Jason Calacanis — the man who talks more sense about blogging than anyone else — has published an interview he had with what appears to be an unnamed print magazine journalist.

He covers all the ground, making the nuanced distinctions necessary to understand the choices available in the blogosphere, from personal blogging to media businesses based on blog technology. He defines his own Weblogs Inc this way : “At Weblogs, Inc. we wanted to build a ‘scale’ blogging business–that was our goal.” It’s now an eight-figure business.

If you’re interested in the many forms of blogging and how they morph into other activities, read this piece.

Here are a few thoughts of my own

Some see blogging as a form of prayer, others as a kind of social service. They use phrases like “selling out” and “going over to the enemy” if you as much as add Adsense to your blog. Such folk can usually be seen demonstrating with placards outside government and company buildings most weekends.

So let’s be clear about this : blogging is either about gaining attention for yourself or a means of making money. Is craving attention a “better” motivation than making a living, especially when supporting yourself makes a better contribution to society?

Let’s leave the blog pietists behind then and not kid ourselves that blogs are a form of holy writ.

I love blogging. I wouldn’t be doing it right now if I didn’t. But blogging is essentially an amateur activity and therein lies its charm. Personal blogs are just that — a means of self-expression and letting off steam.

However, once you’ve decided you’re in this as a commercial venture, you would do well to adopt the attitudes and terms of writers / authors / copywriters / journalists. They are all seen as professionals outside the blogosphere.

If you develop a number of blog-driven websites into a network, the very word “blogging” ceases to describe what you’re doing. You could, of course, continue sailing close to the wind by over-emphasising keywords to suck in searchers, or use various forms of traffic exchange — in which case you have not left the semi-problogging stage.

Finally, another quote from Jason’s interview : “Also, it is very rare that one new medium kills the medium before it. Blogs are not going to kill newspapers and magazines, but they will take 10-40% of their audience, just like cable TV didn’t kill network TV but it did take 20-30% of its audience.”

If network magazines can take 10-40pc of print magazines’ audience, and given our cost base, we can look forward to a very comfortable outcome.