Attack of the Blog

blog (blog) n: a personal website that provides updated headlines and news articles of other sites that are of interest to the user; also may include journal entries, commentaries and recommendations compiled by the user; contraction of web log.

They’ve been hailed as the “new journalism” by their champions and likened to a “one man circle-jerk” by critics like New York Times editor Bill Keller. Either way you see them, blogs are the biggest thing to hit cyberspace since broadband (well...almost). Blogs are like the instant message of web publishing, and with the advent of free, user-friendly online host applications like Blogger, over the last few years it’s become as easy as typing an e-mail to give everyone on the web a piece of your mind.

Blogs are providing much more than just live journal forums for teen angst—they’re revolutionizing the way people share ideas. In particular, the blogosphere has become a valuable tool for grassroots organizers, making it much easier for activists to network and collaborate on alternative policy ideas and actions. Skirting FCC regulations and not beholden to corporate owners and the demands of news for profit, blogs also provide a medium for truly independent grassroots journalism. Blogs place a premium on attitude and instantaneity, and unlike some big news outlets, bloggers tend not to mince words or pretend to be “fair and balanced” when they’re not.

Though they’ve been derided by traditionalists for lacking journalistic integrity, bloggers have won some measure of respect for their ability to do in-depth research and fact-checking and corroborate quickly on developing stories. Blogs have started to be recognized as legit news sources over the last couple years for pushing stories that would otherwise be ignored by mainstream press. You can thank bloggers (Josh Marshall of Talking Point Memo, in particular) for headlines that forced former Senate majority leader Trent Lott to give up his seat to Bill Frist in 2002, and for pushing network news for coverage of military mothers for peace and government negligence in precipitating the crisis in New Orleans more recently.

Not all blogs are political or progressive— in the blogosphere, as in the realm of mainstream punditry, right-wing blowhards have insidiously established a solid foothold. Here are some of the heavyweights that are part of the “reality based community” blogging from the left:

Daily Kos – the king of blogs, with 500,000 hits daily
http://www.dailykos.com

Josh Marshall – progressive columnist
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com

Rox Populi – a witty female perspective
http://roxanne.typepad.com/

Oliver Willis – “like kryptonite to stupid”
http://www.oliverwillis.com/

Juan Cole – Middle East expert
http://juancole.com

AmericaBLOG – focusing on gay civil rights
http://www.americablog.org

Huffington Post – everyone from Eve Ensler to RFK Jr.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com

Think Progress – blog of the Center for American Progress
http://www.thinkprogress.org

Blogspeak—from the blogherald.com

Blogger: person who keeps and/or writes a blog; also the name of Google’s blogging service.

Blogosphere: used to describe the world or community of blogs and blogging

Blogroll: a collection or list of links to other blogs and websites commonly featured on blogs. The word came into popular uses from the service of the same name. Sometimes referred to as link lists or bookmarks

Post: the term used to refer to an individual story or article on a blog, literally to post to a blog is to write an article or contribution, and a blog consists of multiple posts.

RSS: Rich Site Summary, or Really Simple Syndication: a form of XML used in the delivery of blog feeds, comes in various standards as well, 0.92, 1 and 2 are the most common forms of RSS.

TrackBack/ PingBack: A system that allows a blogger to see which other bloggers have referenced or written about a particular post.
The system works by sending a ‘ping’ between the blogs, and therefore providing the alert.

***DIY**************************************************************************************************
Get yer own blog hosted for free at http://www.blogger.com. You can also join existing blogging communities—
post at Daily Kos, MyDD, Guerrilla News Network, and Campus Progress, just to name a few.
Search the blogosphere using http://www.technorati.com by Heather Buchheim