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Le 10e anniversaire des Blogs (en anglais seulement) |
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Happy Blogiversary
It's been 10 years since the blog was born. Love them or hate them, they've roiled presidential
campaigns and given everyman a global soapbox. Twelve commentators -- including Tom Wolfe,
Newt Gingrich, the SEC's Christopher Cox and actress-turned-blogger Mia Farrow -- on what
blogs mean to them.
By TUNKU VARADARAJAN
The Wall Street Journal
July 14, 2007; Page P1
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Notwithstanding the words of Tom Wolfe, who puts an elegant boot, below, into the corpus
of bloggers, there are many more people today who would read blogs than disparage them.
The consumption of blogs is often avid and occasionally obsessive. But more commonly, it is utterly
natural, as if turning to them were no stranger than (dare one say this here?) picking one's way
through the morning's newspapers. The daily reading of virtually everyone under 40 -- and a fair
few folk over that age -- now includes a blog or two, and this reflects as much the quality of today's
bloggers as it does a techno-psychological revolution among readers of news and opinion.
We are approaching a decade since the first blogger -- regarded by many to be Jorn Barger -- began
his business of hunting and gathering links to items that tickled his fancy, to which he appended
some of his own commentary. On Dec. 23, 1997, on his site, Robot Wisdom, Mr. Barger wrote:
"I decided to start my own webpage logging the best stuff I find as I surf, on a daily basis," and
the Oxford English Dictionary regards this as the primordial root of the word "weblog."
RELATED READING
• Podcast: The Impact of Blogs
• Q&A: The Evolution of Blogging
• Slideshow: Blogs: Then and Now
• Video: BoingBoing.net's Cory Doctorow and David Pescovitz
• Discuss: How Often Do You Read Blogs?
• Blogs 101: How to Keep Up with the Sites
The dating of the 10th anniversary of blogs, and the ascription of primacy to the first blogger, are
imperfect exercises. Others, such as David Winer, who blogged with Scripting News, and Cameron
Barrett, who started CamWorld, were alongside the polemical Mr. Barger in the advance guard. And
before them there were "proto-blogs," embryonic indications of the online profusion that was to
follow. But by widespread consensus, 1997 is a reasonable point at which to mark the emergence
of the blog as a distinct life-form.
Once a neologism, outlandish to some, weblog has come to be abbreviated to blog, a brusque and
jaunty word that no one, now, would think to look up in a dictionary. That said, the spell check on
Microsoft Word has yet to awaken to the concept of the blog. Type in "blogging," for instance, and
you will promptly earn a disapproving underscore in red, with the suggestion that "bogging,"
"clogging," "flogging" or "slogging" (unappetizing alternatives all) might, in truth, be the word
you seek.
In the decade since their conception, blogs, once a smorgasbord of links, have evolved into vehicles
for a fuller, more forceful and opinionated prose. Not all of it has been lovely to behold, or even
edifying. Inevitably, there has been bombast, verbosity and exposure to the public eye of thoughts
that, ideally, should have remained locked inside fevered heads. (The impact of blogs on public
discourse has included, I contend, the emergence of a form of "oral blogging," noticeable at seminars
and the like, where people who might once have asked brisk questions are now empowered by the
blog form to hold forth at length, with little attempt at self-editing.)
The other change in the blog has, of course, been its mainstreaming. Blogging was once the province
of the Nerd Without a Life (NWAL -- which, when pronounced aloud, sounds remarkably and
appropriately like know-all). Today, while members of that tribe still abound, there are others who
blog not because it is their only window on the world, but because blogging offers the opportunity
of direct and immediate communion with those who would respond to their ideas. Call it intellectual
"skin contact."
Jack Bogle, the founder of Vanguard, blogs (his is the Bogle eBlog, so called because the second
word is an anagram of his surname; and unlike many CEOs, he blogs without the aid of a
ghostblogger). Gary Becker, Nobel laureate in economics, blogs. Peter Stothard, editor of the Times
Literary Supplement of London, blogs. Mia Farrow, the cinema actress, who also writes below, blogs.
As do politicians and activists of every stripe. Some blogs are profitable businesses, and it is no
surprise that the traditional media have bought into the action, including this newspaper (see James
Taranto's contribution, below).
Featured here, then, are a dozen brief meditations on what the blog has come to mean and on the
role blogs play in the usual tussles of any civilized society. The appropriate question about blogs,
10 years into their first appearance, is not whether they are a form of exhibitionism, or journalism,
or theater. It is, instead, this, and I pose it with a courteous apology to Tom Wolfe: What would we
do without blogs?
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Harold Evans
A Spurious Megaphone
Editor at large, the Week
Former editor, the Times of London
Favorite blogs: AndrewSullivan.com (political pundit for the Atlantic Monthly); MichaelTotten.com
(Mideast affairs blogger); HeadButler.com (news and culture roundup)
Coming from a print culture where the rule was check, check, source, source, I was chilled, in the
early days of the blogosphere, by the easy dissemination of lies.
Did you know that 9/11 was the work of the Mossad? How else can you explain that the 4,000 Jews
were tipped off to stay away that morning? Gibberish, of course, but widely believed in the Muslim
world.
In Indonesia, Tom Friedman reported, only 5% of the population could get on the Web, but these 5%
spread rumor as fact: "They say, 'He got it from the Internet.' They think it's the Bible."
In this case, the revealed "truth" was a blog by one Sy Adeeb, writing from Alexandria, Va., under
the logo of Information Times (with an address at the National Press Building in Washington, which
had no trace of him). When I tracked him down, he told me he got it from Al Manar, the Hezbollah
station in Beirut.
Once upon a time, Adeeb would be sending out smudged mimeographed sheets that would never
see the light of day. Now, as bloggers on the Web, Adeeb and others like him have a megaphone
to the world, with this spurious authenticity of electronic delivery. (Tony Blair says there are
70 million blogs. Presumably, British Intelligence has been counting.)
What's lamentable is that mainstream media, in a desperate race to be hip, will often now quote an
unsourced blog story as a source. So nobody can really calculate the ripple effect of blogging.
That said, there's a lot that's great about the blogosphere.
Some blogs have become the best check on monopoly mainstream journalism, and they provide a
surprisingly frequent source of initiative reporting. As an example, the only hope of staying sane
in the lockstep stereotyped reporting of the 2000 presidential campaign was to look up Eric
Alterman on MSNBC.com and the Daily Howler hilariously documenting the false narrative into
which every story about Al Gore was fitted.
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Christopher Cox
Bolstering Investors' Toolkit
Chairman, Securities and Exchange Commission
Without a good search engine (Google, of course, along with blogdigger, Feedster and a handful of
others), it would be impossible to intelligently sample the vast landscape of the blogosphere. With
that basic tool, it's at least possible to get a feel for the range of opinions on a given topic. It's a bit
like reading the verbatims from an opinion poll; you get someone's genuine opinion, and it most
certainly is not statistically valid.
Blogs can contribute a great deal in the world of finance, which turns on information -- the newer,
the better. As investors strive to make sense of the ever-higher mountains of data that we're buried
under, the services of bloggers, whom we can imagine sitting at home in their pajamas trolling the
Internet for us, free of charge, are likely to be an increasingly consequential addition to the investor's
tool kit.
