How blogging changed my view of journalism

I've been blogging since April 2006, when USA Today asked me to start a blog about small business. Within a couple weeks, I had an epiphany: 21st century journalism is about writing provocative links ("headlines" in the analog world) to aggregate people online. That means the most powerful journalists now are often those who can produce really attention-getting links.

I built a list of blog ideas for USA Today that I figured could bring lots of traffic to the site. Since the paper didn't follow through, I'm posting five of them below in hopes some paper will adopt them:

• Sex. Duh! It's what people spend tons of Web time chasing. Online personals are growing like Topsy. Why not create a sex-and-romance blog co-authored by a man and a woman?
• Pets. Pictures of cute dogs and cats are among the most popular online. Imagine all the reader-generated photos you'd get with a blog that posted a cute pooch of the day.
• Race. Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign has thrust race onto the public stage again. And it already dominates the online "conversation" in story comments.
• CEOs. A gossipy column about the absurd money and perks paid to the nation's top corporate executives.
• Populism. Bread-and-butter issues like rising gas prices and shrinking job opportunities for the middle class. (Why should Lou Dobbs have all the fun?)

[Photo: Japan has a new nursing home for a swiftly graying population -- dogs, the Associated Press says.]