Blogging: a personal medium is now the message

My article on blogging was published in the Australian Financial Review yesterday. Here is the text with links for those who want to look at some of the sources.

Five years ago there were a few dozen weblogs, now there are millions. Blogging attracts people because it is cheap and easy, great fun and informative. It offers a heady mixture of individuality and community participation yet it is much more than this - it is changing the way we share information and opinions.

Jay Rosen, a New York University journalism expert, sees blogging as much more than a fun thing to do on the internet. He sees a revolution coming and the main targets of that revolution are big media and traditional politics.
At the Davos World Economic Forum in January this year, Rosen compared weblogs to the original newspapers that appeared in London coffee houses in the early 18th century.
But there's a big difference in that the internet has made blogging available to millions of people and not just a small intellectual elite. The technology may be vastly different but the principle is the same - individuals can use their online "printing presses" to participate more fully in public debates.
Not everyone is as confident as Rosen about the future shape and effect of blogging. Elizabeth Albrycht, an American public relations consultant with considerable IT expertise says: "We are just starting to see what will happen with weblogs. As the masses jump into this, they will transform the medium through their use of it."
Rebecca Blood, author of The Weblog Handbook, also believes it is still too early to be definitive about blogging.
Regardless of that debate, millions of people write something every day for their weblogs with contributions that range from a few words to lengthy essays. They cover everything anyone could possibly be interested in. Some are excellent, many are appalling. A few will be read by tens of thousands, most by a handful of friends and colleagues and many are probably read by no one.
Blogging has been growing exponentially since 1999 when new services, like Blogger and Typepad, started putting web authoring within the reach of anyone free of charge or at most a few dollars a month.
"The [blogging] tools are so simple that anyone who is able to do an e-commerce transaction or send an email has the technical expertise to create a weblog," Blood says.
Back in 1994, internet enthusiasts were also talking about self-publishing for the masses but the catch was you had to know HTML, the coding for websites, how to set up servers and so on. Having the tools to publish
cheaply and easily is fine but what do all those people write about?
Blogcensus found last year that nearly one in two weblogs is a personal diary, making it by far the largest content category. Self-revelation has been an increasingly popular part of Western culture since Montaigne and Rousseau. Now, well over a million people are sharing their thoughts, feelings and perceptions with the world on a more or less regular basis.
These sites can be surprisingly popular. Loobylu ("dishing the fluff since 1999, knitting it since Saturday"), a gorgeously designed online diary by Melbourne illustrator Claire Robertson, was recently named Australia's best weblog. Another diarist, the evocatively named Mimi Smartypants, has reportedly signed a deal with HarperCollins for $US20,000 ($26,987) to publish her posts in book form.
Online political commentary seems to have received a big boost since September 11, the Iraq War and, in Australia, the Bali bombings. Just over 6 per cent of weblogs now fall into this category, according to Blogcensus.
Although it is a minority interest, the mental image of more than 100,000 highly opinionated political commentators hammering at their keyboards every day is truly daunting.
Rosen also told the Davos session that blogging is a "radical development" because "it turns consumers of media content into producers of media content".
In other words, blogging can turn passive media consumers into activists who link up to break the grip of corporate media and political elites over the flow of information and ideas.
Until the primary season kicked off in Iowa, the pin-up boy for this new
weblog-generated activism was presidential hopeful Dean, who used the internet to quickly raise $US41million from small donations, staff a 50-state campaign and go from an asterisk poll rating to frontrunner.
His crash showed that "the actual voting population is a very different audience" from the "early adopters" who have flocked to the blogosphere, according to Tom Murphy, the author of the blog PR Opinions (some thoughts and opinions on the public relations profession and industry). Analysis of the US blogging population supports Murphy's assessment. Statistics recently released by the Pew Research Centre, an independent opinion research group based in Washington, DC, that studies attitudes toward the press, politics
and public policy issues, suggest that bloggers make up between 2 and 7 per cent of American internet users, or 9 million people tops. At 11 per cent the proportion of internet users who have read weblogs is larger, but still not all that impressive.
Despite Dean's post-Iowa caucus "screamwreck", blogging by politicians seems set to become a feature of modern political campaigning. According to The Guardian, United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair is considering his own campaign weblog to make the next election "an engaging dialogue with the British people".
Really? If he does, he will be following the lead of Tom Watson, MP for West Bromwich East, who has been blogging since July 2001, making his one of the earliest political weblogs.
Some Deaniacs see more sinister forces at work and believe that their campaign's failure was due to a push by "big media" which is allegedly worried about the capacity of bloggers to undermine its privileged position
in the communications food chain. The endless, and excessive, repetition of Dean's scream is the key exhibit for conspiracy theorists.
However, the argument that traditional media and bloggers are locked in mortal combat is difficult to sustain.
"Comparing bloggers to professional journalists entirely misses the point," Blood says. "Each is doing something important, but they are doing two entirely different things."
Few bloggers have the resources or inclination to do anything that might resemble serious investigation and reporting. Bloggers, on the other hand, are under no obligation to be "balanced and fair" and the consequent
