Last Updated 5:59 am PDT Monday, July 30, 2007
Story appeared in SCENE section, Page E1
http://www.sacbee.com/107/story/298530.html
Bloggers, we've heard it said, never have an unwritten thought.
Blogorrhea, it's been snidely called.
So why is it that, except for a few mentions here or there in the
blogosphere and a story in that stodgy mainstream media dinosaur, the
Wall Street Journal, no one is opining on the deep significance of
blogs turning 10 years old in 2007?
This is, after all, extraordinary news.
Ten?
Impossible.
Why, it seems like only yesterday we were bouncing baby bloggers on
our knee, cooing about the cuteness of Gawker, marveling at the
precociousness of the Daily Kos, lamenting that colicky Drudge Report,
and enthusing on the crayon skills of Perez Hilton.
My, how big you've grown, blogosphere.
So big, in fact, that it might astonish you. Blogpulse, a Web site
about Web sites, reports that by the end of last week there were more
than 53.1 million individual blogs on the Internet. Technorati,
another blogging authority, says 175,000 new blogs are created each
day -- two per second.
Considering that 10 years ago only a handful of blogs existed -- a few
floated around the Internet a few years before Jorn Barger actually
coined the term "weblog" -- it's an amazing growth curve.
Maybe it shouldn't be surprising, though. Blogs seemingly have been
around in various low-tech forms since the dawn of man. What is cave-
wall writing other than early man's attempts to share his thoughts
with the guy in the next cave down? And people have been penning
thoughts since back when papyrus was considered high tech.
The difference now, of course, is the ease with which one can convey a
message, as well as the technological potential for interaction on a
large scale. Ten years ago, a fax machine was still considered cutting
edge by many.
Of course, anyone who has spent much time around 10-year-olds knows
how mercurial and unpredictable they can be. Blogs are no different.
They can be sweet one minute, sarcastic the next. They go off on
tangents and say things they later regret. They are alternately
insightful and insensitive.
Most of all, they demand attention.
And, you know what? They deserve it.
No longer can you dismiss bloggers by tritely depicting them as pasty-
faced social misfits in pajamas, holed up in their parents' basements,
waiting for the apocalypse -- or the latest version of the iMac.
These days, the most popular bloggers are challenging the appeal of
the most popular newspapers. Then again, some of the most popular
bloggers work at mainstream newspapers. (The San Francisco Chronicle
even recently named a blogger, Eve Batey of SFist.com, as its new
deputy managing editor.)
Indeed, blogging has changed the way mainstream media -- TV news and
radio included -- deliver their content. For one thing, since readers
often return to blogs throughout the day for the latest info, news
outlets now are constantly updating, as well.
Often, too, blogs drive coverage on issues that were ignored or
downplayed.
Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) was forced to resign his position as Senate
majority leader in 2002 when bloggers at Talking Points Memo and
others picked up on his pro-segregation comments about a colleague,
the late Strom Thurmond. ABC News had aired the story, but it got
little immediate reaction. Fanned by bloggers, however, the story
turned into a political firestorm.
The same fate awaited Dan Rather on CBS' "60 Minutes II" in 2004. When
he delivered a story questioning President Bush's National Guard
service, using memos from 1970 as evidence, conservative bloggers at
sites such as Little Green Footballs exposed the memos as inauthentic.
CBS eventually retracted the story, and some say it contributed to
Rather's retirement in 2005.
Some bloggers have become so influential that Democratic and
Republican operatives invite them to meetings to try to curry favor in
much the same way they woo newspaper editorial boards. And bloggers
have become so ubiquitous that even political conventions and the
Oscars have issued them credentials.
But blogging has affected pop culture much more than just in news
gathering, political maneuvering and gossip sharing.
Anyone with a laptop and an Internet connection can be a blogger --
for free. (It took 80 seconds for this reporter to start his own
personal blog, simply by clicking on one of several sites and filling
out two painless forms.)
Surfing the Web, you can find blogs about almost every conceivable
subject. Underwater hockey? Sure. Mongolian throat singing? Yup.
Ferrets? Oh, scads.
In the blogosphere, celebrities rub shoulders with ordinary folk, too.
Rosie O'Donnell has a blog. So do Lily Allen, Barbra Streisand, Alec
Baldwin, Avril Lavigne and Pamela Anderson.
CBS News anchor Katie Couric has one, though she suffered no small
amount of embarrassment when it was revealed that her producer
actually does the writing and posting -- and that the producer was
guilty of plagiarism.
That's another thing about blogs. They can cause a heap of trouble for
those doing the posting.
One of the most popular current blogs is Dooce.com, which is about how
to navigate the dangers of writing about work on your personal blog.
It's hosted by Salt Lake City resident Heather Armstrong, who was
canned from her software job after writing some flaming posts about
her colleagues.
Meanwhile, a blogger employed by Google recently was reprimanded for a
posting she wrote on a company blog in which she criticized Michael
Moore's new documentary, "Sicko," and urged health-care companies to
take out ads on Google to fight Moore.
The same holds true for those who respond with comments on blogs or
message boards. Last month, the CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey, drew
heat from critics, as well as his own investors and board members, for
pseudonymous postings denigrating a competitor (Wild Oats). Mackey
also puffed up himself, writing once on a message board, "While I'm
not a 'Mackey groupie,' I do admire what the man has accomplished."
