Hollywood PR firms are beginning to pay attention to the power of blogs. . .

Case in point, Grace Hill Media, a PR firm that exists to provide the faith community with influence on Hollywood, has offered a blogger friend of mine, Stacy Harp, access to free advance screenings, relevant interviews with Hollywood professionals, high-resolution screenshots for her site, and other resources they may have available. Don't ask me how Stacy got so lucky. Divine Providence, I guess! :-)

Grace Hill Media has worked on some of Hollywood's biggest releases, including The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Signs, Bruce Almighty, The Notebook, The Rookie, A Walk to Remember, Big Fish, Elf, Secondhand Lions, Seabiscuit, and many others. Their goal is to provide access to religious journalists commensurate to their secular counterparts.

Grace Hill's President, Jonathan Bock, told Stacy he had "been impressed with the writing quality and reach of blogs" and "while news sites are a viable source for general information, many readers are turning to blogs as a source of updates and opinions on culture."

Does this indicate an even further embrace of bloggers as legitimate sources of information? We are all well aware of how both the RNC and DNC gave bloggers press credentials and invited them to cover the conventions right alongside their more traditional media counterparts.

Is this yet another indication of a trend toward mainstreaming of blogs as a credible publishing medium? I believe it is. Is the "top-down" professional journalism monolith having to give sway to another breed of journalists -- citizen publishers known as bloggers? It would appear so.

BTW, Stacy jumped at the opportunity of course. Here's her first post about an upcoming PBS project called The Question of God. I've invited Mr. Bock to comment on this issue. When and if he does, I'll let you know what he has to say.