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In college, to satisfy a requirement, I took an introduction-to-music class. I was fortunate to have for an instructor Henry Cowell . Cowell was a legendary modernist composer, performer and theoretician who undertook the teaching of Music 101 with remarkable grace. He began the first class session by explaining that he felt called upon, in that academic setting, to begin with a definition of music. He told us that he had wrestled with the task, and the best he could come up with was, "a tone or series of tones intended to produce an effect on a listener." I tell this anecdote here for two reasons. For one, I feel called upon to define 'blogs' in order to explain them. And I note with respect the blogger's intention--the urge to not simply record, but to produce an effect on the viewer--to stimulate discussion. 'Blog' is at its simplest a light and humorous contraction of the phrase 'Web Log'--a personal journal published on the World Wide Web. But it's not that simple. Blogging takes several forms. Blog sites are like things we knew before the Internet:
There are key differences from these traditional forms, because the Blogsites are available just about everywhere, all the time.
Form and Content An increasing number of blogs are the product not of an individual but of an organization with an agenda. It is now routine, for example, for a political campaign to have a blog area on the website, so that interested citizens can have their say about the candidate and the issues.  This is the banner for the campaign website of Brad Carson, a Democratic Congressman running for the U.S. Senate in Oklahoma. Notice that there are just a few principal links, one of them to the campaign blog. By several estimates, above four million of the websites in the world are blogs. A recent survey found that about 5% of the people in the U.S. with Internet access either have a blogsite or have had one, and 17% read at least one such site regularly. After a number of mind numbing rambles among them, I can report that an awful lot of them are really intended just for a small circle--family, close friends--and hold only a voyeuristic charm for anyone else. Many. Another substantial part of the blogosphere is inhabited by sites intended for all of us, but offering only the opinions of people who are, to be kind, not profound thinkers. Ego and rant. Of course there are many blogs that are thoughtful and worthy of attention, often focused on a single topic of interest to the blogger--a hobby, a crusade, a field of human knowledge. And, since blogging is now a significant field of human endeavor, there are an increasing number of blogs devoted to the subject of blogs and blogging. At the beginning--less than ten years ago--a person needed to know how to write HTML code to make pages for a website. Around five years ago, blog software started to appear, which made it fairly simple to publish to the web and update a site. This software also facilitates 'archiving,' so that the front page does not become enormously large as items are added, yet keeps the older postings accessible. And there is software for the easy addition of comments by others.
An important aspect of blogging in these early days has been 'community.' Bloggers read each other's blogs, and offer comments about them as blogs as well as commenting about the subject at hand. And, importantly, bloggers link compulsively. Blogs get new readers in three ways. They get readers through word-of-net: "oh, boy, check out this one." People find them through search engines like Google and Yahoo!. And blogs are found through links from other blogs. "If you like my blog, then you will like …" Or, "here are some blogs I like." But the motive for linking is often not quite so pure as that. Blogs are rated for popularity by the number of visitors, and by the number of other sites that link to them. So bloggers who care about being found are encouraged to provide links to each other. When bloggers refer to each other, on their sites and in comments on other sites, first names are used. It is part of the cozy feeling of a small community people like to have. 'Newby' (a person new to the blogosphere) is a slightly derogatory term. People commenting on an obviously newby comment will gently chide any failings of the unspoken but widely held codes of deportment. (No 'flames'--personal attacks. No unsolicited links in the text. No spam. No obviously commercial solicitations--although, more about this later). The not-so-subtle implication is, "Oh, God, 'our thing' is being taken over by all these new people …." There are now Blog Meetups a rather curious yet charming inversion of the blog aesthetic. Here are all these people in the same place at the same time, without links and with their comments not recorded. Of course, there are people with laptops and digital cameras blogging at the meetup; and after the meetup there will be a lot of postings about it, to get it on the record. The unofficial historian of the blogosphere is Rebecca Blood, who offers sane and enthusiastic views of the phenomenon. Another leading figure is David Winer, of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard. His group sponsored BloggerCon this spring, a conference that brought together many souls who toil long hours alone at their computers, to discuss:
