Roger L. Simon has let the cat out of the bag on a new initiative for bloggers in An Open Letter to All Bloggers. If you have a blog and are interested in carrying a little advertising and maybe making a few bucks someday, you might want to check it out and sign up. Blog advertising is one aspect of the effort, the other is in bringing blog content out to the more general public by forming a "Blog News Service": "...An editorial board consisting of Glenn Reynolds, PowerLine, Lawrence Kudlow, Hugh Hewitt, Marc Cooper, Wretchard of the Belmont Club and Tim Blair, as well as the founders, is already in place with other bloggers in many countries having signed on as contributors..."

So, if you're a blogger, go ahead and check it out and consider signing up by visiting Roger's post above. You might also want to take a look if you're someone who reads blogs or may be interested in investing in the project. See posts here and here for more info.

I can confess now that I've known about this for some weeks. I happened to have had an idea and for whatever reason emailed it over to Roger. It was very much like what they seem to be doing with their editorial board and syndication idea - close enough that Roger emailed me back and told me that it was very similar to something he had in the pipeline, but that I would have to sign a non-disclosure agreement to hear more about it and consider signing on (yes, this is a serious effort). I did sign the NDA, and did sign on to the project. Roger was kind enough to say that he had been meaning to contact me about it - kind enough, I say, because I doubt this little blog would have been a necessary inclusion in their first round of recruiting had I not by coincidence stepped forward at just the right time - just not enough traffic to rank up there (yet!). Still, it's neat to be included, and also fun to be doing something serious enough to require signing and faxing hard copies.

BTW, I know very little more than what you can read in the various blog posts on the subject, so let me save you some questioning. Besides, I couldn't tell you even if I did know! NDA and all, haha.

Anyway, as I said, if interested, go take a look. Personally, while I think rationalizing ad revenue is a nice thing, I can't imagine it would make that much difference for anyone but the big guys. I'm more interested in this opening up an avenue into publishing something in the legacy, or at least the pay, media. That's where I think the interest would likely lie for those of us who's sites aren't into the thousands of hits a day territory.

Edit: BTW, that last paragraph is pure speculation on my part. Remember what I said - that at this point I have very little more information than what's (now) publicly available, so my speculation is little better than anyone else's.