Magablogs Rising

Folio: has a piece on the rise of magazine blogs.

Excerpt:

"There are lonely teenagers cyber-begging for attention. There are passionate and articulate experts sharing their insights. There are outright lunatics. These are the residents of the blogosphere, an online realm ruled by the egalitarian ideal of an individual communicating without the filter of established media.

Lately, however, established media have glommed on to blogging. Magazines as diverse as Variety, Christianity Today, Business 2.0, The New Republic and The American Prospect are sponsoring their own blogs, committing editing time, money, prominent space on their Websites and their journalistic reputations to a format that was supposed to be all about amateurs controlling the microphone.

Are these new “magablogs” the tip of a trend? Will blogs, like Websites, become an essential adjunct to print magazines and a source of badly needed revenue? Or will magazine bloggery remain a quirky offshoot of a magazine’s Internet presence-a marketing gimmick that gives the brand a dose of hipness and provides an ego boost for star writers?

The answer is yes. Magazine blogs are promotional tools and they are becoming useful (and possibly sponsorship-ready) adjuncts to print and online brands, particularly in the b-to-b category."