To be sure, the blogosphere is subject to all of the same risks as the Internet itself. Many blogs are
loaded with vanity posts, half-truths, rumors, and even intentional distortions. Others have spotty
quality. The Securities and Exchange Commission's Office of Internet Enforcement has discovered
several fraudsters operating blogs on the Web.
There's no question, however, that among the ranks of legitimate bloggers, the corporate world is
well represented, although some executives have undoubtedly hired professionals to blog in their
stead. And, of course, you'll have seemingly unlimited choices when it comes to selecting your
favorite Web-based market analyst. Not surprisingly, when it comes to the new financial-reporting
language of XBRL and interactive data, blogs such as blog.hitachixbrl.com are a far more likely
place to find the latest scoop than, say, your local library.
When, in September 2006, I posted on one executive's blog (search for "Jonathan Schwartz" +
"Christopher Cox" and you can find it), it immediately became clear how quickly news can spread.
The exchange drove home the point that in carrying out the SEC's mission, Web-based disclosure
will be of growing importance.
On his blog, Mr. Schwartz, chief executive of Sun Microsystems, challenged the commission to clarify
that the use of blogs like his could be consistent with our regulations requiring public companies to
share news with the public at the same time they give it to market professionals. As a result of that
exchange, the SEC is moving forward on that initiative, aided by thoughtful commentary from
outside our own cathedral, some of it found on blogs.
Do bloggers portend more lasting ramifications for the securities world? But of course. Shareholders
are on the move, and technology has given them a cheaper and more-effective means to communicate.
From improved price discovery to better corporate governance, investors, markets, managements
and boards will never be the same.
Favorite blogs: Mr. Cox prefers not to specify any favorite blog because "the way that some SEC
followers hang on every agency pronouncement will lead someone to decide that monitoring the
blog is both a new compliance burden and a guide to the hidden meanings of agency thinking."
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Mia Farrow
The Editor in Chief: Me
Actress
Favorite blogs: BoingBoing.net (Tracks nooks and crannies of the Web); GPSMagazine.com
(Everything about global positioning systems)
When my daughter came to me crying because the school newspaper refused to print one of her
articles, I said: Why not start your own paper?
Unfiltered publishing was once the exclusive domain of media moguls, but today, who needs Rupert
Murdoch? Blogging has become a publishing equalizer that was scarcely dreamed of years ago.
It's free, you don't need editors or publishers, you don't even need to be able to write well.
Last year, I followed my own advice. I started www.miafarrow.org. I am my own toughest critic,
and I can't say the acceptance rate for my pieces is vastly improved, but the only person I have to
convince that an article is worth publishing is the editor in chief: me. (When a piece is posted, the
entire staff is elated.)
It is through this experience that I've come to appreciate the purity and power of blogging. I have
appeared in more than 40 movies, written a book and given countless interviews on TV, radio and in
print. Yet none of this has allowed me to spotlight issues important to me as completely as my blog.
I have blogged from some far-flung locations, such as the ravaged borders between Darfur and
eastern Chad. And even in the most isolated regions, I knew that I was not alone. I had brought
with me 30,000 readers a day, and they stuck with me every step of the way.
Via satellite phone, I sent messages from the outskirts of the newly attacked town of Paoua in remote
northwestern Central African Republic. I found myself in the middle of a humanitarian catastrophe.
Hundreds of people had fled into the bush. They were eating leaves and drinking swamp water.
No one was there to protect them. "Drums and gunfire are the music of the night," I blogged.
Neither the reader nor I could know what would happen next. That immediacy and urgency was
transmitted to my family and friends back home, along with thousands of members of the larger
human family.
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James Taranto
Answering an Unmet Need
Editor, OpinionJournal.com
Favorite blogs: KausFiles.com (Slate's prolific political blogger); InstaPundit.com (Libertarian law
professor's take on politics and technology); JustOneMinute.typepad.com (Recent addition to politics
blog circuit)
In the world of politics and political journalism, blogs have evolved differently on the right and the
left. The seeds of this evolution were sown by two proto-blogs that played key roles in the Clinton
impeachment.
On Jan. 18, 1998, the Drudge Report sent an email billed as a BLOCKBUSTER REPORT: "At the last
minute, at 6 p.m. on Saturday evening, Newsweek magazine killed a story that was destined to shake
official Washington to its foundation: A White House intern carried on a sexual affair with the
President of the United States!"
Drudge's borrowed scoop forced the story into the open, and within three days President Clinton
issued the first of many denials. His subsequent testimony under oath that he had not had a fling
with Monica Lewinsky led to his impeachment for perjury and obstruction of justice. Had Drudge not
acted after the mainstream media hesitated, there is no way of knowing if the story would ever have
seen the light of day.
That September, after it became clear that Mr. Clinton had lied about his relationship with
Ms. Lewinsky, a pair of liberal technology entrepreneurs began a project called "Censure and
Move On," an online petition calling on Congress to abandon impeachment, "immediately censure
President Clinton and move on to pressing issues facing the country." The Web site, MoveOn.org,
later became a hub for liberal political activism, opposing the Iraq war and other Bush administration
policies.
Broadly speaking, conservative bloggers have followed the Drudge model, acting as a check on the
liberal tendencies of the mainstream media, or "MSM." Conservative bloggers' proudest moments
have come when they have debunked false and biased MSM reporting, especially CBS's fraudulent
exposé on President Bush's National Guard service in 2004 and Reuters' doctored photos from
Lebanon in 2006.
The liberal blogosphere, meanwhile, is a hotbed of edgy activism -- some might say extremism. It
pushed forward the Valerie Plame kerfuffle and gave support to candidates such as Ned Lamont, Jon
Tester and Jim Webb. Just as conservative talk radio helped along the Republican victory in 1994,
liberal blogs had their moment of triumph in the midterm elections 12 years later.
Conservatives see blogs as the answer to Dan Rather, who is liberal but not overtly so. Liberals see
them as the answer to Rush Limbaugh, who is open about his opinions and his desire to influence
public opinion. In both cases they answer an unmet need in the political/media marketplace.
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Jane Hamsher
21st-Century Howard Beales
Founder, firedoglake (political blog)
Favorite blogs: DigbysBlog.blogspot.com (political news and commentary);
TBogg.blogspot.com (liberal pundit covers news and culture); CrooksAndLiars.com (left-leaning
commentary with lots of video clips)
During the '90s, railing at the TV set was the isometric sport of the silent majority. Progressive
political junkies watched in isolation as the Washington Post prominently printed one Whitewater
story after another as if they originated on tablets of stone rather than the fax machines of Arkansas
political operatives. Many people felt like they were the only ones who scratched their heads in
wonder that it all made no sense, recoiling in horror as a slick PR operation rapidly escalated from
the realm of lazy, spoon-fed journalism to the constitutional mockery of the Clinton impeachment.
That isolation ended with the advent of the progressive blogosphere, which acts as a virtual water
cooler for those who not only want to rail at the TV set, they want the TV set to listen. Probably
nothing better contrasts the pre- and postblogospheric worlds than the Whitewater and CIA leak
stories. In one, the endless repetition of meaningless gibberish was allowed to take root and become
conventional wisdom. In the other, despite the constant reiteration of abject fantasies like "no
underlying crime was committed," the public seemed to realize that it's not okay to perjure yourself
in front of a grand jury and obstruct justice on behalf of your boss. Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald
was allowed to try his case in court before GOP spinmeisters could try it in the press, and a recent
Gallup poll shows that 66% of the country thinks Bush should've left Scooter alone to do his time.