Let me assure you that they decided it is the big thing, and not the little one. So millions of people are publishing their inmost thoughts, their poems and their opinions about music and politics and current events, and reporting the activities of their pets. Is the sheer volume of information and comment provided by blogs, and our unlimited access to it, creating a new thing? If so, can we yet determine what that thing is (and what it is not)? Noted author and columnist Andrew Sullivan, former editor of the New Republic, is now a major blogger. He says, "… this much is clear: The phenomenon is real. Blogging is changing the media world and could … foment a revolution in how journalism functions in our culture." In an interview published in May of 2002 on wired.com, Sullivan makes the case this way. "Blogs … are personal. Almost all of them are imbued with the temper of their writer. This personal touch is much more in tune with our current sensibility than were the opinionated magazines and newspapers of old. Readers increasingly doubt the authority of The Washington Post or National Review …. They know that behind the curtain are fallible writers and editors who are no more inherently trustworthy than a lone blogger who has earned a reader's respect." And unlike mainstream media-broadcast, newspapers, newsletters, books or posters-the cost of production and distribution is no longer a factor: Intermediaries-publishers, printers, distributors, vendors-are gone. One snippet from Sullivan's quote--"earned the reader's respect"--catches the eye. You can only judge the trustworthiness of the content if it's something with which you are familiar. (Ted Sturgeon once famously noted that 'Time Magazine seems so authoritative, except when they cover something you know something about'). There are contrarians who do not see blogging as the next big thing. John C. Dvorak, in his PC Magazine column last November, foresaw big media Co-opting the future: "We're told that blogs will evolve into a unique source of information and are sure to become the future of journalism. Well, hardly. Two things are happening to prevent such a future: The first is wholesale abandonment of blog sites, and the second is the casual co-opting of the blog universe by Big Media…. we have the emergence of the professional blogger working for large media conglomerates and spewing the same measured news and opinions we've always had--except for fake edginess, which suggests some sort of independent, counterculture, free-thinking observers. … These are not the hard-hitting independent voices we were promised. They are just a new breed of columnist with a gimmick and a stern corporate editor." (Dvorak does maintain a rather blog-like personal site, http://www.dvorak.org/about.html) But Dvorak is right about the 'wholesale abandonment.' In fact, while you were not paying close attention, the number of new blog sites (they find them, they count them--it is not for us to understand) has 'flat-lined.' The number of new sites continues to increase, but the number of sites seemingly abandoned or no longer in existence is rapidly increasing. Because, for one thing, it becomes a chore for most people, despite early enthusiasm, to keep the damn thing going. Or they simply run out of things to say. It happens. Commercial co-optation of the Blogosphere The co-optation is even more pervasive and slippery than Dvorak discusses. Example: a recording company wants to promote a music CD. They advertise and do all the usual promotional activities. But they also, it is reputed, have a network of kids browsing blogs to find those that seem amenable and offer comment space. The shill then writes a personal, gushy tribute to the great new CD she just heard. A further evolution of this commercial use of blogging finds corporate blogsites for products. The hope is, the fresh voices of 'real people' will provide a more direct connection with the brand, among people who can identify with the blogger. The giant Saatchi & Saatchi advertising group has started `Lovemarks: the future beyond brands.` The basis is to create and manipulate the emotional connection people have with brands. It's a topic for a different time, but the point is, one pillar of Lovemarks is blogging.  On the subject of Lovemarks, and to give you the flavor of the blogs, an unnamed critic at the Gawker website comments,
Pamela Parker writes about the new technologies and their nefarious uses in marketing for the ClickZNetwork. In a May, 2004 article, Wrangling the Blogosphere, she quotes Pete Blackshaw, CMO at the internet marketing consulting firm Intelliseek, on the positives of using blogs to build a positive image for a product. Blackshaw tells her, "Influencers really matter. The whole notion that there are outspoken, expressive, highly viral experts who offer a highly credible point of view should be a really important part of the marketing equation." Parker continues, 'Blackshaw points out blog entries such as product reviews, comments on products or services, and rants against brands frequently show up on search engines when people look for product information. Blackshaw's own blog rant about his disappointment with his hybrid car's mileage ended up in a Wired News story. It's currently ranked third in a Google search for 'hybrid car mileage.' 'Word of mouth is a form of advertising, it's a form of media,' Blackshaw said. 