'Bloggers' - diary writers on variety of topics - are getting lots of Web attention

Andrew Sullivan, a right-wing commentator, proudly announced last week that his "Web log" - a compilation of notes on topics ranging from paedophile priests and Middle East politics to criticism of the "liberal mainstream press" - had gone into profit.

His boast comes as commercial publishers of news and commentary on the Web are struggling to stem losses in the face of an advertising slump. Mr Sullivan's financial success, albeit modest - he expects to be able to draw a salary "more than comparable" with his earnings as former editor of the New Republic - is adding fuel to a broad debate about the future of Web publishing and online journalism.

Could it be that grassroots publishers will flourish as commercial investments in new media recede? Might a multitude of independent voices reclaim the Web from the giants of the media industry?

Mr Sullivan is a "blogger" (short for Web-logger), one of the tens of thousands of individuals and small groups who publish such online diaries.

The vast majority of Web logs are little more than regularly updated letters to friends, with rambling accounts of day-to-day life. Many see them as the latest incarnation of the personal website with family photos and holiday greetings that was popular briefly in the late 1990s.

But a few dozen bloggers with broader interests, Mr Sullivan among them, have begun to attract much wider audiences. Last month, andrewsullivan.com drew more than 800,000 visits from more than 200,000 individual readers. Virginia Postrel, editor of Reason magazine, is also drawing a strong following for her dynamist.com.

Oddly, bloggers with right-leaning politics seem to have gained the ascendancy. This is perhaps because they frequently express a different point of view to that on the websites of most magazines and newspapers. It is also because they are sometimes outrageous and often provocative enough to draw the attention of the mainstream media they denigrate - and so gain publicity.

Once you have found one right-leaning political blog, it is not difficult to find more. Bloggers typically co-operate by providing links to one another's websites to create what is known as a "Web ring". Indeed, many Web logs are little more than a list of links to articles written by other bloggers and by journalists on traditional publications.

There are "linkers and thinkers" as one blogger puts it. With no editors to tame their writing, many of the "thinking" bloggers have a tendency to self-indulgence, ranting and wavering off track.

Yet at their best, bloggers bring a fresh, raw quality to their work. Ignoring, or ignorant of, stultifying style guides, they aim to "tell it like it is".

Blogging has also embraced the innately interactive qualities of the internet that many professional media websites have failed to capture. While magazine and newspaper editors adapt awkwardly to a closer relationship with their readers, blog writers frequently incorporate readers' comments.

"The newspaper is a lecture. The Web is a conversation," says James Lileks, both a blogger and a Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist.

Similarly, the links among blogs create a dynamic environment in which a posting on one website leads another blogger to write and then another - and back and forth. For readers, the effect can be dizzying and exciting.

While most bloggers comment on news reported elsewhere, some do their own reporting. They can tell the world as fast as they can type what a corporate executive or politician has said. Even wire service reporters cannot beat them because the former must file copy to a news desk before it is published.

Yet the veracity of Web logs has still to be established. To the extent that bloggers report news, should they be trusted to the same degree as - or more, or less than - the traditional media? Readers will have to decide.

Some bloggers regard themselves as media watchdogs. The Los Angeles Examiner, for example, carries an online Web log that specialises in upbraiding the Los Angeles Times for stories that it has allegedly missed or mis-reported. Other bloggers skewer reporters and commentators who slip up or express an opinion with which they disagree.

It is no wonder that bloggers frequently receive short shrift from newspaper journalists.

To Web-log optimists, Mr Sullivan's new-found profitability seems to suggest that all it takes to make money on the Web is one good writer and a computer. Mr Sullivan, and his like, can leverage the work of thousands of newspaper and magazine reporters for their sites.

But Mr Sullivan remains dependent on traditional media. Not only does his site include articles he has written in print publications but his revenues come from selling books online and reader donations. Whether his profits are sustainable is open to question.

In the meantime, Mr Sullivan is crowing. Thanking his online readers for their support this week, he wrote: "You have proved the naysayers wrong. Which is why the anti-blog backlash from the established media is now under way. Methinks they're a little rattled. As well they might be."