robustness, often virulence, of their efforts is appealing to large numbers of people.
Many weblogs provide a valuable service by finding and linking to existing online resources, usually with a few lines of additional commentary. Much of this material is, of course, generated by traditional media sources. Some of the popular sites - like InstaPundit and CalPundit - follow this "trawl and link" format, supplemented with commentary, as do the tens of thousands of sites with specialist audiences like PR Opinions.
Bloggers can also provide additional depth to the daily coverage of issues in their areas of expertise.
For instance, Australian academic economists John Quiggin and Stephen Kirchner (Institutional Economics), as well as trade consultant Peter Gallagher of Inquit, provided a stream of excellent analysis of the recent free trade agreement negotiations.
These efforts augment newspaper op-ed pages, as well as radio and TV current affairs, and many expert commentators who blog also use the media to get their views into the public arena.
By linking to each other, these specialist bloggers create large reservoirs of accessible material, allowing people to find out what experts are saying on a particular topic in a way that is easier and more rewarding than traditional search engines.
On the other hand, many major media outlets have already established weblogs, maintained by journalists, columnists and editors, and it is likely that the media will occupy an increasingly large share of the blogosphere in the years ahead.
The Guardian was one of the first media outlets to set up a weblog and it established annual awards in 2002 to recognise the best of British blogging. The paper also gave a fortnightly column to the legendary Salam Pax, the pseudonym for an Iraqi citizen who has been blogging from Baghdad since September 2002, and the newspaper recently published a book of his postings.
Moreover, the US presidential campaign has prompted an upsurge of media involvement in blogging and recognition of its importance.
The New Republic and the New York Times, among many others, have established weblogs to meet the audience desire for continuous coverage, while the Columbia Journalism Review is providing daily round-ups of weblog commentary, alongside its summaries of media campaign coverage.
Many media outlets, including The New York Times, BBC and The Guardian, also now offer blogger-friendly feeds for use in newsreaders like FeedDemon. These programs use XML (extensible markup language) and RSS (really simple syndication) to make it easy to monitor hundreds of weblogs and are a necessary tool for anyone serious about blogging.
Blogging is still fairly limited in Australia, though already some local commentators, notably Tim Blair and Quiggin, have built substantial international reputations and followings for their online contributions.
Blair and Quiggin represent two strands of commentary blogging. Blair is tabloid and provocative, something akin to a blogging shock jock, while Quiggin, though not dull, tends to stick more strictly to his academic and
policy orientations.
Blair's audience is much larger than Quiggin's. Audiences online, like those for traditional media, are attracted in greater numbers to provocative, even outlandish, viewpoints. Although blogging and journalism are different activities, the lines between them can become blurred.
In February Rex Hammock, a Nashville publishing company president, author of rexblog, caused a stir when he participated in a meeting on the economy with President George W. Bush, from which the media was excluded. Rex was so enthusiastic about the President's performance that he posted his impressions to his weblog, while in a taxi on the way to the airport immediately afterwards.
Hammock thinks it's all OK because he only said nice things about Bush, but the White House press corps was left wondering about the status of private meetings in a blog-soaked world.
There has also been a vigorous debate on the Columbia Journalism Review site, and elsewhere, about whether weblogs should be able to publish exit polls before voting finishes, or whether they should refrain as do media outlets to avoid influencing voters.
The question of personal weblogs maintained by journalists is also causing some consternation in newsrooms. The New York Times recently told Editor & Publisher magazine that it basically didn't like the idea. Personal blogs, because of their opinionated nature, raise all sorts of issues about
objectivity and credibility for newsrooms. While most are not as strict as the Times, Editor & Publisher concluded, based on its interviews, that just about every newsroom would have a couple of personal bloggers using anonymity to avoid management scrutiny.
Despite a growing media presence in blogging, most weblogs will continue to be the work of amateurs. And among these, Rosen says, "the most successful are done by individuals with a voice and a sensibility".
This emphasis on authenticity, and personal engagement with the audience, leads many blogging experts to be deeply sceptical about the prospects for blogging in the corporate world. Weblogs are personal, passionate and opinionated - all attributes rarely found in corporate communications.
Dublin PR practitioner Tom Murphy says he has experimented with executive weblogs and "the feedback from customers and staff has been extremely positive, but if a team of copywriters is posting the content under the name of the executive, it is usually very apparent - and readers won't like it".
Albrycht cautions "if you are not prepared to truly engage with your readers [be they customers, potential customers, partners, journalists, investors] you shouldn't bother with a weblog. You already have a website that takes care of static displays of brochureware."
Not everyone believes that the rewards on offer justify the time and commitment that goes into maintaining a weblog. Frank Catalano, a US technology consultant and commentator, recently abandoned his personal
weblog saying, in his final entry, that he could reach a bigger audience "writing a letter to the editor in Pocatello, Idaho". But he is maintaining his professional weblog, which evolved out of an email newsletter.
Blogging is evolving and the churn rates are high. But it is here to stay, and a few million enthusiasts are adding a whole new dimension to the way the world communicates.