'This media is getting in front of consumers at these inflection points where they are unsure about how they feel about a product.'" Intelliseek offers marketers BlogPulse, "a online discovery tool that measures and analyzes 'buzz' in more than 1 million blogs." The notion is, trends can be detected by tracking new mentions in blogs. Presumably, because blogs are in some way, authentic. But the notion is to co-opt them and thereby make them less authentic. Which seems to defeat the purpose, but by then there will be a new marketing initiative under way. Although number one in places to live, as to whether we are number one in any measure of the blogosphere, I know not. But we sure have plenty. Here are a few, of unusual quality and interest: Gus Mueller was a very young man in the area ten or eleven years ago, and started posting his Musings of the Gus for the amusement and edification of a circle of friends--and anyone else who cared to browse. He offers highly personal views of Charlottesville people and places in the drug, art and music scene of the mid- to late-nineties. He tells us with wry nostalgia, via email June 2, "Those eight years of accounts are a good chronicle of the way youth slowly dies in the soul of a man." Now in his mid-thirties and living near Woodstock, New York, he has seen a benefit from keeping stuff up on the web: "There was Gretchen, my long-lost college sweetheart who Googled herself and found something I'd written about her [years before]. We got married two and a half years later." Helena Cobban, long-time contributor to the Christian Science Monitor (and an occasional commentator on this site), writes and hosts Just World News by Helena Cobban.  She writes civilized yet passionate journal entries, focused on international affairs. The look of the page is cool--as are the colors. Her background and experience make her deeply credible. We asked her why she even bothers to blog--she has other outlets for her writing. She tells us, via email May 31:
Rey Barry is also a friend of this site with a blog of his own. The Freeware Hall of Fame is chock full of writings and links on a startlingly eclectic range of topics. The mixture of colors and typefaces in his banner is an indication of what you'll find.  Insightful, sometimes curmudgeonly and often droll, with lots of local history and commentary-it was started many years ago, long before the web, and has lived as a newsletter, a bulletin board and web pages. Barry gets a lot of visitors, and notes in an email of June 1 that "Four of my pages have proven very popular: myths.html which explodes popular American myths, email.html which is an Internet standards guide to proper use of email, spam.html which is a constantly changing guide to spam laws, and acronyms.html, a guide to common shorthand expressions found on the web." Over in the Anthropology Department at UVa, Prof. David Sapir runs Fixing Shadows. Dedicated to a strongly-held notion of 'straight' photography, he searches out and posts photos from throughout the history of the field, along with his comments and the critical writings of others.  Cvillenews.com has a front page both handsome and sedate. Brief statements about news and issues of local (or wider) interest are set by the moderator (often Cvillenews founder Waldo Jaquith, who also maintains a web log, a classic personal site, at http://www.waldo.net/). Comments about the news items are invited--they are the point, actually--and while individual contributions are usually brief and pointed, the threads can be become lengthy. Politics lends itself to personal expression--things are so indefinite--and expression is the heart of blogging. Some commentators whose names come up a lot among political blog-browsers, in addition to Andrew Sullivan quoted above, are Joshua Micah Marshall, who publishes Talking Points Memo; Glen Reynolds, the InstaPundit and Juan Cole's Informed Comment. And our own Helena Cobban, who writes the previously-mentioned Just World News. Paul Goldman, the well known Virginia political strategist (best known as Doug Wilder's campaign manager in his successful run for Governor in 1989) voices strong opinions at Politics US. A voice of reason worth looking up is Chris Cagle, who produces Left-Center-Left in Boston. One useful aspect of this Blogsite is the list (mercifully short) of recommended sites. Josh Scott of the Center for Politics at UVa is enthusiastic about political blogs. He emails us (May 29), "These websites provide a great forum to see pure democracy at its best--real people expressing real opinions in an effort to inform and persuade readers. … Scott goes on to mention another, newer phenomenon: "Blogs are becoming de rigueur on political websites, but the people that read or participate in those discussions generally have one of two purposes: 1) to support their candidate and their own personal beliefs, or 2) to completely disrupt the discussion and use the site as a sounding board for opposing ideas. "Either way, the candidate blogs impart a feeling of intimacy with a candidate that you don't get through TV ads, and it can be an effective method to inform and fire up your base supporters." History will judge, but the preponderance of the evidence is that the Democratic Primary campaigns last year, and especially Howard Dean's campaign, kicked use of the Internet by political campaigns to the next level. For years campaigns have had websites, but they were more like on-line pamphlets, with email as the mechanism for communication with the campaign. The Dean campaign saw the value of interactivity and public postings. Seeing someone else's blog, another real person just like you, on the Dean site reinforced positive feelings. The website created a mass of quite dedicated volunteers. Campaign staffers were constantly reading, commenting upon the blogs, and updating the pages. They were able to provide a quick response to negative postings, and to keep the comments current with events in the campaign. The fact that the Dean campaign's innovations did not translate into primary votes is quite a separate issue. David Swanson points out that it was still the vastly larger mainstream media that told the story of Howard Dean to the general (voting) public.
