Forbes has a rundown on mainstream media outlets bringing in outside bloggers (via Romenesko). Time, the Boston Globe, the NYT, the Washington Post, and many other outlets have hired outside bloggers in the past couple of years. Perhaps the most famous is the former DC gossip columnist Wonkette, Ana Marie Cox (pictured, so hot), who is now at Time.com.
As a miniature example of the trend, I can attest that moving to a traditional site does include some loss of previous readers (as well as lots of new ones), and some loss of readers’ trust (if that’s the right word). Other downsides include having to work with someone else’s lame software, an unwise rollout of multiple blogs at about the same time, lack of built-in interaction among blogs on the same site, and a strange unwillingness to use blog content on other parts of the site or even in the print version, which other outlets have been doing for years now.