Hail Dooce, still queen of the mommy bloggers

Heather Armstrong has traveled a lot of blog miles since she was fired from her Los Angeles start-up job in 2002 for keeping a personal diary called a weblog. Since we last checked in with her, the Utah-based writer of Dooce.com, profiled in this coming Sunday's New York Times Magazine, has become the head of an empire called Blurbodoocery Inc., she's had her second child, and she gets about 100,000 daily visitors to the site. She still writes about poopy diapers and depression and being surrounded by Mormons, but maybe less about sex. From the story:

She is the only blogger on the latest Forbes list of the Most Influential Women in Media, coming in at No. 26, which is 25 slots behind Oprah, but just one slot behind Tina Brown. Her site brings in an estimated $30,000 to $50,000 a month or more — and that’s not even counting the revenue from her two books, healthy speaking fees and the contracts she signed to promote Verizon and appear on HGTV. She won’t confirm her income (“We’re a privately held company and don’t reveal our financials”). But the sales rep for Federated Media, the agency that sells ads for Dooce, calls Armstrong “one of our most successful bloggers,” then notes a few beats later in our conversation that “our most successful bloggers can gross $1 million.”

Also recommended on the New York Times site: Mark Bittman's no-prisoners column on the evils of McDonald's oatmeal, and Harvey Araton's piece on the enduring spring training friendship of 85-year-old baseball icon Yogi Berra and ex-pitcher Ron Guidry. He wears a cap called “Driving Mr. Yogi.”

“There was really nobody else that he had to sit and talk with, to be around after the day at the ballpark,” Guidry said. “So I just told him, ‘I’ll pick you up, we’ll go out to supper,’ and that’s how it started. It wasn’t like I planned it. It just developed.”

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"You know, he’s like an encyclopedia, and that’s what I loved, all the stories and just being with him. If he’s not the most beloved man in America, I don’t know who is.”

Photo of Heather Armstrong, Catherine Ledner for the New York Times