 Both Kerry and Bush have blog sections on their campaign websites. Here's a negative posting, in its entirety, from the Kerry Campaign website Blog Pages, with an editorial comment added before it by a campaign staffer, and an instant answer.
A cynic might opine that the thing could be a setup-the negative put there by a Kerry supporter as a straw man to be skewered by the campaign staffer. Capitalizing on the 'real person' feel of a blog through trickery is an increasing problem for the blogosphere. And the Kerry Core offers a new spin, a further journey into the blogosphere. They'll guide you into setting up your personal blog for Kerry. "As a registered Kerry Core member you will have your own web page that you can send to friends for contributions. You can track your totals and deliver a personal message to your friends on behalf of John Kerry." (from the website). Bloggers will be credentialed for the Democratic National Convention in Boston this summer. In prior years, it was open only to representatives of accredited news organizations. Mike Hurlbut of the DNC Press Gallery spoke with us by phone on June 10. "It's a matter of how many people we get [applying], and how much room we have. At this point we have no particular criteria--the deadline [for applications] is the 15th, and then we'll outline it a little more…."
Kris Eisenla is the Director of Web Development for the previously mentioned Brad Carson campaign for the U.S. Senate in Oklahoma. His enthusiasm for blogging makes the phone vibrate as we speak, on June 9. "Coming out of the [Democratic] primaries we've seen that this new technology is exciting.... We get instant feedback on issues, policy ... [our opponent] will run [an attack] TV ad and you get a response right away, donations, comments.... The Blogs are mostly written by campaign staff (and the Congressman himself), along with some invited blogs. Contributions from the electorate are posted to the Comments section, "People may not respond directly to a policy issue--they may use [their comment] as a segue into something else they want to talk about," Eisenla explains. Comments are not mediated or edited in advance. Says Eisenla, "I guess that's a little risky, but you know, if someone writes something inflammatory, you'll see 15 or 20 people come in and write defending the campaign or whatever." We asked him about the part of the electorate who are not Internet users. He acknowledges that they are out there, but is not too concerned. "People talk to other people. [If they're motivated] they'll go over to the neighbors, or the library [to use a computer]. ... people in Oklahoma appreciate the opportunity. We're giving them something new....the connection is so direct." Another cause for Eisenla's enthusiasm is the way Brad Carson has taken to his own campaign blog. "He uses it to communicate one-on-one with a voter. It's a direct organic traditional grass-roots campaign mechanism [that the blogging] has uplifted -- really, [it has in a way] returned [us] to the old days." The Tony Knowles campaign for U.S. Senate in Alaska is another with a serious, interactive blog section on its website. Gus Gustafson, at one time a campaign worker in Virginia and now with the Knowles campaign has expressed serious concerns about the effectiveness of blogging for political campaigns.  Casey Fenton runs the website for the Knowles campaign. He tells us that each topic on the blog is hosted by an individual who has that topic as a special interest--the environment, say, or national defense or local Alaskan issues. We spoke by telephone on May 10. He acknowledges that postings are reviewed and extremes of language or opinion might be lightly edited, but nothing would be removed. Fenton says their intention is to keep it "totally open, and also keep the operation [of the website] as simple as possible." He says that the campaign likes getting the blogs and comments because they "Offer a kind of personal input you don't get any other way." Locally, Rep. Virgil Goode Jr.'s campaign website not only does not have a blog, it doesn't even offer an email address for communication with the campaign--just a mailing address and a telephone number. But an unhappy constituent in Franklin County named Joe Stanley has started the Goode Report, to keep tabs on what is seen as the egregious actions of the Congressman.  