ALL ABOUT THE BLOG

On Thursday, Roggio handed business cards to strangers as he searched for someone who could help his Internet business make ends meet.

Roggio is one of countless Internet bloggers stuck in a gap between influence and income. He’s the editor of The Long War Journal, a Web site and blog that covers the Iraq war and attracts 10,000 to 20,000 readers a day, about as many subscribers as a small newspaper.

“It is a real look at the situation on the ground,” said Roggio, a former Army specialist who has made several trips to battlefields in Iraq to document the war for his Web site. “It is not being filtered through a reporter who may walk in and walk out.”

Roggio is also one of about 2,000 people in Las Vegas this week for the first Blog World and New Media Expo.

The event is billed as the first of its kind. Its aim is to be a forum for Internet bloggers who want to improve their writing, make money and increase their influence with the public.

Roggio started a military blog in 2004 and used accounts from soldiers, information from Web sites and press releases to build it into a venture that led to an invitation to join seven other bloggers in a conference call with the president.

Roggio took heat from anti-war bloggers for participating in the call, but he doesn’t regret the decision. Nor does he consider himself a mouthpiece for the White House.

“I would have done the conference call with any sitting president,” Raggio said. “Any journalist would, right?”

Yet Raggio and many other bloggers are yet to translate Internet buzz into a sustainable way to make a living.

That’s where Blog World fits in.

Event co-founder Rick Calvert said he hatched the idea for a blogger conference last year when he sought out a trade show and convention that would offer support for his blog, called the Real Ugly American.

“I was really just shocked one didn’t exist,” Calvert said.

Within a month Calvert, whose day job is in sales for a woodworking trade show, started organizing Blog World, which ends today at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Calvert said many bloggers are motivated by ideology or interest in a specific topic. But once a blogger becomes a hit with the public the blogger isn’t always prepared to capitalize.

“You have to think about it like a magazine or newspaper except there is no cost to entry,” he said.

Although the event is small by the standards of Las Vegas conventions, it attracted big interest. Sponsors include Southwest Airlines, AOL and Yahoo.

The corporate interest reflects a broader interest in blogging in general.

The concept of blogging, essentially using the Internet to provide commentary, news or information in a continual format, dates back to 1997. Political bloggers started making headlines with the presidential election in 2000. Military bloggers gained prominence in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Today there are an estimated 110 million blogs.

Most major newspapers and television outlets employ bloggers and corporations use blogs as a form of outreach.

“The publicity machinery should understand that blogs are the present and will be the future,” said Richard Abowitz, who writes a Las Vegas blog called Movable Buffet for the Los Angeles Times, one of about 30 blogs the newspaper operates.

Abowitz said he gets more feedback from online readers than from people who see his column in the Times, which has a weekday circulation of 780,000 according to the Audit Board of Circulations.

The blog, Abowitz said, represents a more inside connection to Las Vegas entertainment and events than newspaper articles and reaches a global audience.

“I get mail from Colombia when I write about Shakira,” Abowitz said.

But not every blogger seeks financial success.

Rex Taylor, who blogs under the name Vegas Rex, said the blog he started about a year ago now attracts as many as 75,000 readers a month. Taylor, 39, said the site got a big boost during the NBA All-Star Game Weekend in February.

Much of it came from critics who accused him of racism for posting verbatim accounts of shouting and skirmishes he witnessed on the Strip.

“If I see something interesting I take a picture and post about it,” Taylor said. “(Critics) thought I was picking on black people. I wasn’t.”

Since February, Taylor’s site has been noticed for its traffic.

He said he’s recently turned down offers from advertisers and companies that want to influence the postings, including one from a local gaming company.

“When someone dangles money in front of your face, a lot of money, it is tempting,” said Taylor, a former musician who blogs from his home near the Strip. In the end, Taylor said he considers his blog “the mindless ramblings of some random idiot,” not an outlet for advertisers.

“They were really respectful and they understood why I turned them down,” he said of the spurned advertisers.

Contact reporter Ben Spillman at bspillman@reviewjournal.com or (702) 477-3861.