Dante Chinni of the Christian Science Monitor on Journalism's fear and loathing of blogs:
Blogs, or weblogs – websites on which a person or a group of people opines about events, reports what's been heard, or simply links to other sites (many of which are also blogs) – are the latest concern among journalists who look at them with curiosity and fear.
Many believe blogs are a dangerous direct competitor to mainstream journalism – a way for individuals and interest groups to reach around the gatekeeper function that newspapers, magazines, TV, and radio have traditionally held. Some even see them as the future of journalism; an army of citizen journalists bringing the unfiltered news to a public hungry for the inside dope.
Thomas Claburn of Information Week on Survey: Blog Readership Skyrocketing:
In six years, blogs have gone from navel-gazing online diaries to must-read Internet publications that rival the reach and influence of traditional media properties.
A new study from online research firm comScore Networks Inc. reveals that 50 million U.S. Internet users visited blog sites in the first quarter of this year, up 45% from the first quarter of 2004. That represents about 30% of all U.S. Internet users, or a sixth of the total U.S. population.
Antone Gonsalves of Internet Week on Nearly A Third Of Online Americans Have Visited Blogs:
The number of people in the United States who visited web logs in the first quarter of the year reached 50 million, and each of the top four hosting services for blogs on the Internet topped 5 million visitors, a web metrics firm said Monday.
The number of Americans visiting blogs amounted to 30 percent of the total online U.S. population, an increase of 45 percent over the same period last year, ComScore Networks said.