The Al Weed campaign for Congress against Goode has a prominent blog section--but it really doesn't qualify as a true blog, under the criteria we're using here. [As a personal note, the writer of this piece was for a time on staff with the Weed campaign, although he had no connection with the development or implementation of the website.] The Weed blog publishes staff and volunteer-written entries to add that personal touch and convey the feeling of what it was like to be at an event with the candidate. And there are candidate-written comments on issues and events (at this writing, it features an appreciation of Ronald Reagan by Al Weed). But the public is not invited to post to the blog, and there is no mechanism for the inclusion of comments about the blog postings that are there. A forthcoming 'Reality TV' series, American Candidate has a website where blogs mimic the blogs of 'real' campaign. The producers encouraged those who wanted to try to get on the show to post to blogs to a site that the host network, Showtime, provides. (At this writing, there are over 400 blogs on the site. The show will proceed with 12 candidates, to be whittled down, week by week, to the candidate). The hopefuls were encouraged to think that they were using the Blog site to advance their chances to get on the show. Not so fast. The blog sites certainly provide promotion for the show to the blog-hopping public. But they don't advance the chances of the individuals who have created them for themselves. Here we have co-optation of the blogosphere by a commercial interest with unwitting bloggers. Of the millions of Blogs out there, there a few that deserve a look because they are long-established, highly reputable and quite interesting--you are invited to suggest your favorites, and explain why they deserve inclusion.  Kuro5hin is one (the name is pronounced 'corrosion' and stems from an arcane techie injoke) and Slashdot is another. Slashdot is one of the longest-established blog sites, and the content is primarily related to technical issues surrounding internet-related software. When is it Like a Blog but not Really a Blog? With a topic as amorphous and rapidly-evolving as the world of blogs, drawing a strict line of definition is impossible. A wonderful example of a website that encourages personal comment is the Virtual Community Chalkboard hosted by the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Freedom of Expression in Charlottesville. There are two pretty good reasons why it is not a blog:
A Cyberzine is a magazine that happens to be published on the Internet instead of appearing on the magazine racks. An eminent example is our friend Katherine McNamara's archipelago, a wonderful literary magazine that while classic in design and organization, takes advantage of the benefits of electronic publishing and Internet distribution. While it is an expression of one person's taste, it is not bloggish. In fact, it is so well-mannered that the word blog itself falls more heavily on the ear when used in this paragraph.  More problematic, if one is drawing a line between blogs and not-blogs, is David Budbill's self-styled Cyberzine the Judevine Mountain Emailite: "An On-line and On-going Journal of Politics and Opinion." It is the expression of one person's views--in this case, Vermont poet and litterateur Budbill--and while irregular in publication, is archived, provides links, and invites comment. So it is a blog, and not a Cyberzine, by our definition. But Budbill can call it what he likes until there is a little more discipline in these matters. He says, (via electronic mail June 16), "I always thought I couldn't be a blog--not that I wanted to be--because 1. I didn't do it DAILY and 2. I published not only my own writing but essays and poems by lots and lots of other people also, thus it seemed, seems, to me THE JUDEVINE MOUNTAIN EMAILITE is much more like the print magazines I used to be a part of." An Ezine, to continue parsing the subject, is an electronic newsletter. Often the product of a special interest organization or academic discipline, the 'zine is focused on a particular field, is published on a regular schedule, and its primary mode of distribution is often through email to a list of subscribers--although many Ezines do also appear on a website. The Blogosphere--a Global Village at Last? Our paradigm of democracy is the agora, or in more recent terms, the town meeting. People getting together for a purpose, mutually accountable; often, well known to each other. Marshall McLuhan in the early '60s famously introduced the concept of the Global Village. In his formulation, the Global Village was the result of the rapid and pervasive growth of what we now call the mainstream media. He saw increasing, worldwide access to information as a trend that would continue-the Internet, emerging many years later, feels like a reasonable extension of his analysis. And Blogging is Internet prime. It takes the Web and gives it life, through interactivity and personality and institutional memory. Blogging offers information and opinion on topics so teeny and personal that only the writer really understands them; and topics so grand that one gasps in admiration at being permitted to glimpse them. Rant and ego, certainly, but also the calm, reasoned voices of the grownups.
A lot like a village. (Dave Sagarin, June 11, 2004)
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