Serious healthcare journalists jump into blogging with an attitude.

Two new drug company and healthcare related blogs in just a week . . . waz happenin?

A few days ago I told you about the new blog Pharmalot started by healthcare journalist Ed Silverman and the Star Ledger.

Yesterday I receive an e-mail from yet another friend and heavyweight within drug company journalism—Jim Edwards from Brandweek. He told me that he and Brandweek just started the new blog Brandweek NRX.

And a short glance at these two new blogs tells me things are going to get really interesting with lots of exciting stories, written in a way you don’t usually see these two journalists write their regular articles.

It is news, but news with an attitude.

All of this makes me quite happy. I mean, if these big media enterprises are getting into the healthcare blog world, that means they’ve noticed what PharmaGossip and others, such as this humble blog, are doing. And that they liked what they saw.

Here's how Jim Edwards from Brandweek explained the rational for these new blogs:

"A cynic would say that these are two old media brands desperately trying to find a new way to be relevant to our readers.

An optimist would say we're just utilizing a popular new medium to give our readers more of what we think we're interested in.

Personally, it expands my coverage of the beat. Reporting a news story is a time consuming ordeal, with all the interviews, fact checking, data gathering etc. But having an opinion or simply suggesting to readers that 'hey, this is interesting,' is easy. Plus, sometimes other writers simply write something better than I would've done so it's fair to point readers toward that."

The one challenge for these new blogs is not content, because the drug industry provides a never ending flow of fantastic stories. The challenge is getting and retaining readers.

Most people have a set number of friends, and they don’t have time for more friends. So even if a “better” friend comes around, they often stick with the old ones. Newspapers and blogs work the same way. People only have time to read a certain number of them, which makes it hard to break into this market.

But, I do hope this works out for both Brandweek and Star Ledger; after all, blog postings with attitude are a lot more fun to read than many regular articles. And that may be part of the reason the blog world has exploded and professional journalists are now becoming professional bloggers.

Makes me wonder when someone will acquire the PharmaGossip brand and get a jump on everyone else, after all PR blog Strumpette recently put itself up for sale . . .

And hey, maybe one day I'll have a new job getting paid for blogging. Now that would be really good news. After all, writing books is really painful, like eating healthy food, and blogging is this easy, addictive, distraction, kind of like crack cocain.