Newspapers opening up blogging to the masses?

I read via Influx Insights that The Telegraph is going to be hosting blogs for it's readers.  Like Influx, I find this to be a rather interesting development.  In many ways, this seems like a natural evolution of people identifying themselves with a particular brand they trust.  Of course, there is the flip side of this and it could go down in flames like the LA Times experiment with wiki editorials. 

(orig posted on my beta blog)