Such "sock puppetry" -- the term coined for creating a false Internet
identity -- has felled others in hubris-heavy self-promotion, most
notably New Republic magazine blogger Lee Siegel.
So the cloak of anonymity for bloggers -- and those who respond to
blogs -- is not always protective. Last spring, for instance, Bay Area
technology blogger Kathy Sierra was "flamed" viciously by anonymous
people in their comments, which included some death threats.
As a result, some have proposed a "blogger code of conduct," although
the idea has gone nowhere. Apparently, not only does "information want
to be free," as the Internet cliché goes, but bloggers want free rein
to spout opinions regardless of their factual basis, as well.
The thinking is, readers should have access to all points of view and
figure out on their own what's credible. Two weeks ago, a poll by the
market firm Nucleus Research and the Web site KnowledgeStorm showed
that 72 percent of people continue to look to the mainstream media for
vetted political information.
But that might be changing. One of the more popular political blogs,
the Huffington Post, employs professional journalists along with
"amateurs" and friends of founder Arianna Huffington. Huffington's
blog also is one of the first non-mainstream media blogs funded by
corporate money.
So who knows? In another 10 years, blogging may have matured enough to
gain the respect to go with its popularity.
At 20, after all, it'll be nearing adulthood.
* * *
Some blogs that local bloggers cruise
· Says "Beckler" at Heckasac (www.heckasac.blogspot.com): "I guess my
favorite blog would be Film for Tourists
(filmfortourists.blogspot.com), but he doesn't update enough. ... I
like him because he shares my taste in local politics, music and
movies."
· Says John Myers, KQED radio Sacramento bureau chief, at Capital
Notes (www.kqed.org/weblog/capitalnotes/blog.jsp): "I actually read
probably about 15 blogs at this point, almost all California politics/
public-policy geared. (It's) pretty evenly split between Democratic
and GOP blogs. But if I had to pick ones I read more often than not:
Mickey Kaus' blog at Slate.com (www.slate.com/id/2170453) and Rick
Hasen's Election Law blog (electionlawblog.org).
· Says Don Zacharias (a.k.a. CoolDMZ) at Sacrag (sacrag.com): "The
blog I read the most is 'Watch With Kristin' over at (www.eonline.com/
gossip/kristin/index.jsp). I don't read any 'personal' blogs, but I
did go to college with Kristin, and I am obsessed with television, so
I read her blog every day."
· Says Jennifer Cliff at Sacatomato (www.sacatomato.com): "I would
have to say the Sacrag is my favorite. Not only does (contributor)
'Sac-Eats,' a.k.a. Greg Sabin, post on food with a wit and a sarcasm
that I just love, there are other writers there that have their own
brand of humor about other Sacramento goings-on."
· Says Andy Nevis at Young Insider (www. younginsider.blogspot.com):
"The blog that I probably read the most is Free Republic
(www.freerepublic.com). It is actually more of a message board, but it
provides a place for conservative contributors from all over the world
to come together and discuss issues and share information."
· Says Matthew Keys at Radio Matthew (radiomatthew.com): "Lori Hahn's
blog (hahnathome.com) is insightful, funny, clever, smart and
generally warm. I don't know where a single mom in her 40s who works
full time finds a few minutes to blog nearly every day, but it's
always nice to see a post by her."
· Says Lori Hahn (hahnathome.com): "The one local blog I read most
consistently is Beancounters (beancounters.blogs.com). She's got a
sense of humor similar to mine and says things about her job that I
would love to say."
· Says "Pamela" at Beancounters (beancounters.blogs.com): "Postcards
from Sacramento (mayagirl.blogspot.com). Maya lives the urban life in
downtown Sacramento, and shares the things she finds there, like
Vietnamese sandwiches and out-of-the way places."
* * *
A whirlwind decade of development
January 1994: Swarthmore College student Justin Hall starts a site,
"Links from the Underground."
January 1995: Carolyn Burke begins her "Online Diary."
September 1997: Slashdot starts a "News for Nerds" message board.
December 1997: Web site manager Jorn Barger coins the term "weblog."
The term catches on, although Barger's blog about tech issues does
not.
March 1999: LiveJournal, a virtual community where users can keep
blogs, launches.
April 1999: Blogger and programmer Peter Merholz shortens "weblog" to
"blog" in a posting -- and the term sticks.
August 1999: The first free blog- creation service is introduced.
January 2000
Popular tech blog Boing Boing is launched.
August 2000: The first two advertising models for blogs are created.
February 2002: "Dooced" becomes a verb ("to be fired for blogging
about work") after Heather Armstrong is fired for content on her own
blog, dooced.com.
November 2002: Gawker.com, the first popular gossip site, is launched.
December 2002: The blog Talking Points Memo writes about Sen. Trent
Lott's positive comments about segregation. Lott later resigns his
position as Senate majority leader.
June 2003: Google initiates a program that matches ads to content on
blogs.
December 2004: Merriam-Webster dictionary names "blog" as its "Word of
the Year."
March 2005: Perez Hilton launches his popular Los Angeles gossip site
and popularizes the use of scribbling graphics on celebrity photos.
June 2006: Technorati reports that more than 50 million individual
blogs have been registered.
April 2007: Tech executive Tim O'Reilly calls for a "blogger code of
conduct" after blogger Kathy Sierra receives death threats.
Sources: New York magazine, blogstar.com, technorati.com