"Conversely, as blogging professionalizes, and as more folks are paid to do it full or part time, you get more bloggers who report. I make a lot of calls. Many of them end up on this site, either in the form of direct quotes or background information. My work pays for me to have a phone line from which I can make these calls, and my colleagues understand that it’s part of their job to endure me talking about insurance regulations all day. But that’s not because I have the magic “call people” gene, it’s because I’m a professional writer. Similarly, Dana Goldstein, Marc Ambinder, Chris Cilizza, and a variety of other professional writer/bloggers make lots of calls. If their day jobs were at accounting firms, however, they’d probably make fewer calls. And this is one of those things that irritates me about professional writers complaining that those damn bloggers just don’t do enough: Being a professional writer is an immensely privileged position. If you’ve got the gig, then pat yourself on the back, shut up, outcompete your competition, and be generous to those who steal time out of their workday just to have a small voice in the national conversation."
