The young writer of our dream-come-true is Elizabeth Spiers who did come from a small town in Alabama. On the way to New York, though, she stopped by Duke University to pick up a degree in Political Science and Public Policy. From there she moved to New York to work as a financial analyst, focusing on small cap tech equities and early stage venture capital. Not exactly the archetypical starving writer, is she?

But there's a high-tech twist to this story. The publication that got Elizabeth Spiers her job at New York magazine never saw print. Her witty synthesis of media news and celebrity gossip was showcased on a frequently updated Web log (or "blog") called Gawker.com, which made its debut late last year and soon became a daily stop for more than 40,000 Web surfers, including much of Manhattan's media elite.

Quite impressive, isn't it. How did she manage that? Let's take a look:

Step #1 – It's who you know: While Spiers was still a financial analyst she met Nick Denton, a former writer for the Financial Times and an Internet entrepreneur. Denton was starting an "insider's guide" site that he could use to promote his other projects and hired Spiers as the editor.

Step #2 – It's who the people you know, know: Denton, Spier's publisher, owns a news-search technology company (Moreover Technologies) that the magazine giant Conde Nast has invested in.

Step #3 – Get noticed by powerful media insiders:The best way to get noticed by a narcissistic media clique is to obsess over their every move. While analyzing the ban on garlic in the Conde Nast's cafeteria probably won't get you noticed by Instapundit, it will get you noticed by the people who hire for glossy magazines.

Step #4 – Did I mention it's who you know?: Spiers, after freelancing for the New York Times and New York Post, was able to parlay her connections into a job writing for New York magazine.

So the lesson we learn is that the key to transitioning from an obscure blogger to magazine writer is to a) know someone with media connections, b) have them pay attention to your work, and c) have them hire you based on your impressive resume. Of course, take out the blog part and this is the way it has always been done.

None of this is meant to denigrate Spier's talent as a writer. It is simply to point out what she has said herself:

"Editors at major magazines aren't sitting at their desks, frantically scouring blogs in search of new talent, but if something happens to show up on their radar and they like it, they're definitely open to calling people whose names they don't recognize and asking them to freelance."

Spiers' spectacular career trajectory -- from financial analyst to media insider in less than a year via the Internet -- may be difficult to duplicate, but it's not impossible. Matthew Yglesias did something like it. The recent Harvard graduate landed a job at The American Prospect, a political magazine based in Washington, largely on the strength of his well-regarded, politically minded blog.

"The fact that he had a well-known blog definitely influenced our decision to hire him," American Prospect senior editor Garance Franke-Ruta says via e-mail. The commentary site created by Yglesias, who now is helping out with the magazine's own blog, helped him "stand out in a very large field" of applicants, Franke-Ruta adds.

Yes, his well-regarded blog put him head and shoulder above the non-blogging Harvard grads. No offense to Yglesias, he may be a fine writer and astute analyst. But the truth of the matter is that if he had graduated from a degree mill in Idaho he wouldn't have even been considered for a position working the copier, much less as a writer. Using this as an example of the talents of a blogger being parlayed into a position writing for a magazine is ridiculous.

"The media is starting to pay attention to blogs," says Jeff Jarvis, a co-founder of Entertainment Weekly who has worked for many other "old media" companies, including TV Guide and the Chicago Tribune. Jarvis, now the guru of new-media strategies for Advance Publications and a blogger himself, thinks it's only a matter of time before more Web site writers show up in mainstream publications.

"They're a new source of talent," says Jarvis.

"It's a fundamentally meritocratic medium," says Gawker Media president Nick Denton, who hired Spiers. "Quality [rises] quickly on the Web."

Throughout my "Notes on Blogging" series, I hope to dispell this myth that quality is the key to sucess in the blogosphere.

Nevertheless, Mr. Denton, an Oxford grad and rising porn-peddler on the web, may have a point. I'll be checking to see how many obscure bloggers he hires for his web projects.

"When I started out, one of my fears was that I'd be laughed out of town. Here I was, a college junior, and who cares what I think?" Yglesias says. The rise of his blog -- thanks to generous attention from more famous bloggers, such as the "InstaPundit," Glenn Reynolds -- "speaks well of the people involved, rather than just the software involved," he adds.

Glenn Reynolds (a graduate of Yale Law) helping Yglesias (graduate of Harvard) does speak well for the amount of cooperation between Ivy League grads.

Back in the Dark Ages, starting out in journalism used to mean late nights covering school board meetings or writing features about the circus coming to town. But that kind of old-fashioned resume-building doesn't matter much to Denton when he's hiring for Gawker or his other for-profit site, the gadget-centric Gizmodo.com.
"Whether someone has newspaper experience is irrelevant and probably a negative," Denton says. "Age, education, experience, [published] clippings, all fall to one side -- it's really just, `Are they funny? Can they write?'"

