W. Caleb McDaniel, writing for Common-place, on Blogging in the Early Republic: Why bloggers belong in the history of reading:
Just five years ago, blogs were still a rarity, but since September 11, 2001, their numbers have skyrocketed. The growth has been especially staggering among “poliblogs” and “warblogs,” many of which model themselves on the punditry of sites like Glenn Reynolds’s Instapundit. By the 2004 election, prominent bloggers like Ana Marie Cox of Wonkette were being invited to the presidential nominating conventions of both parties, and mainstream news organizations have proclaimed polibloggers a force to be reckoned with. In 2002, Joshua Marshall, who blogs at Talking Points Memo, helped to discredit former Senate majority leader Trent Lott for his statements on racial segregation, which led to Lott’s eventual resignation. More recently, bloggers exposed forged memos used by CBS News for a story on President Bush’s military service during the Vietnam War.
This, at least, is the conventional history of blogging. But the story is a skewed one. Although famous poliblogs receive the lion’s share of attention from bloggers and journalists alike, most blogs go largely unnoticed by the mainstream media. Of the millions of blogs tracked by Technorati, the vast majority are not concerned primarily with political influence or alternative journalism. There are knitting blogs, book blogs, poetry blogs, academic blogs, cooking blogs, photo blogs, religion blogs, gossip blogs, teaching blogs, parenting blogs, and more.
McDaniel's article, which compares blogging to historic journalistic practices, is well worth a read.
Link courtesy of Rose Miller in the July 21 edition of Utne Web Watch.