http://ojr.org/ojr/glaser/1084325287.php
It discusses whether blogs can be considered journalism and asks what impact they really have on other media and on public opinion. What I really liked was this quote:
"Many people pay attention to the very small world of blogging that goes on among people who are already some form of public intellectual. Yet there are tens of thousands of other communities, some of them quite small, that remain somewhat removed from view. Many of us are still in the 'mass' mindset of the last century and are missing the fact that there are blogospheres, not a single mass of bloggers.The neighborhoods of local experts, the opinion leaders of high school tribes, the conspiracy theorists, the white nationalists, urban activists -- all have interesting neighborhoods of Weblogs. To many of them, the 'A-list bloggers,' and the related academics, journalists, and lawyers who blog, might as well be on another planet."
I thought that a view of blogs as being many separate neighborhoods rather than one big blogosphere was very appropriate. I see blogs as parallel, actually, to the older BBS's that preceded the World Wide Web. BBS's usually had forums systems/message boards where people would chat and exchange information/opinions, but they were like smaller neighborhoods when compared to the Internet we know today. They were usually run by one central person, who gave each BBS its own voice, much the way each blog has its own narrator/moderator.
Judith
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