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Understanding why blogs are important

August 29, 2007 in Web 2.0, blogging, blogs, journalism
As a respite to all the recent exchange of verbal blows over blogging and journalism, this is a refreshing op-ed in The Guardian from co-founder of Salon.com Scott Rosenberg.

He avoid getting into a fruitless debate about whether blogging is journalism and instead talks about how “from the dawn of blogging it’s been tempting for established professionals to reject blogging as trivial and unreliable”.

Most journalists’ understanding of the nature of blogging has been circumscribed by a focus on how it might affect our profession. We write articles about whether blogging can be journalism, we worry about whether bloggers can or will replace journalists, and we miss the real stories.

Blogs provide a tool for free expression, and this is something that journalists regularly campaign for. So it is ironic that they should fear, dismiss or undermine others who seek to have a voice.

As Rosenberg argues, “blogging has redrawn the line between private communication and mass publication”, as it allows anyone to share their life experience with an audience.

Rosenberg’s insight is to make a distinction between the publication of a post and the viewing of a post. “When anyone can publish anything, the moment of truth isn’t when you press the post button, it’s when others choose to read what you’ve said.”

This is a fundamental point. The value of a blog is not decided by its author but by its readers. Each of us can decide whether or not to spend our time on a blog. How we value the contribution of each and every blog is a personal decision. The web means we can be our own editors, investing our time in the media that helps us understand the world, be it a blog or a newspaper website. ( This artical was found on Reportr.net)

Wikipedia Definition Of A Blog

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Blog (disambiguation).
"Blogger" redirects here. For the blog publishing system owned by Google, see Blogger (service).
A blog (a contraction of the term "Web log") is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual [1], with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.
Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketches (sketchblog), videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), audio (podcasting), which are part of a wider network of social media. Micro-blogging is another type of blogging, one which consists of blogs with very short posts. As of December 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 112 million blogs.[2] With the advent of video blogging, the word blog has taken on an even looser meaning — that of any bit of media wherein the subject expresses his opinion or simply talks about something.