That message wasn't carried by the beltway Brahmins of the MSM, the media elite who transcend
party loyalties and embrace Libby as one of their own. They collectively bristled at the thought that
Scooter (and no doubt themselves) should be subject to the verdict of some "ignorant jury"
(as Ann Coulter likes to call them). No, that message was carried by bloggers and their readers, the
thousands of people who collectively pored over the story's coverage, serving as institutional
memory and holding media outlets to account when the politics of access journalism threaten to
obscure the truth.
At a time when government is in desperate need of oversight and the Fourth Estate has become
uncomfortably close with those they are tasked with covering, the progressive blogosphere is a place
where erstwhile Howard Beales coalesce to fill the gap. They come together to challenge the virulent
Rovian notion that no law is so sacred, no tenet of national security so vital it can't be flouted in the
pursuit of political gain. Scooter and other hermetically sealed beltway denizens may think he's a
hero, but the rest of the country realizes he's nothing better than a garden variety crook.
It ain't perfect, but it's progress.
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Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner
'Milblogging' the War
Spokesman for Multi-National Force, in Iraq
Military blogs offer readers a front-row seat into the camaraderie, pride and challenges of those in
uniform. No one can better represent the experiences of a soldier than soldiers themselves, and
"milbloggers" deployed to the frontlines of the war on terror offer first-hand insights into their
service and sacrifice.
Why does this matter? Because milbloggers uniquely reveal the human face of our forces, from a
young trooper patrolling Baghdad neighborhoods to a doctor saving lives at a Combat Support
Hospital. First-hand accounts are an important way to communicate the creativity, commitment,
and the lighter moments of those who are placing their lives on the line.
In the past decade, new technologies from satellite phones to Internet technology have changed the
relationship between information and warfare. The military's former inclination to control information
has been replaced by an appreciation of the risks, but more importantly the opportunities of
cyberspace.
One example is when soldiers, of their own initiative, create and maintain personal blogs about
their day-to-day experiences. Since blogs have the potential to reach a global audience, we have
established clear guidance to ensure that blogging does not violate operational security, individual
privacy, military policy or propriety. Our troops are fast learners, so while we have had a few
breaches there have been many more positive experiences shared.
By no means do all military blogs paint a positive picture, nor should they. Each posting represents
an individual's musings at a particular point in time. We are waging a historic fight against a ruthless
enemy. It is also a campaign that historians will be able to learn more broadly about from anecdotes
and insights in today's military blogs.
Favorite blogs: "Around here, folks like to read Small Wars Journal (http://smallwarsjournal.
com/index.php), Blackfive (http://www.blackfive.net/) and The Mudville Gazette (http://www.
mudvillegazette.com/)."
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Newt Gingrich
New Political 'Prosumers'
Former House speaker
Favorite blogs: RedState.com (Republican news and notes); Corner.NationalReview.com
(conservative magazine's politics blog); PowerlineBlog.com (covers law and right-leaning politics)
Home Depot redefined an industry by catering to customers who preferred to fix their homes
themselves rather than rely on professional repairmen. Dell Computer revolutionized the computing
industry by allowing customers to design their own computers instead of purchasing the
prepackaged, recommended configurations.
It may not seem obvious, but blogging is part of this same social trend. Think of blogging as a DIY
movement in our always intertwined media and political culture, blurring the lines between
professional producers (news organizations and politicians) and amateur consumers (citizens),
creating what Alvin Toffler called "prosumers," characterized by their desire to play an active role in
creating the products they consume and by their distrust of professionals who claim to know what's
best.
In politics, supporters of a candidate or party are increasingly dissatisfied with simply putting up yard
signs or making scripted phone calls; they want those in power to listen and respond to them as well.
They also don't trust professional politicians to do what is right without constant supervision.
In many ways, these are the characteristics of any insurgent political movement, but blogging is
enabling particularly rapid mobilization and organization.
We've already seen the effects on the Democratic Party. Web sites such as Daily Kos and
MoveOn.org -- which I find fascinating as models of online activism -- have made it quite clear that
their aim goes beyond stopping President Bush; they're also targeting leaders in their own party
viewed as unresponsive to the grassroots. Sen. Joe Lieberman's primary loss is the most visible
example. If Republicans remain out of step with their base for too long, expect a similar insurgency
on the right.
Similarly in news, it used to be that the only way to respond to an article or editorial was to write a
letter to the editor. Now anyone can be a publisher. Bloggers can critique, fact-check or applaud
journalists on their own platform, as well as offer their own analysis of world events. The term MSM
s a derogatory term in the blogosphere, signifying distrust of the news professional.
To succeed in this new environment, news and political organizations will need to offer products that
are both highly responsive and easily customized. Balancing this pressure with the need for news
organizations to remain objective and politicians to act in accordance with their leadership
responsibilities in a representative democracy will be a significant challenge.
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Dick Costolo
Zero-Cost Publishing
Group product manager, Google
Former CEO of FeedBurner (blog services and tools provider)
Favorite blogs: FakeSteve.blogspot.com (musings by a Steve Jobs imposter); Publishing2.com
(new media and the future of online publishing); Blog.Photoblogs.org (aggregates the best of the
photoblogs)
When I was a kid, there were three broadcast TV channels that everybody was subscribed to,
a couple of local papers and a handful of local radio stations with significant range. For all these
broadcasters, a community of interest was defined as all the households this broadcast is reaching,
so there was no real concept of targeted content or communities of interest. If you happened to be
interested in venture capital and were a college student living in Detroit, there was no way for you
to participate (an important term) in any community of interest around venture capital unless you
moved to Silicon Valley or paid a ridiculous sum of money to subscribe to an obscure newsletter.
On the publishing side, the barriers to entry were replete with all manner of government regulation,
massive capital requirements and steep learning curves, creating a natural status difference between
publishers and subscribers. The publishers had massive status, the subscribers little or none. The
Internet destroyed most of the barriers to publication. The cost of being a publisher dropped to almost
zero with two interesting immediate results: anybody can publish, and more importantly, you can
publish whatever you want. With the cost of publication at almost zero, the cost of subscribing to
almost any community of interest also dropped to zero. Anybody can publish and anybody can
subscribe, and publishers and subscribers are now two sides to the same coin. Any subscriber can
actively participate in any community of interest by becoming a publisher in that community.
Everything is challenged and no media provider is immune from open public questioning. This is true
across the spectrum of publishers. A VC blog written by an expert in Silicon Valley with 20 years'
experience is subject to counterpoints from the student in Detroit who's similarly passionate about
this community of interest. The challenge, of course, is that in a media democracy, it is incumbent
on all of us to determine how we make decisions about authenticity and authority in media, since
these traits are no longer an implicit (if sometimes unwarranted) artifact of publication.
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Tom Wolfe
A Universe of Rumors
Novelist
One by one, Marshall McLuhan's wackiest-seeming predictions come true. Forty years ago, he said
that modern communications technology would turn the young into tribal primitives who pay
attention not to objective "news" reports but only to what the drums say, i.e., rumors.
And there you have blogs. The universe of blogs is a universe of rumors, and the tribe likes it that
way.
