Journalism's been part of a mainstream media world where there are many constraints.

I originally studied journalism but chose not to follow that career path, because I was idealistic at the time and wanted to write about “the truth." What I saw then was that most journalists don't get to write what they want to write, and the ones that do work many years for the privilege.

Since then I've also learned that "the truth" is a matter of perspective, and it usually takes exposure to many perspectives to get a sense what's real... and mainstream media can present a very limited perspective.

I've also learned that there are many intelligent people who write well, but were unlikely to take a path that would lead to mainstream publication. This is mainly because of scarcity - those paths were scarce; there was only so much media "real estate" to fill.

In the early 90s, I started writing for zines, even became a print publisher for a while, because the barriers to entry were lowered by the desktop publishing revolution; I could do my own thing without working within the constraints of mainstream media.

Then with the web I could publish online, with even fewer constraints, I just had to learn a few technical tricks to make it happen.

Then, with blog software, after a bit of setup I could publish anything I wanted with very little effort on the publishing side... I could focus on writing, write whatever I wanted, and focus on building an audience.

So this is what we have now: anyone can publish and find an audience. There are few constraints. We've gone from a scarcity of channels to an abundance, and we have a range of activity, from journals and blogs that are read by very few, to large conglomerates of very popular blogs like the Gawker and Weblogs, Inc. systems.