Daniel Oppenheimer in the Valley Advocate talks to and about David Neiwert, journalist and author of the blog, Orcinus, in this article. Neiwert talks about how blogs can level the journalistic playing field. Everyone can participate and no one has special placement on the Web. However, he also warns that some spin doctors use blogs in too insular a fashion, which results in name calling and ass kissing. And that just doesn't help anyone. [Link][comments?][Karma: 8 ( + / - )]
No time to check up on the twenty or so blogs you like to peruse? No problem! You can use RSS to make blog updates come to you! The Contra Costa Times explains RSS technology, with which bloggers send out summaries of their posts to recipients signed up to receive the RSS feed, pretty well in this article. [Link][comments?][Karma: 10 ( + / - )]
Playbill.com reports on an off-Broadway show that featured readings from blog posts. Worst. Sex. Ever. featured 11 bloggers reading excerpts about their ill-fated quests for love from their blogs. I wonder how the audience reacted to seeing the bloggers in person and hearing the posts being read out loud. I'm sorry I missed it. [Link][comments?][Karma: 16 ( + / - )]
The Stanford Daily reports that their "Writing and Rhetoric Lecturer Christine Alfano" is using blogs in her class as a means of communication between her and her students. The students post ideas and thoughts about what they're studying and others are allowed to reply. This form of blog is more akin to bulletin boards, such as those used in the distance learning application, WebCT, and one that I will distance myself from in my thesis. Although bulletin-board-type blogs are useful and probably easier to use than other bulletin board applications, they don't correlate to diaries in that the reader is invited to participate and become an author. Readers can then overtake the discussion and usurp authority from the original author. In contrast, I will focus on diary-type blogs and try to figure out how the public nature and electronic form of the blog changes the context of the diary. [Link][comments?][Karma: 15 ( + / - )]
Guy Clapperton, a columnist for various U.K. publications, has started a blog in which he comments about various bits of news and how the U.K. media are covering them. It's very interesting insight into U.K. journalism; something I don't know much about. [Link][comments?][Karma: 15 ( + / - )]
According to the Guardian Unlimited, Tony Blair might blog during the next general election. [Link][comments?][Karma: 10 ( + / - )]
Katy Butler in today's Salon describes her experience as an active Howard Dean supporter. She says that after she started posting regularly to Dean's Blog for America, she lost her sense of reality. She says: "I'm not sure exactly what day it happened, but sometime during that September and October, I forgot that I'd stood at that truck near a Borders bookstore on a windy May evening for something bigger than candidate Dean. I got fascinated by us -- the campaign, its explosive growth, the money, the story, and the growing likelihood, given the polls and the traffic on the blogsite, that our candidate might actually win." The Zogby polls, which showed that Dean was experiencing some type of popularity, contributed to this enthusiasm. It seemed that people who were not frequenting Dean's Web site were also interested in him. Eventually, his poll numbers in Iowa dipped. Butler says, "We were talking less and less to strangers and more and more to each other" [meaning, Dean supporters]. Perhaps the growing insularity contributed to the drop in poll numbers? This break from reality can also be seen in the speech Dean made after the Iowa results came in. According to Butler, who was there in the audience, neither Dean nor Senator Tom Harkin addressed the disappointment of Dean supporters. Rather, they acted as if Dean won. I understand why Dean would want to keep up the enthusiasm, but he can't ignore the reality of the loss. It seemed that Dean and his supporters (me included) got too carried away with the blogging phenomenon. In hindsight, of course there was a big chance that our enthusiasm wouldn't be shared with other, non-Internet-using voters. I think Internet sites tend to mostly attract people who are looking for them in the first place, especially after the rise of search engines. Blogs seem like a good way to spread the word around, but it's easy to get too comfortable in the "me too" environment blogs and online bulletin boards tend to create. [Link][2 comments][Karma: 9 ( + / - )]
Christopher Farah in his Salon column, The Fix, brings up an ethical dilemma faced by bloggers who write under pseudonyms. Some of these bloggers critique and insult journalists and other public figures. The bloggers say they decided to write anonymously because they're afraid for their jobs. They fear that either their opinions will not be tolerated by their bosses, or that working on their blogs during work hours would reflect badly on them. That’s nice, but journalists’ livelihoods are at stake when they don’t perform ethically. Ideally, if a journalist commits plagiarism, he or she is fired. If they write off-the-wall, whack job columns or books, they’re more than likely branded by at least some people as a whack job and their book sales will go down. Journalists are force to stand by the integrity of their very names. If an anonymous blogger commits plagiarism or libel, there’s no accounting for his or her actions because there’s no one to trace the blog to. They won’t even loose their jobs if they publish something blatantly false. But is the blogging world different from the real world? Wouldn’t a blog die if enough people deem to be unworthy? Does it matter if these bloggers don’t use their real names? As with anything else one reads, I suppose it’s best to just read things with a smudgeon of cynicism. |
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