional and who’s not. I believe Jason pointed this out in the original post … schooling does not make you A Journalist. I am an excellent example of that. I’m a college dropout. I happened to wind up at a school which at the time had no journalism program – I was interested in music at the time, anyway – but because I also had long been a writer, I answered an ad in the college weekly paper (which operated DESPITE the lack of a journalism program), and while I spent four years working on that damn paper (learning and doing everything from typesetting to layout to humor writing to entertainment reviewing to news reporting), I accumulated about one year’s worth of credits (no credit for working on the paper, a few of us did get paltry stipends). Then I went to work fulltime as … a disc jockey.

Long and boring story results from there, but now after 30-plus years of it, I have a hell of a resume, three Emmy Awards, amazing experiences I will always remember, blah blah blah, and a fascinating future I am thrilled to be living every single crazy headache-inducing long day.

I have met some great journalists who happened to have J-degrees (even graduate work), and some with the education who could not write or report their way out of the proverbial paper bag. Again, as I say often, the proof is in the end result. Judge someone by their work, and whether it provides information – “journalism” and otherwise – that matters to your life.

Sorry, I’m rambling. Writing this from demolition stakeout in the car. Gotta switch to a more scenic location. P.S. I do think there are more people like me out there and all they need is TO BE BRAVE. Leaping out of my job last year, knowing all I had to support my family on was a highly penalized early 401k withdrawal and advertising revenue that at the time barely equaled a very part time job, was INSANELY risky. I have NEVER taken that kind of risk in my entire life. But if we can do it, anyone – WITH SINCERITY AND DEDICATION, among other qualities – can. Really.

As I admitted to Tim, it would have been better for me to call it the “mass professionalization” of journalism.

The really important change to grasp, in my mind, is that there is no longer anything preventing me, that lady down the street, or her uncle Jimmy from becoming a journalist. The barrier is gone.

Which completely changes the game for newspapers, and it could help explain why so many people seem to resent “journalistic elitism,” which exists because in the past, not everyone could be a journalist.

Right on. So I guess this is just wordplay? The whole “letting go of professional journalism” thing? Because there are two main differences between “professional” journalists and those who are not: making money and being part of a company. You acknowledge neighborhood bloggers are doing it for money, or at least the prospect, a lot of them, and once they start hiring other reporters and building networks, like Tracy and Cory of MyBallard are hoping to do, they will begin to operate very much like a company.

So why bother with talking about what “professional” means? It seems the real distinction here is between media that have been around for a long time and are stuck in ancient bureacucracies and those that are starting up from scratch in a new era, pushing forth online and behaving like start-ups.