James D. Miller has an interesting article on the future of blogging in today's Tech Central Station. An excerpt:

I predict that the best bloggers will eventually join branded, heavily advertised web sites. ... Soon, I suspect, the Internet will become a more profitable place to operate. When it is again profitable to attract a wide audience, bloggers will be hired by media companies. While not all bloggers will "sell out" / "sign up" those that do will get the advantage of working under a media brand name and will consequently grow in popularity and influence.

And here's the O'Toole File from March 18 (a post that Glenn Reynolds and several others were kind enough to link to at the time):

Rather, I suspect that the big bloggers will join Dan Pink's Free Agent Nation, moving their blogs to sites that are willing to pay for the audience, and the reader loyalty, they bring with them. (How much more often would you find yourself on TNR's website -- looking at their ads and reading their articles -- if that's where, say, Andrew Sullivan's blog were hosted? Or on the Reason site if that's where you had to go to read Virginia Postrel?)

This solution is such a win-win for everybody -- the websites get fresh, daily content that brings its own set of eyeballs, and the bloggers get an economic model that frees them up to concentrate on what they do best -- that I can't believe some version of it won't eventually take off.
--------