Blogs are an advance guard to the rear. For example, only a primitive would believe a word of
Wikipedia (which, though not strictly a blog, shares the characteristics of the genre). The entry under
my name says that in 2003 "major news media" broadcast reports of my death and that I telephoned
Larry King and said, "I ain't dead yet, give me a little more time and no doubt it will become true."
Oddly, this news supposedly broadcast never reached my ears in any form whatsoever prior to the
Wikipedia entry, and I wouldn't have a clue as to how to telephone Larry King. I wouldn't have
called him, in any case. I would have called my internist. I don't so much mind Wikipedia's recording
of news that nobody ever disseminated in the first place as I do the lame comment attributed to me.
I wouldn't say "I ain't" even if I were singing a country music song. In fact, I have posted a $5,000
reward for anyone who can write a song containing the verb forms "am not," "doesn't," or "isn't"
that makes the Billboard Top Twenty.
Favorite blogs: Mr. Wolfe, "weary of narcissistic shrieks and baseless 'information,' " says he no
longer reads blogs.
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Xiao Qiang
Breaking the 'Great Firewall'
Founder and editor of China Digital Times (an independent aggregator of China news); director,
China Internet Project at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley
Favorite blogs: ZonaEuropa.com (global news with a focus on China); SmartMobs.com
(author Howard Rheingold's tech thoughts); Blog.DoNews.com/keso (opinated takes on tech, from
iPhone to Google)
Lian Yue started his blog in the spring of 2005. A free-lance columnist, Lian lives in Xiamen, one of
China's most wealthy cities on the southeast coast. His liberal-style social commentary and humorous
writing quickly won him thousands of readers.
Starting this March, Lian posted a series of articles warning the people in his hometown that a
paraxylene (PX) chemical factory being built in his city could have a disastrous environmental impact.
He called on residents to speak out against the construction. "Don't be afraid," Lian wrote on his blog
on March 29. "Please just talk to your friends, family and colleagues about this event. They might still
be in the dark."
Lian is one of 16 million (and growing) active bloggers in China. While most posts are personal, an
increasing number of bloggers writing about public affairs have become opinion leaders in their local
communities. Despite the government's "Great Firewall" to filter out "undesirable information,"
and the tens of thousands of personnel hired to police the Internet, the sheer number of bloggers
writing about public affairs is having a transformative impact on Chinese politics.
Xiamen authorities have vigorously deleted anti-PX factory messages on any servers within their
governing territory. However, word still got out to local residents via email, IM and SMS on mobile
phones. One of Lian Yue's articles on this topic was published in a newspaper in a neighboring
province and spread "like wildfire" throughout the blogosphere. By the end of May, SMS messages
and cellphone photos of protesting slogans such as "Boycott PX, Protect Xiamen" were sent out to
millions of Xiamen residents. On June 1 and 2, against the local authorities' warning, several
thousand citizens spontaneously showed up "to walk" in front of the city government with anti-PX
message boards. Participants reported the protest live with their cellphones, which directly
transmitted photos and text to their blogs.
The government was forced to announce a "re-evaluation" of the factory construction.
In China, blogs enable millions of citizens to express their opinions with reduced political risk simply
because of the sheer number of like-minded opinions online. Facing these independent voices, the old
ideological machine starts to crumble. Within society, bloggers like Lian Yue are seen as more credible
voices than propaganda officials. The Chinese blogosphere is a dynamically contested terrain.
What will the long-term implications be? I think the writing is already on the Great Firewall.
_________________________________________________________________
Jim Buckmaster
Zero-Cost Publishing
CEO, Craigslist
Favorite blogs: Slashdot.org (one of the first tech blogs); Metafilter.com (community blog anyone
can edit); Valleywag.com (tech gossip site); TechDirt.com (popular tech news site)
Iraq Occupation? Global Warming? Abuse of Power? Pick up a Blog!
I read blogs every day, for all sorts of reasons, but I turn to blogs especially when I want to hear
alternative viewpoints -- for example, information on a particular medical treatment from the
viewpoint of patients receiving it, rather than doctors administering it; reports from the battlefield
seen through the eyes of soldiers rather than politicians; thoughts on a particular technology from
the standpoint of engineers rather than executives.
Consider the Iraq occupation -- or colonization. Corporate media provide saturation coverage, but
often manage to leave all the most interesting bits for bloggers, such as what our government is
actually trying to accomplish by occupying Iraq (blog.zmag.org/ttt), what Iraqis think about the
occupation so far (afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com, iraqblogcount.blogspot.com), how our soldiers
feel about it (cbftw.blogspot.com), and how taxes being appropriated for it are being doled out
(www.huffingtonpost.com). On global warming and reducing our reliance on oil imports, stories in
corporate media tend to reinforce the status quo, dwell on political impracticalities of making
changes, or focus on pork-barrel nonsolutions like ethanol. Turn instead to quality blogs on the
subject (like cleantechblog.com, or Amory Lovins's blog at green.yahoo.com) and you quickly learn
that excellent solutions are at hand, but are being mostly ignored because they aren't popular with
certain large corporations and their representatives in Washington.
With millions of private citizens now blogging, there is a diverse and not-easily-censorable chorus
to sound alarms, something the corporate media often will not do. In fact, I think our "citizen
journalists" in the blogosphere protect us against abuse of power to a far greater degree than the
much ballyhooed "citizen militia" afforded by gun ownership -- without the daily carnage of
accidental and impulse shootings.
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Elizabeth Spiers
Effective Niche Targeting
Writer
Founding editor, Gawker (news and gossip site)
Favorite blogs: Reason.com/blog (news and commentary recommended by libertarian magazine's
staff) MaudNewton.com (former attorney who writes on literature and culture);
DesignObserver.com (posts about design)
"I don't know why anyone reads blogs," the editor in chief of a large magazine once said to me.
"It's like listening to the crazy guy on the subway rant." I had generated a substantial part of my
income in the previous three years from professional blogging and wasn't inclined to bash blogs
categorically, but I conceded that in some cases she was right. There are countless blogs that are
filled with inarticulate vituperative screeds that appear to have been published by people whose
mental facilities are not fully intact. I'll even confess to having written a few posts that undoubtedly
fit that description.
That said, a blog is just a format for content. It's a way of presenting information in a linear fashion,
in reverse chronological order. Ultimately, the blog is only as good as the information presented.
Of the various blogs I've written or produced, the ones that worked best -- the ones that had the
biggest and most loyal readerships -- always had a few consistent qualities. They were topically
focused, often in niche areas. They published regularly and frequently, typically during office hours
and several times a day. They published content that was original or difficult to find, from breaking
news to proprietary photographs to obscure links that readers are unlikely to find on their own. They
were usually well-written, which has its own intrinsic appeal for anyone who prefers to enjoy what
they're reading. And lastly, they engaged their readership by soliciting feedback and responding to it,
in the form of asking for tips, allowing comments or otherwise demonstrating some level of interest
in their audience's preferences.
Most blogs are personal diaries and don't fit those criteria, even in part. But the success of the
various blogs that do choose to follow the aforementioned formula indicates that it's possible to
create commercially viable media products for niche audiences. Even more important for traditional
media, blogs are an inexpensive way to test new editorial concepts with an engaged audience whose
behavior and preferences are more directly measurable than in any other medium.
This alone should be of interest to any pragmatic editor.
_________________________________________________________________
• Email us at pursuits@wsj.com.
