I had lunch Friday with a long-time friend/colleague who has over twenty years of service in the newpaper business (for the past 7 or 8 years he has run the online version of the paper). While not an extremely active blogger, he does follow them quite closely (especially those dealing with media).

We re-capped the recent election blogging events and the relationship between the 'old media' and bloggers. One concern he expressed was the echo chamber of the blogospere. When bloggers talk about the impact/influence that blogs have, most of the time we are preaching to the choir.

ComScore recently stated that 35 million Americans, more than 20 percent of U.S. Intrernet users, read blogs.. Steve Rubel recently wrote that media coverage of blogging is increasing:

"According to Google News, last month alone there were 5,240 articles that mentioned blogs -- nearly double the number of press stories that mentioned Britney Spears! PubSub, a service that monitors blogs, is tracking 3.75 million of them. And over the last several months, particularly during the campaign, we witnessed a number of landmark events like Rathergate that have only helped blogs move further into the mainstream."

Have blogs tipped? I think among those who know what 'tipped' means they have, but not among the general public. So how does that change?

The main avenue for the general public to learn about blogging is via the main stream media. I am encouraged by the amount of PR blogging going on. It would seem natural that PR practitioners are best prepared to help publicize blogs to the public.

So this is a call-to-arms for the PR bloggers. Perhap this should be one of the mandates of organizations such as the iAOC. How can we invite others to join our 'cult'?

Think about it.