Those who have read my column at The Post Online have noticed my approach to information gathering: the Internet. But that's not credible
you say, Anyone can post anything on the Internet. Yes, but the same goes for television (after midnight), and we let our TV sets run our lives. Given a user is analytically savvy, virtually any source can be verified. Why is there still fear about the validity of the Internet?
Join me online one last time and I'll show you those who make verification their pastime and even their job. With millions of users logging online each day and demanding fresh content, the Internet has become the world's biggest newspaper and opinion exchange. This is the story of the weblog.
A weblog is a collection of musings and links updated regularly and delivered in small bites. The term was first coined for logging the web in 1997 by Jorn Barger, an Ohio-born writer and Internet author of http://robotwisdom.com. The noun evolved into a verb in 1999, meaning, to edit or post to one's weblog. Later that year, Blogger (http://www.blogger.com) erupted onto the scene. The first hosted weblog tools, Blogger allows users to bypass behind-the-scenes code and directly post the content.
With one click, anyone can log online and become a blogger. There are as many types of weblogs, or simply blogs, as there are chicken dishes at a Chinese buffet. From personal and political to collaborative and corporate, users have taken it upon themselves to pre-surf for you and talk about themselves in the process. There are even blogs for bloggers.
When I first logged online in 1996, online journals (a blog precursor) were all the rage. Insignificant people, many of them teenagers to young adults, earned a mini-Internet celebrity just by talking about their daily lives. For a while, I was one of them. With the hourly updates of most blogs now, online journals can't compete and most have been replaced by blogs.
The real world intervened and I've left my Web site behind, but that doesn't mean I've stopped participating. I make my rounds at certain blogs each day to get my news. One of these bloggers, Jason Kottke of http://kottke.org, has recently quit his job and turned his attention to full-time blogging. While some think his decision is silly, I think he's one step ahead of the competition.
Kottke's decision affirms that what started as exclusive and unique has become the norm. In recent years, bloggers redefined the Iraq war through online blog correspondence, unearthed the Kaycee Nicole Internet Hoax (http://www.rootnode.org/article.php?sid=26) and demanded Dan Rather be fired for last year's 60 Minutes faux-pas concerning the authenticity of President Bush's military service documents (http://www.rathergate.com/).
The blogosphere has proved itself in the journalistic realm and, frankly, the media isn't prepared. Instead of acknowledging the blogger's cry for truth, American media attempts to undermine it whenever possible. According to a March 3 CNN/Gallup poll, only 26 percent of 1,008 American adults said they were very familiar or somewhat familiar with blogs. Only 7 percent said they read a blog at least a few times a week.
The headline for this story, Most Americans unfamiliar with blogs (http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/03/03/poll.blogs/) doesn't include young adults as part of the poll, which -I am convinced -would have greatly skewed the outcome. Nor does it mention the age range, Internet access or free time of those interviewed. I don't wanna believe, with the estimated 34.5 million blogs in the world according to The Blog Herald, that these blogs aren't being read.
Bloggers, young and old, are redefining the Internet and the media is at once resistant of their intrusion. Will bloggers take away their jobs? Both groups are combing, linking and wading through heaps of information in order to discover what is true, what is interesting and what is absurdly silly. While bloggers keep the journalists on their toes, but I don't think they'll be replacing journalism jobs anytime soon.
They're much too busy posting about themselves.
-Caren Baginski is a junior journalism major who thanks her readers and their encouragement this quarter. Read her companion article online at The Post Online or send her an e-mail at caren.baginski@ohiou.edu.
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