_________________________________________________________________
It's been 10 years since the blog was born. Love them or hate them, they've roiled presidential
campaigns and given everyman a global soapbox. Twelve commentators -- including Tom Wolfe,
Newt Gingrich, the SEC's Christopher Cox and actress-turned-blogger Mia Farrow -- on what
blogs mean to them.
By TUNKU VARADARAJAN
The Wall Street Journal
July 14, 2007; Page P1
________________________________________________________________
Notwithstanding the words of Tom Wolfe, who puts an elegant boot, below, into the corpus
of bloggers, there are many more people today who would read blogs than disparage them.
The consumption of blogs is often avid and occasionally obsessive. But more commonly, it is utterly
natural, as if turning to them were no stranger than (dare one say this here?) picking one's way
through the morning's newspapers. The daily reading of virtually everyone under 40 -- and a fair
few folk over that age -- now includes a blog or two, and this reflects as much the quality of today's
bloggers as it does a techno-psychological revolution among readers of news and opinion.
We are approaching a decade since the first blogger -- regarded by many to be Jorn Barger -- began
his business of hunting and gathering links to items that tickled his fancy, to which he appended
some of his own commentary. On Dec. 23, 1997, on his site, Robot Wisdom, Mr. Barger wrote:
"I decided to start my own webpage logging the best stuff I find as I surf, on a daily basis," and
the Oxford English Dictionary regards this as the primordial root of the word "weblog."
RELATED READING
• Podcast: The Impact of Blogs
• Q&A: The Evolution of Blogging
• Slideshow: Blogs: Then and Now
• Video: BoingBoing.net's Cory Doctorow and David Pescovitz
• Discuss: How Often Do You Read Blogs?
• Blogs 101: How to Keep Up with the Sites
The dating of the 10th anniversary of blogs, and the ascription of primacy to the first blogger, are
imperfect exercises. Others, such as David Winer, who blogged with Scripting News, and Cameron
Barrett, who started CamWorld, were alongside the polemical Mr. Barger in the advance guard. And
before them there were "proto-blogs," embryonic indications of the online profusion that was to
follow. But by widespread consensus, 1997 is a reasonable point at which to mark the emergence
of the blog as a distinct life-form.
Once a neologism, outlandish to some, weblog has come to be abbreviated to blog, a brusque and
jaunty word that no one, now, would think to look up in a dictionary. That said, the spell check on
Microsoft Word has yet to awaken to the concept of the blog. Type in "blogging," for instance, and
you will promptly earn a disapproving underscore in red, with the suggestion that "bogging,"
"clogging," "flogging" or "slogging" (unappetizing alternatives all) might, in truth, be the word
you seek.
In the decade since their conception, blogs, once a smorgasbord of links, have evolved into vehicles
for a fuller, more forceful and opinionated prose. Not all of it has been lovely to behold, or even
edifying. Inevitably, there has been bombast, verbosity and exposure to the public eye of thoughts
that, ideally, should have remained locked inside fevered heads. (The impact of blogs on public
discourse has included, I contend, the emergence of a form of "oral blogging," noticeable at seminars
and the like, where people who might once have asked brisk questions are now empowered by the
blog form to hold forth at length, with little attempt at self-editing.)
The other change in the blog has, of course, been its mainstreaming. Blogging was once the province
of the Nerd Without a Life (NWAL -- which, when pronounced aloud, sounds remarkably and
appropriately like know-all). Today, while members of that tribe still abound, there are others who
blog not because it is their only window on the world, but because blogging offers the opportunity
of direct and immediate communion with those who would respond to their ideas. Call it intellectual
"skin contact."
Jack Bogle, the founder of Vanguard, blogs (his is the Bogle eBlog, so called because the second
word is an anagram of his surname; and unlike many CEOs, he blogs without the aid of a
ghostblogger). Gary Becker, Nobel laureate in economics, blogs. Peter Stothard, editor of the Times
Literary Supplement of London, blogs. Mia Farrow, the cinema actress, who also writes below, blogs.
As do politicians and activists of every stripe. Some blogs are profitable businesses, and it is no
surprise that the traditional media have bought into the action, including this newspaper (see James
Taranto's contribution, below).
Featured here, then, are a dozen brief meditations on what the blog has come to mean and on the
role blogs play in the usual tussles of any civilized society. The appropriate question about blogs,
10 years into their first appearance, is not whether they are a form of exhibitionism, or journalism,
or theater. It is, instead, this, and I pose it with a courteous apology to Tom Wolfe: What would we
do without blogs?
_________________________________________________________________
Harold Evans
A Spurious Megaphone
Editor at large, the Week
Former editor, the Times of London
Favorite blogs: AndrewSullivan.com (political pundit for the Atlantic Monthly); MichaelTotten.com
(Mideast affairs blogger); HeadButler.com (news and culture roundup)
Coming from a print culture where the rule was check, check, source, source, I was chilled, in the
early days of the blogosphere, by the easy dissemination of lies.
Did you know that 9/11 was the work of the Mossad? How else can you explain that the 4,000 Jews
were tipped off to stay away that morning? Gibberish, of course, but widely believed in the Muslim
world.
In Indonesia, Tom Friedman reported, only 5% of the population could get on the Web, but these 5%
spread rumor as fact: "They say, 'He got it from the Internet.' They think it's the Bible."
In this case, the revealed "truth" was a blog by one Sy Adeeb, writing from Alexandria, Va., under
the logo of Information Times (with an address at the National Press Building in Washington, which
had no trace of him). When I tracked him down, he told me he got it from Al Manar, the Hezbollah
station in Beirut.
Once upon a time, Adeeb would be sending out smudged mimeographed sheets that would never
see the light of day. Now, as bloggers on the Web, Adeeb and others like him have a megaphone
to the world, with this spurious authenticity of electronic delivery. (Tony Blair says there are
70 million blogs. Presumably, British Intelligence has been counting.)
What's lamentable is that mainstream media, in a desperate race to be hip, will often now quote an
unsourced blog story as a source. So nobody can really calculate the ripple effect of blogging.
That said, there's a lot that's great about the blogosphere.
Some blogs have become the best check on monopoly mainstream journalism, and they provide a
surprisingly frequent source of initiative reporting. As an example, the only hope of staying sane
in the lockstep stereotyped reporting of the 2000 presidential campaign was to look up Eric
Alterman on MSNBC.com and the Daily Howler hilariously documenting the false narrative into
which every story about Al Gore was fitted.
_______________________________________________________________
Christopher Cox
Bolstering Investors' Toolkit
Chairman, Securities and Exchange Commission
Without a good search engine (Google, of course, along with blogdigger, Feedster and a handful of
others), it would be impossible to intelligently sample the vast landscape of the blogosphere. With
that basic tool, it's at least possible to get a feel for the range of opinions on a given topic. It's a bit
like reading the verbatims from an opinion poll; you get someone's genuine opinion, and it most
certainly is not statistically valid.
Blogs can contribute a great deal in the world of finance, which turns on information -- the newer,
the better. As investors strive to make sense of the ever-higher mountains of data that we're buried
under, the services of bloggers, whom we can imagine sitting at home in their pajamas trolling the
Internet for us, free of charge, are likely to be an increasingly consequential addition to the investor's
tool kit.
To be sure, the blogosphere is subject to all of the same risks as the Internet itself. Many blogs are
loaded with vanity posts, half-truths, rumors, and even intentional distortions. Others have spotty
quality. The Securities and Exchange Commission's Office of Internet Enforcement has discovered
several fraudsters operating blogs on the Web.
