In America today, there are almost as many people making their living as bloggers as there are lawyers. Already more Americans are making their primary income from posting their opinions than Americans working as computer programmers or fire fighters The best studies we can find say we are a nation of over 20 million bloggers, with almost 2 million Americans getting paid by the word, the post, or the click - whether on their site or someone else's.  The Information Age has developed many new professions, but blogging could well be the one with the biggest effect on our culture.  What started as a discussion forum for politics and new technologies has now been used in health care, the arts, fashion and just about every other imaginable area of life. What started as a hobby for volunteers is becoming big business for newly appearing sites, for companies that now depend upon their reviews and for the people who work in this new industry. All this fits with the trend  toward Opinion TV. Less and less of our information flow is devoted to gathering facts, and more and more is going towards popularizing opinions. Twenty-four-hour news channels have been replaced by 24-hour opinion channels. Some bloggers even serve as "spokesblogers"-paid by advertisers to blog about the products. They are highly paid and they have to report long hours-50 to 60 hours a week. Bloggers make money if their consumers click the ads on their sites. Some sites even pay writers by the click, which is of course a system that encourages using shocking words or doing whatever it takes to get noticed. For now, bloggers say they are very happy in their work, reporting high job satisfaction. But what happens if they lose work? Are they considered journalists  under shield laws ? Is there someone to complain to about false blogs or hidden conflicts? There are more questions than answers about America's Newest Profession. The author considers bloggers  _
have a positive effect on American culture can easily earn big money by writing will replace journalists under shield laws face many problems though highly paid