CBS has decided to do a Web log.

It sounds stupid, but isn’t necessarily. The Public Eye will be written by Vaughan Ververs, formerly editor of The Hotline, which has been drawing crowds of paying customers for The National Journal since 1992.

In its earliest incarnation the Hotline made Mike McCurry a star. McCurry was then the spokesman for candidate Bruce Babbitt, and his missives there gave Babbitt a boomlet. Later he was a Clinton press secretary. The point is there's a history of online financial success here.

The point is that Ververs, rightly or wrongly, is being given credit for some long-term success, and told to duplicate it on a larger stage, just as local anchors are often given the network gig and expected to produce big numbers.

Ververs' new blog will likely compete directly with the National Journal’s own Blogometer, which is trying to compete with blogs such as Wonkette and newsletters like ABC’s The Note. (The April 29 note referred to Ververs as “nattily dressed.” Good for a TV, bad for a blogger.) Ververs’ charter is to beat out those other guys by emphasizing interactivity, drawing huge comment threads behind him. That’s not as easy as it looks.

Larry Kramer, former CEO of Marketwatch and now head of the networks’ online unit, called the new site a “cable bypass,” but it has a long, long way to go in order to catch up to MSNBC. The new site will also feature video reports created especially for it (a modest innovation), although how long that lasts is probably up to the advertising income the site generates. In order to get the video in CBS is doubling the size of its Internet team, to 60 from 30. That’s a lot of mouths to feed.

Most of the early coverage on this focuses on the video, and its costs.

Personally I think they should have paid more attention to Ververs. If he can get some traction in the blogosphere, if he’s allowed the full range-of-motion common to blog authors, he could get something done.

Personally I’m betting against that.