There's no question, however, that among the ranks of legitimate bloggers, the corporate world is
well represented, although some executives have undoubtedly hired professionals to blog in their
stead. And, of course, you'll have seemingly unlimited choices when it comes to selecting your
favorite Web-based market analyst. Not surprisingly, when it comes to the new financial-reporting
language of XBRL and interactive data, blogs such as blog.hitachixbrl.com are a far more likely
place to find the latest scoop than, say, your local library.
When, in September 2006, I posted on one executive's blog (search for "Jonathan Schwartz" +
"Christopher Cox" and you can find it), it immediately became clear how quickly news can spread.
The exchange drove home the point that in carrying out the SEC's mission, Web-based disclosure
will be of growing importance.
On his blog, Mr. Schwartz, chief executive of Sun Microsystems, challenged the commission to clarify
that the use of blogs like his could be consistent with our regulations requiring public companies to
share news with the public at the same time they give it to market professionals. As a result of that
exchange, the SEC is moving forward on that initiative, aided by thoughtful commentary from
outside our own cathedral, some of it found on blogs.
Do bloggers portend more lasting ramifications for the securities world? But of course. Shareholders
are on the move, and technology has given them a cheaper and more-effective means to communicate.
From improved price discovery to better corporate governance, investors, markets, managements
and boards will never be the same.
Favorite blogs: Mr. Cox prefers not to specify any favorite blog because "the way that some SEC
followers hang on every agency pronouncement will lead someone to decide that monitoring the
blog is both a new compliance burden and a guide to the hidden meanings of agency thinking."
_______________________________________________________________
Mia Farrow
The Editor in Chief: Me
Actress
Favorite blogs: BoingBoing.net (Tracks nooks and crannies of the Web); GPSMagazine.com
(Everything about global positioning systems)
When my daughter came to me crying because the school newspaper refused to print one of her
articles, I said: Why not start your own paper?
Unfiltered publishing was once the exclusive domain of media moguls, but today, who needs Rupert
Murdoch? Blogging has become a publishing equalizer that was scarcely dreamed of years ago.
It's free, you don't need editors or publishers, you don't even need to be able to write well.
Last year, I followed my own advice. I started www.miafarrow.org. I am my own toughest critic,
and I can't say the acceptance rate for my pieces is vastly improved, but the only person I have to
convince that an article is worth publishing is the editor in chief: me. (When a piece is posted, the
entire staff is elated.)
It is through this experience that I've come to appreciate the purity and power of blogging. I have
appeared in more than 40 movies, written a book and given countless interviews on TV, radio and in
print. Yet none of this has allowed me to spotlight issues important to me as completely as my blog.
I have blogged from some far-flung locations, such as the ravaged borders between Darfur and
eastern Chad. And even in the most isolated regions, I knew that I was not alone. I had brought
with me 30,000 readers a day, and they stuck with me every step of the way.
Via satellite phone, I sent messages from the outskirts of the newly attacked town of Paoua in remote
northwestern Central African Republic. I found myself in the middle of a humanitarian catastrophe.
Hundreds of people had fled into the bush. They were eating leaves and drinking swamp water.
No one was there to protect them. "Drums and gunfire are the music of the night," I blogged.
Neither the reader nor I could know what would happen next. That immediacy and urgency was
transmitted to my family and friends back home, along with thousands of members of the larger
human family.
________________________________________________________________
James Taranto
Answering an Unmet Need
Editor, OpinionJournal.com
Favorite blogs: KausFiles.com (Slate's prolific political blogger); InstaPundit.com (Libertarian law
professor's take on politics and technology); JustOneMinute.typepad.com (Recent addition to politics
blog circuit)
In the world of politics and political journalism, blogs have evolved differently on the right and the
left. The seeds of this evolution were sown by two proto-blogs that played key roles in the Clinton
impeachment.
On Jan. 18, 1998, the Drudge Report sent an email billed as a BLOCKBUSTER REPORT: "At the last
minute, at 6 p.m. on Saturday evening, Newsweek magazine killed a story that was destined to shake
official Washington to its foundation: A White House intern carried on a sexual affair with the
President of the United States!"
Drudge's borrowed scoop forced the story into the open, and within three days President Clinton
issued the first of many denials. His subsequent testimony under oath that he had not had a fling
with Monica Lewinsky led to his impeachment for perjury and obstruction of justice. Had Drudge not
acted after the mainstream media hesitated, there is no way of knowing if the story would ever have
seen the light of day.
That September, after it became clear that Mr. Clinton had lied about his relationship with
Ms. Lewinsky, a pair of liberal technology entrepreneurs began a project called "Censure and
Move On," an online petition calling on Congress to abandon impeachment, "immediately censure
President Clinton and move on to pressing issues facing the country." The Web site, MoveOn.org,
later became a hub for liberal political activism, opposing the Iraq war and other Bush administration
policies.
Broadly speaking, conservative bloggers have followed the Drudge model, acting as a check on the
liberal tendencies of the mainstream media, or "MSM." Conservative bloggers' proudest moments
have come when they have debunked false and biased MSM reporting, especially CBS's fraudulent
exposé on President Bush's National Guard service in 2004 and Reuters' doctored photos from
Lebanon in 2006.
The liberal blogosphere, meanwhile, is a hotbed of edgy activism -- some might say extremism. It
pushed forward the Valerie Plame kerfuffle and gave support to candidates such as Ned Lamont, Jon
Tester and Jim Webb. Just as conservative talk radio helped along the Republican victory in 1994,
liberal blogs had their moment of triumph in the midterm elections 12 years later.
Conservatives see blogs as the answer to Dan Rather, who is liberal but not overtly so. Liberals see
them as the answer to Rush Limbaugh, who is open about his opinions and his desire to influence
public opinion. In both cases they answer an unmet need in the political/media marketplace.
_________________________________________________________________
Jane Hamsher
21st-Century Howard Beales
Founder, firedoglake (political blog)
Favorite blogs: DigbysBlog.blogspot.com (political news and commentary);
TBogg.blogspot.com (liberal pundit covers news and culture); CrooksAndLiars.com (left-leaning
commentary with lots of video clips)
During the '90s, railing at the TV set was the isometric sport of the silent majority. Progressive
political junkies watched in isolation as the Washington Post prominently printed one Whitewater
story after another as if they originated on tablets of stone rather than the fax machines of Arkansas
political operatives. Many people felt like they were the only ones who scratched their heads in
wonder that it all made no sense, recoiling in horror as a slick PR operation rapidly escalated from
the realm of lazy, spoon-fed journalism to the constitutional mockery of the Clinton impeachment.
That isolation ended with the advent of the progressive blogosphere, which acts as a virtual water
cooler for those who not only want to rail at the TV set, they want the TV set to listen. Probably
nothing better contrasts the pre- and postblogospheric worlds than the Whitewater and CIA leak
stories. In one, the endless repetition of meaningless gibberish was allowed to take root and become
conventional wisdom. In the other, despite the constant reiteration of abject fantasies like "no
underlying crime was committed," the public seemed to realize that it's not okay to perjure yourself
in front of a grand jury and obstruct justice on behalf of your boss. Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald
was allowed to try his case in court before GOP spinmeisters could try it in the press, and a recent
Gallup poll shows that 66% of the country thinks Bush should've left Scooter alone to do his time.
