Salon.com turns 10 years old Thurs­day (and is throw­ing a party in SF). The Merc has a busi­ness story on the online magazine’s bumpy but bril­liant ride. Con­grats David (in absten­tia), Gary, Joan, Scott and the whole crew over there.

The power of par­tic­i­pa­tory jour­nal­ism hits home in India.

Pod­caster John Fur­rier of PodTech — who reminds me of some of my more tena­cious jour­nal­ist brethren (that’s a com­pli­ment, John) — just posted an exclu­sive pod­cast with Yahoo! exec Scott Gatz upon the news that they’re adding RSS (Really Sim­ple Syn­di­ca­tion) into Yahoo! Mail. There’s a tran­script to accom­pany the podcast.

New from Mark Glaser in the Online Jour­nal­ism Review: Will NPR’s pod­casts give birth to a new busi­ness model for pub­lic radio?

Michael Arring­ton of TechCrunch has the skinny on 23, a new photo-sharing site in Europe that resem­bles Flickr in many ways.

Inter­est­ing arti­cle in today’s San Jose Mer­cury News with the unfor­tu­nate head­line, Pod­cast­ing riches. Some ama­teur net radio shows have hit the adver­tis­ing jackpot.

Unfor­tu­nate, because suc­cess­ful pod­casts will not come from those with dol­lar signs pop­ping up in front of their eyes.

Excerpts:

Since they started record­ing their eccen­tric, irrev­er­ent pod­cast from their Mid­west farm­house, Dawn Miceli and Drew Domkus would joke about “world domination.”

They haven’t quite achieved that goal yet. But their down­load­able “Dawn and Drew” show is now so pop­u­lar that it’s courted by big-name adver­tis­ers — despite its some­times raunchy and pro­fane lan­guage — and has allowed Domkus to quit his day job so he can con­cen­trate full-time on podcasting.

“It’s kind of unique when your hobby becomes your job,” said Miceli.

Miceli and Domkus are on the van­guard of pod­cast­ers who are find­ing that their living-room-produced, ama­teur Inter­net radio shows can lead to both fame and fortune.

Now that some pod­cast­ers are pulling in hun­dreds of thou­sands of lis­ten­ers a month, adver­tis­ers are set­ting their sights on the down­load­able audio pro­grams as a viable mar­ket­ing channel.

That’s spawn­ing an ecosys­tem of com­pa­nies hop­ing to cap­i­tal­ize on the emerg­ing medium. And it’s let­ting some pod­cast­ers begin to seri­ously think about quit­ting their day jobs.

“I think things will take a dra­matic turn,” said Ron Bloom, chief exec­u­tive of San Fran­cisco start-up Pod­Show, look­ing ahead to 2006. “There’s a $32 bil­lion war chest invested in radio adver­tis­ing. Adver­tis­ers are already lean­ing for­ward and look­ing at alternatives.” …

Vir­ginia moms Paige Heniger and Gretchen Vogelzang began “Mom­my­cast”– a show about the joys and tra­vails of moth­er­hood — in March. The pair have quickly become pod­cast­ing stars, draw­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of lis­ten­ers a month and appear­ing on national news shows.

Ear­lier this month, the duo announced what is per­haps the most lucra­tive pod­cast­ing mar­ket­ing deal to date — a 12-month spon­sor­ship agree­ment with Dixie paper prod­ucts, worth more than $100,000. …

Mean­while, Palo Alto pod­caster John Fur­rier is demon­strat­ing that adver­tis­ing isn’t the only path to finan­cial inde­pen­dence for podcasters.

Fur­rier, who hosts the tech­nol­ogy focused infoTalk pod­cast, is build­ing a busi­ness around help­ing cor­po­ra­tions inte­grate pod­cast­ing into their mar­ket­ing plans. So far, Fur­rier has worked with Juniper Net­works, IBM and Barracuda.

“I’m mak­ing a full-time job out of it now,” Fur­rier said. “I’ve raised some cap­i­tal and I really think it’s a busi­ness oppor­tu­nity. I’m try­ing to help peo­ple do what I did for myself.”

NY Times: Great for Craigslist but Not for News­pa­pers. “In 2005, almost nine mil­lion [peo­ple using online clas­si­fieds] went to Craigslist.org, a 165 per­cent increase from 3.4 mil­lion last year.”

I had missed this in San Anto­nio Cur­rent from two weeks back: Haven’t picked up pod­cast­ing? Skip it. The vlo­gos­phere has arrived.

Michael Verdi [pic­tured above] is famous.

So are Amanda Con­g­don, Ryanne Hod­son, and Jay Ded­man. Never heard of them? That’s okay; they’re famous anyway.

And they want to add you to the list.

These four, and an innu­mer­able swell of oth­ers, are part of a surg­ing move­ment on the inter­net known as video blog­ging, or “vlog­ging,” a video expan­sion of tra­di­tional blog­ging that, in roughly one year of exis­tence, already boasts a tightly knit global com­mu­nity, legions of devoted fans, and its own hit shows and celebri­ties. To wit: Peo­ple like you are cre­at­ing, upload­ing, sub­scrib­ing to, and shar­ing a vast and var­ied cat­a­logue of video con­tent online, and get­ting well-known for it, all with unprece­dented ease. Vlog Nation, it seems, has arrived.…

Renee Blod­gett
Orig­i­nally uploaded by jdla­sica.

Happy birth­day, Renee!

Josh Wolf informs that a new group has arisen from the ashes of the Cur­rent TV Meetup group. It’s called the Bay Area Media Mak­ers, and will include all media enthu­si­asts (videoblog­gers, pod­cast­ers, tra­di­tional doc­u­men­tar­i­ans, etc.).

The group will meet for the first time in March with this on the agenda:

1) Intros
2) Infra­struc­ture: Dis­cus­sion of the group itself, and out
progress lead­ing up to the next “sum­mit.“
3) Pitch Ses­sions: An oppor­tu­nity for you to pitch your idea
and hope­fully get help from other mem­bers.
4) Peer Screen­ings: A chance to screen your work, and get input
on how you can improve your piece from your peers.
5) Guests, and skill shares: An Oppor­tu­nity for peo­ple to
impart their knowl­edge about appli­ca­tions, tech­niques, and
styl­is­tic approaches with the community.

Sug­ges­tions, ques­tions, com­ments, or con­cerns? Email Josh.