Blurred Lines Between Blogs and Traditional News Outlets

The moment often comes when an upstart organization is so successful battling the established Goliath that they have to start emulating the structures against which they have been fighting.

Such an organization needs to evolve, and the struggle then becomes how to preserve what made them so unique while changing the way they manage themselves to accommodate more volume.

That is not to say that bloggers are "fighting" against traditional news outlets. But it is fair to say that when a blog reaches a certain level of success it starts measuring its progress in more sophisticated ways than counting the number of daily hits.

The Huffington Post has succeeded in this way, and in the process has significantly blurred the lines between traditional news outlets and blogs. They hired Betsy Morgan, who was the general manager of CBSNews.com, as their chief executive.

Bill Carter wrote in the New York Times:

“Getting somebody like this to come to our site says a boatload about where
the industry is going,” said Kenneth Lerer, who has been acting as the chief
executive of The Huffington Post and will move up to chairman. He founded the
site along with Arianna Huffington, the political commentator.

I agree with Mr. Lerer.