That message wasn't carried by the beltway Brahmins of the MSM, the media elite who transcend
party loyalties and embrace Libby as one of their own. They collectively bristled at the thought that
Scooter (and no doubt themselves) should be subject to the verdict of some "ignorant jury"
(as Ann Coulter likes to call them). No, that message was carried by bloggers and their readers, the
thousands of people who collectively pored over the story's coverage, serving as institutional
memory and holding media outlets to account when the politics of access journalism threaten to
obscure the truth.
At a time when government is in desperate need of oversight and the Fourth Estate has become
uncomfortably close with those they are tasked with covering, the progressive blogosphere is a place
where erstwhile Howard Beales coalesce to fill the gap. They come together to challenge the virulent
Rovian notion that no law is so sacred, no tenet of national security so vital it can't be flouted in the
pursuit of political gain. Scooter and other hermetically sealed beltway denizens may think he's a
hero, but the rest of the country realizes he's nothing better than a garden variety crook.
It ain't perfect, but it's progress.
__________________________________________________________________
Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner
'Milblogging' the War
Spokesman for Multi-National Force, in Iraq
Military blogs offer readers a front-row seat into the camaraderie, pride and challenges of those in
uniform. No one can better represent the experiences of a soldier than soldiers themselves, and
"milbloggers" deployed to the frontlines of the war on terror offer first-hand insights into their
service and sacrifice.
Why does this matter? Because milbloggers uniquely reveal the human face of our forces, from a
young trooper patrolling Baghdad neighborhoods to a doctor saving lives at a Combat Support
Hospital. First-hand accounts are an important way to communicate the creativity, commitment,
and the lighter moments of those who are placing their lives on the line.
In the past decade, new technologies from satellite phones to Internet technology have changed the
relationship between information and warfare. The military's former inclination to control information
has been replaced by an appreciation of the risks, but more importantly the opportunities of
cyberspace.
One example is when soldiers, of their own initiative, create and maintain personal blogs about
their day-to-day experiences. Since blogs have the potential to reach a global audience, we have
established clear guidance to ensure that blogging does not violate operational security, individual
privacy, military policy or propriety. Our troops are fast learners, so while we have had a few
breaches there have been many more positive experiences shared.
By no means do all military blogs paint a positive picture, nor should they. Each posting represents
an individual's musings at a particular point in time. We are waging a historic fight against a ruthless
enemy. It is also a campaign that historians will be able to learn more broadly about from anecdotes
and insights in today's military blogs.
Favorite blogs: "Around here, folks like to read Small Wars Journal (http://smallwarsjournal.
com/index.php), Blackfive (http://www.blackfive.net/) and The Mudville Gazette (http://www.
mudvillegazette.com/)."
__________________________________________________________________
Newt Gingrich
New Political 'Prosumers'
Former House speaker
Favorite blogs: RedState.com (Republican news and notes); Corner.NationalReview.com
(conservative magazine's politics blog); PowerlineBlog.com (covers law and right-leaning politics)
Home Depot redefined an industry by catering to customers who preferred to fix their homes
themselves rather than rely on professional repairmen. Dell Computer revolutionized the computing
industry by allowing customers to design their own computers instead of purchasing the
prepackaged, recommended configurations.
It may not seem obvious, but blogging is part of this same social trend. Think of blogging as a DIY
movement in our always intertwined media and political culture, blurring the lines between
professional producers (news organizations and politicians) and amateur consumers (citizens),
creating what Alvin Toffler called "prosumers," characterized by their desire to play an active role in
creating the products they consume and by their distrust of professionals who claim to know what's
best.
In politics, supporters of a candidate or party are increasingly dissatisfied with simply putting up yard
signs or making scripted phone calls; they want those in power to listen and respond to them as well.
They also don't trust professional politicians to do what is right without constant supervision.
In many ways, these are the characteristics of any insurgent political movement, but blogging is
enabling particularly rapid mobilization and organization.
We've already seen the effects on the Democratic Party. Web sites such as Daily Kos and
MoveOn.org -- which I find fascinating as models of online activism -- have made it quite clear that
their aim goes beyond stopping President Bush; they're also targeting leaders in their own party
viewed as unresponsive to the grassroots. Sen. Joe Lieberman's primary loss is the most visible
example. If Republicans remain out of step with their base for too long, expect a similar insurgency
on the right.
Similarly in news, it used to be that the only way to respond to an article or editorial was to write a
letter to the editor. Now anyone can be a publisher. Bloggers can critique, fact-check or applaud
journalists on their own platform, as well as offer their own analysis of world events. The term MSM
s a derogatory term in the blogosphere, signifying distrust of the news professional.
To succeed in this new environment, news and political organizations will need to offer products that
are both highly responsive and easily customized. Balancing this pressure with the need for news
organizations to remain objective and politicians to act in accordance with their leadership
responsibilities in a representative democracy will be a significant challenge.
__________________________________________________________________
Dick Costolo
Zero-Cost Publishing
Group product manager, Google
Former CEO of FeedBurner (blog services and tools provider)
Favorite blogs: FakeSteve.blogspot.com (musings by a Steve Jobs imposter); Publishing2.com
(new media and the future of online publishing); Blog.Photoblogs.org (aggregates the best of the
photoblogs)
When I was a kid, there were three broadcast TV channels that everybody was subscribed to,
a couple of local papers and a handful of local radio stations with significant range. For all these
broadcasters, a community of interest was defined as all the households this broadcast is reaching,
so there was no real concept of targeted content or communities of interest. If you happened to be
interested in venture capital and were a college student living in Detroit, there was no way for you
to participate (an important term) in any community of interest around venture capital unless you
moved to Silicon Valley or paid a ridiculous sum of money to subscribe to an obscure newsletter.
On the publishing side, the barriers to entry were replete with all manner of government regulation,
massive capital requirements and steep learning curves, creating a natural status difference between
publishers and subscribers. The publishers had massive status, the subscribers little or none. The
Internet destroyed most of the barriers to publication. The cost of being a publisher dropped to almost
zero with two interesting immediate results: anybody can publish, and more importantly, you can
publish whatever you want. With the cost of publication at almost zero, the cost of subscribing to
almost any community of interest also dropped to zero. Anybody can publish and anybody can
subscribe, and publishers and subscribers are now two sides to the same coin. Any subscriber can
actively participate in any community of interest by becoming a publisher in that community.
Everything is challenged and no media provider is immune from open public questioning. This is true
across the spectrum of publishers. A VC blog written by an expert in Silicon Valley with 20 years'
experience is subject to counterpoints from the student in Detroit who's similarly passionate about
this community of interest. The challenge, of course, is that in a media democracy, it is incumbent
on all of us to determine how we make decisions about authenticity and authority in media, since
these traits are no longer an implicit (if sometimes unwarranted) artifact of publication.
_________________________________________________________________
Tom Wolfe
A Universe of Rumors
Novelist
One by one, Marshall McLuhan's wackiest-seeming predictions come true. Forty years ago, he said
that modern communications technology would turn the young into tribal primitives who pay
attention not to objective "news" reports but only to what the drums say, i.e., rumors.
And there you have blogs. The universe of blogs is a universe of rumors, and the tribe likes it that
way.