Comments

[Trevor Cook]

Someone emailed me and asked about why I didn't put Margo Kingston in the article -
"I did consider Margo and yes I do think she can be considered a blog. I guess it was really a question of space. I had to edit down to meet the 2000 word limit - though that's a pretty poor excuse I guess. I hear that Margo draws a lot of traffic to the SMH site, so I probably should have mentioned her on that basis alone. Its actually a good example of the media using a blog to boost an otherwise fairly predictable news site. I wanted to use Blair and Quiggan as Australian examples because of their different styles and their international bloging reputations - which I don't think Margo has."

[city of phoenix]

greetings from phoenix, arizona. your site is wicked - hope you're proud.

[kimbofo]

Trevor, this is one of the best pieces I've ever read on the blogging phenomenon.

The thing that intrigues me as a trained journalist who works in publishing and maintains a personal blog is the legal aspect to the great tidal wave of opinion out there. There's a giant libel test case waiting to happen . . . probably worth a separate article in its own right.

[Neville Hobson]

A very good analysis, Trevor! I agree with you that blogging as a professional communication tool (as opposed to personal online diaries) is about to really take off.

Here in Europe, it's still pretty much in its infancy, viewed by many as a geeky kind of thing. But increasing numbers of companies are beginning to pay attention to this as a new or different channel to use to develop dialog with distinct audiences.

There is a fear factor for many people - and that's to do with change. Right now, blogging is about change: it represents a threat to the established way of doing things. But I think it's an irresistible force and presents great opportunities for those organizations and individuals who embrace it.

You have a very good blog, by the way! Useful and interesting info on organizational communication.

[Mark McGrath]

Trevor,

Nice primer on blogging, but I think you should have included probably the most popular political blog in Australia at the moment, Back Pages. Chris Sheil's blog is regularly pulling in excess of 6,000 page views per day and his site is now attracting over 150 comments per post.

There is key difference though between print columnists and bloggers that you didn't mention, which gives weblogs far greater potential...the ability to use their audience as a research network and roll a story forward with updates.

Good weblogs usually have a core of regular and informed posters that can use the web to research a story and post new information that keeps a story running. Having these core posters is like having your own research team on tap.

Most journalists nowadays, with the corporatisation of the media (downsizing, news syndication) would not have the research capacity of these more popular blogs.

Granted, the issue of editorial quality arises with blogs. But it's early days in the blogging world and over time I think you'll see some natural attrition and the emergence of quality bloggers who will draw and hold significant audiences.

Already we have two bloggers in Australia, Professor John Quiggin and Chris Sheil, who the Australian Financial Review pay to write columns. Tim Blair is also an ex-journalist with News Ltd.

Finally, political junkies, the columnist's target audience, find blogs (good ones) more attractive than op-ed pieces becuase they enable you to have a conversation with the writer and other posters, and engage on an issue, rather than just read.

Regards,
Mark McGrath

[panasianbiz]

I stumbled upon this site as I was in the process of doing some online research. As a dedicated blogger with several sites of my own, I found this discussion fascinating. No one would have imagined even ten years ago that blogging would become the phenomenon it has.