Denton has a point. As the former editor of "The East Texas Tribune" I covered my fair share of school boards and circuses and can attest to their worthlessness as experience. Standard journalism is stifling and irrelevant when it comes to punditry. Writing ability and having something to say should trump status and journalism experience. (Needless to say, I'm screwed.)

Michael Totten hopes to follow in the footsteps of Spiers and Yglesias. Totten, a current-affairs blogger from Portland, Ore., works as a technical writer by day, but not for long -- he hopes. He recently penned a piece for the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com, and hopes it's the start of a new career.
"I am not going to do [technical writing] forever," he said via e-mail. "Journalism is much more rewarding and exciting."
"It wouldn't surprise me if a number of people go from blogging to careers in journalism or writing in some form or another," says James Taranto, the editor of OpinionJournal.com.
Taranto reworked a couple of essays that Steven Den Beste wrote for his blog, USS Clueless (www.denbeste.nu), and posted them on OpinionJournal.com. Den Beste is an eloquent and thoughtful writer, but then again, one might wonder how his background as a former Qualcomm engineer gives him the expertise to write about American foreign policy.
"Expertise cuts both ways," says Taranto.

God bless you, Mr. Taranto. You're the pure blogger's only hope for access to the mainstream media.

While I applaud the deserved success of both Den Beste and Totten, they appear to be aberrations rather than the forerunners of a trend. The fact that the reporter could find only two bloggers who gained the attention of the same editor is telling. A more relevant story could have been written on how OpinionJournal.com’s Taranto is ahead of the curve. *

"Sometimes the experts are all wrong. Don't forget, most of what we get through the news media is related by people who are not experts. I think [Den Beste] knows more than most journalists."
Still, despite the fact that he respects the intellect and skills bloggers like Totten and Den Beste, Taranto points out that it's not easy to make a living from writing, online or offline. His advice to most bloggers: "Don't quit your day jobs."

Whatever happened to the idea that you could do important work without it having to be your primary vocation? Why is the worth of a labor valued only if you get a paycheck?

Being an engaging writer, not to mention being first with a new observation or an obscure link, counts for a lot in the sometimes insular "blogosphere." But assuming none of that is a problem, getting paid is.
"For the amateur blogger, there's no money" in doing a Web site, says Gawker's Denton, who hired former financial analyst Spiers based on what she wrote on her previous blog, Capital Influx.
And though Gawker does make money, it didn't pay all that well, says Spiers, who supplemented her income by freelancing for The New York Times, Radar magazine and The New York Post's Page Six gossip column.
"It gets exhausting after a while," she adds. Spiers is now co-writing New York's Intelligencer section and writing the magazine's new blog, The Kicker (thekicker.nymetro.com), which debuted on Oct. 2.
But for many bloggers, especially those in academia, money doesn't matter that much. The payoff of having a piece in The New York Times or The New Republic is more traffic to their Web sites.
"Hit counts are the currency of the blogosphere," says blogger and University of Chicago political science professor Daniel Drezner, who has written several pieces for The New Republic Online (www.tnr.com).

"I really enjoy magazine writing, and I'd love to keep doing it," said Oxford grad student and blogger Josh Chavetz, who has written for The New Republic and The Weekly Standard (www.weeklystandard.com). "But my career ambition is to be an academic, so it will continue to be something that I do on the side."

By the way, going to Oxford is another way to ensure that you will be accepted into the elite.

"I would encourage [aspiring writers] to go for it; it's an enjoyable thing to do," says Yglesias, who worked for a weekly paper at Harvard. "But at the same time, a magazine looking to hire someone is going to want to see that you have experience doing more conventional stuff -- reporting stories, writing proper leads."

Notice that they buried this observation in the second to last paragraph? I guess pointing out that writing for the weekly paper at Harvard could get you a job writing for The American Prospect would have been a bit obvious and contrary to the point of the article.

"I think there's going to be some kind of ladder," Denton says. "I don't think a blogger is going to transition from having 100 people a day in their audience straight to [a position as a] contributing editor for Vanity Fair, but there's an easier progression than in the past."

Anyone out there agree with, Mr. Denton?

*Update: Once again, Bill Wallo is a step ahead of me. He points out an area that I skipped over in my rush to get this post to “press”:

However, Carter says less about the apparent "success" of Steven Den Beste, a blogger (and former Qualcomm engineer) who has had several of his blog essays republished by OpinionJournal.com, a service affiliated with the Wall Street Journal. Or Michael Totten, a technical writer who has likewise seen his work reflected in OpinionJournal.com's posts.

This section was added in order to correct this discrepancy. Hat tip to Bill for catching that.