Blogs are an advance guard to the rear. For example, only a primitive would believe a word of
Wikipedia (which, though not strictly a blog, shares the characteristics of the genre). The entry under
my name says that in 2003 "major news media" broadcast reports of my death and that I telephoned
Larry King and said, "I ain't dead yet, give me a little more time and no doubt it will become true."
Oddly, this news supposedly broadcast never reached my ears in any form whatsoever prior to the
Wikipedia entry, and I wouldn't have a clue as to how to telephone Larry King. I wouldn't have
called him, in any case. I would have called my internist. I don't so much mind Wikipedia's recording
of news that nobody ever disseminated in the first place as I do the lame comment attributed to me.
I wouldn't say "I ain't" even if I were singing a country music song. In fact, I have posted a $5,000
reward for anyone who can write a song containing the verb forms "am not," "doesn't," or "isn't"
that makes the Billboard Top Twenty.
Favorite blogs: Mr. Wolfe, "weary of narcissistic shrieks and baseless 'information,' " says he no
longer reads blogs.
_________________________________________________________________
Xiao Qiang
Breaking the 'Great Firewall'
Founder and editor of China Digital Times (an independent aggregator of China news); director,
China Internet Project at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley
Favorite blogs: ZonaEuropa.com (global news with a focus on China); SmartMobs.com
(author Howard Rheingold's tech thoughts); Blog.DoNews.com/keso (opinated takes on tech, from
iPhone to Google)
Lian Yue started his blog in the spring of 2005. A free-lance columnist, Lian lives in Xiamen, one of
China's most wealthy cities on the southeast coast. His liberal-style social commentary and humorous
writing quickly won him thousands of readers.
Starting this March, Lian posted a series of articles warning the people in his hometown that a
paraxylene (PX) chemical factory being built in his city could have a disastrous environmental impact.
He called on residents to speak out against the construction. "Don't be afraid," Lian wrote on his blog
on March 29. "Please just talk to your friends, family and colleagues about this event. They might still
be in the dark."
Lian is one of 16 million (and growing) active bloggers in China. While most posts are personal, an
increasing number of bloggers writing about public affairs have become opinion leaders in their local
communities. Despite the government's "Great Firewall" to filter out "undesirable information,"
and the tens of thousands of personnel hired to police the Internet, the sheer number of bloggers
writing about public affairs is having a transformative impact on Chinese politics.
Xiamen authorities have vigorously deleted anti-PX factory messages on any servers within their
governing territory. However, word still got out to local residents via email, IM and SMS on mobile
phones. One of Lian Yue's articles on this topic was published in a newspaper in a neighboring
province and spread "like wildfire" throughout the blogosphere. By the end of May, SMS messages
and cellphone photos of protesting slogans such as "Boycott PX, Protect Xiamen" were sent out to
millions of Xiamen residents. On June 1 and 2, against the local authorities' warning, several
thousand citizens spontaneously showed up "to walk" in front of the city government with anti-PX
message boards. Participants reported the protest live with their cellphones, which directly
transmitted photos and text to their blogs.
The government was forced to announce a "re-evaluation" of the factory construction.
In China, blogs enable millions of citizens to express their opinions with reduced political risk simply
because of the sheer number of like-minded opinions online. Facing these independent voices, the old
ideological machine starts to crumble. Within society, bloggers like Lian Yue are seen as more credible
voices than propaganda officials. The Chinese blogosphere is a dynamically contested terrain.
What will the long-term implications be? I think the writing is already on the Great Firewall.
_________________________________________________________________
Jim Buckmaster
Zero-Cost Publishing
CEO, Craigslist
Favorite blogs: Slashdot.org (one of the first tech blogs); Metafilter.com (community blog anyone
can edit); Valleywag.com (tech gossip site); TechDirt.com (popular tech news site)
Iraq Occupation? Global Warming? Abuse of Power? Pick up a Blog!
I read blogs every day, for all sorts of reasons, but I turn to blogs especially when I want to hear
alternative viewpoints -- for example, information on a particular medical treatment from the
viewpoint of patients receiving it, rather than doctors administering it; reports from the battlefield
seen through the eyes of soldiers rather than politicians; thoughts on a particular technology from
the standpoint of engineers rather than executives.
Consider the Iraq occupation -- or colonization. Corporate media provide saturation coverage, but
often manage to leave all the most interesting bits for bloggers, such as what our government is
actually trying to accomplish by occupying Iraq (blog.zmag.org/ttt), what Iraqis think about the
occupation so far (afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com, iraqblogcount.blogspot.com), how our soldiers
feel about it (cbftw.blogspot.com), and how taxes being appropriated for it are being doled out
(www.huffingtonpost.com). On global warming and reducing our reliance on oil imports, stories in
corporate media tend to reinforce the status quo, dwell on political impracticalities of making
changes, or focus on pork-barrel nonsolutions like ethanol. Turn instead to quality blogs on the
subject (like cleantechblog.com, or Amory Lovins's blog at green.yahoo.com) and you quickly learn
that excellent solutions are at hand, but are being mostly ignored because they aren't popular with
certain large corporations and their representatives in Washington.
With millions of private citizens now blogging, there is a diverse and not-easily-censorable chorus
to sound alarms, something the corporate media often will not do. In fact, I think our "citizen
journalists" in the blogosphere protect us against abuse of power to a far greater degree than the
much ballyhooed "citizen militia" afforded by gun ownership -- without the daily carnage of
accidental and impulse shootings.
_________________________________________________________________
Elizabeth Spiers
Effective Niche Targeting
Writer
Founding editor, Gawker (news and gossip site)
Favorite blogs: Reason.com/blog (news and commentary recommended by libertarian magazine's
staff) MaudNewton.com (former attorney who writes on literature and culture);
DesignObserver.com (posts about design)
"I don't know why anyone reads blogs," the editor in chief of a large magazine once said to me.
"It's like listening to the crazy guy on the subway rant." I had generated a substantial part of my
income in the previous three years from professional blogging and wasn't inclined to bash blogs
categorically, but I conceded that in some cases she was right. There are countless blogs that are
filled with inarticulate vituperative screeds that appear to have been published by people whose
mental facilities are not fully intact. I'll even confess to having written a few posts that undoubtedly
fit that description.
That said, a blog is just a format for content. It's a way of presenting information in a linear fashion,
in reverse chronological order. Ultimately, the blog is only as good as the information presented.
Of the various blogs I've written or produced, the ones that worked best -- the ones that had the
biggest and most loyal readerships -- always had a few consistent qualities. They were topically
focused, often in niche areas. They published regularly and frequently, typically during office hours
and several times a day. They published content that was original or difficult to find, from breaking
news to proprietary photographs to obscure links that readers are unlikely to find on their own. They
were usually well-written, which has its own intrinsic appeal for anyone who prefers to enjoy what
they're reading. And lastly, they engaged their readership by soliciting feedback and responding to it,
in the form of asking for tips, allowing comments or otherwise demonstrating some level of interest
in their audience's preferences.
Most blogs are personal diaries and don't fit those criteria, even in part. But the success of the
various blogs that do choose to follow the aforementioned formula indicates that it's possible to
create commercially viable media products for niche audiences. Even more important for traditional
media, blogs are an inexpensive way to test new editorial concepts with an engaged audience whose
behavior and preferences are more directly measurable than in any other medium.
This alone should be of interest to any pragmatic editor.
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