In the furor about what was wrong with Bloggercon, Doc Searls was cast in the role of the guy who didn't buy into the theory of making money with blogs: principally because that's how Dave Winer introduced him -- as a trick that he was playing on all the folks that wanted to talk about making money by blogging.

What got overlooked in the fracas that ensued is what Doc really wanted to talk about, which he pointed out recently:

Doc Searls

[from Said What?]

To Steven Levy I said, "If you're into blogs to make money, you're into it for the wrong reasons." That was part of a longer explanation, only some of which made it into the article (which is how these things go, and that's fine). Anyway, here I am, being niched as The Guy Who Says Blogs Are Not For Making Money.

However, I didn't say that.

Fact is, I have nothing against making money with blogs. What I tried to do at Bloggercon III, and in my conversation with Steven (who got it, and also tried to pass along the same understanding), was enlarge the conversation beyond making money with blogs, into making money because of blogs. I said that in my write-up for the session. I tried to say that in my series of questions for the session. As I've said often, and about many subjects, the logic is AND, not OR.

But that's not what a lot of people heard. And that's certainly not the impression they got from Steven's Newsweek piece.

So let me make this as clear as I can. I have nothing against making money with blogs. Hell, I'd love to make money with IT Garage, and I'm watching closely what Nick and Jason and Tony and Hylton are up to, because they're among the leaders at figuring that out. Chris Nolan, too, as a stand-alone journalist. Also Dan Gillmor. Same are Doug Kaye, Marc Canter and too many others to name here, each in their own ways.

See, I think the future of periodical publishing, and of journalism itself, will be built mostly by individual bloggers and indivdidual blogs, and by a new breed of publishers who harvest and republish (and, yes, pay for) goods from the wide open ranges where bloggers roam, and post, free. The day will come when the top print publications will be comprised of prose and pictures provided by blogs and bloggers.

The same thing will happen with television. And music. Movies too. (Although the rights-clearing mess is a huge hold-up there.)

Think of it as de-industrialization. Or de/re-industrialization. New industries rebuilt within and around the shells of the old ones. And old ones adapting, finally, to conditions that offer whole new frontiers of prosperity that only open up when they quit protecting the Old Ways of Doing Things (for example, by locking up archival "content" so only paying customers can see it).

Whatever replaces advertising (as we've known it) is also essential to the prosperity of these new journals. Is it just going to be whatever Google and Yahoo and Blogads do? No. It will be all that and much more. (Like, for example, a way to voluntarily pay -- even a small amount, micropayment style) for subscriptons to RSS feeds, just like we voluntarily pay for public radio and TV broadcasts.

Meanwhile, I still think there's more money being made because of blogs than with them. Problem is, I have no hard evidence for that. There also are not many people, besides myself and Dave Winer, who are interested in talking about it.

So maybe that's the take-away here.

But the problem that emerged at Bloggercon was really the issue as expounded by Dave Winer, who more or less coopted Doc's role as the session leader, and was not only advancing the argument of making money through blogging, but also the negative argument that we shouldn't want to make money for blogging, and if we did we were missing the whole point.

I share Doc's optimism about new models emerging, and new sorts of businesses arising. I for one am intensely interested in talking about it. BUt that transition won't be instantaneous, so we will be living in a blendo environment for some time, with one foot in the past, and the other reaching out, feeling for the next step. And, yes, Hylton and I and the others at Corante are scrambling to create a different business model and business organization to get there.

The biggest shame is that the subtlety and promise in Doc's presentation was swamped by the turmoil at the Bloggercon session, alas.