Do a half million Americans live off blogs?

Check out this Good Morning Yahoo! report from Minnesota about how some bloggers are making money.

The story follows up Mark Penn's provocative piece in the Wall Street Journal a couple of days ago. Using Technorati stats Mr. Penn wrote:

[W]e are a nation of over 20 million bloggers, with 1.7 million profiting from the work, and 452,000 of those using blogging as their primary source of income. That's almost 2 million Americans getting paid by the word, the post, or the click -- whether on their site or someone else's.

Also:

There are almost as many [Americans] 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 firefighters.

And:

As bloggers have increased in numbers, the number of journalists has significantly declined. In Washington alone, there are now 79% fewer DC-based employees of major newspapers than there were just few years ago. At the same time, Washington is easily the most blogged-about city in America, if not the world.