Monday, April 07, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

WORLD WIDE WEB: ONCE around the BLOG

Multiplying short-form journals represent latest big step in Web communication

Darmon Thornton is one of several Southern Nevadans who use the Web to express their opinions and ideas on weblogs, also known as blogs. The short-form journals are adding a new dimension to Internet communication. Photo by JERRY HENKEL/ REVIEW-JOURNAL Darmon Thornton: www.dcthornton.com Shannon Utley: www.shanni.org

Shannon Utley was fretting about a recent traffic ticket, wishing it hadn't come with her money so tight. Hal Rager was celebrating his son's 15-month birthday. And Darmon Thornton was thinking about what might happen if war ever came.

From different computer desktops in different pockets of Las Vegas, they've created personal spaces, adding thoughts and observations, day by day, post by post, and left them for all with a browser to see.

They're webloggers.

Weblogging, or blogging as it's also known, is a sort of short-form journaling that blends the conversational elements of e-mail and instant messaging with the design elements of personal Web pages. Blogging started around 1998, but has grown exponentially in the last two years. Estimated blogger counts now exceed 1 million, with blogger topics ranging from news and politics to hobbies.

Experts say blogging may represent the Internet's next killer communications application: a user-friendly, supermalleable channel anyone can use to express ideas or share information.

In the early days, said Rebecca Blood, the author of "The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog," people needed to understand hypertext markup language to blog.

No more. Easy-to-use, often free software pushed blogging into superpopularity, Blood said; anyone who can e-mail or buy online can blog.

With Blogger, the Web's most popular blog service, for example, a user signs up, answers a few questions (such as what's your e-mail), and in minutes, blogs. When he has something to say, he types it and hits "publish." Software sorts jottings chronologically, newest to oldest.

Bloggers complement chatter with links, connecting to articles, pictures or maybe other bloggers. Frequently visited blogs get queued in lists dubbed blogrolls.

"Blogs are vox populi; They're a way for people to say their piece," Blood said. "Some people are passionate about politics or their professions, some are passionate about their gardens. Everyone has a story to tell and we are by nature storytellers."

Las Vegas blogger Thornton frequently posts on politics. One recent day, he posted a war cartoon with an American solider and an Iraqi soldier contemplating a battle's outcome.

Thornton, 34, a support staff worker for the Clark County School District, said he began blogging frequently after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, joining a wave of bloggers dubbed war bloggers.

"Seeing the effects the events (of Sept. 11) had both abroad and close to home touched me and gave me a lot of topical material to focus on," he said. "Now, for me, the blog is basically an outlet to express my opinions and vent my spleen. It's better than therapy."

Thornton said blogging exposes him to new opinions and gives news interactivity.

"I think blogs allow writers to go more in depth and detail about current events," he said. "And in some cases allow more feedback from readers."

Another local, James Hudnall, also often blogs geopolitical. A recent post included a link to a British news site's story on waning political support for French President Jacques Chirac's antiwar stance and a story from the Washington Times, a newspaper with a conservative editorial bent, about children of National Guard members who claimed they were harassed by war-opposing teachers.

Hudnall, 45, a former writer for Detective Comics and Marvel Comics, said he's blogged for about a year. He said he started after reading other blogs he liked, including one by Drudge Report author Matt Drudge.

Blogs have some social advantages, Hudnall said. First, people with like interests find each other by design, rather than chance. And, he added, conversations stay posted for rereading and reconsideration. Public conversation, by contrast, is fleeting, lasting only as long as people talk and vanishing forever afterward.

"I think the beauty of it is everyone sets their own schedule; it's something you can appreciate at your own pace," he said. "Someone can come in at 3 a.m. and read my blog and join the conversation, even though I may be asleep then. And they can revisit that conversation as long as they want to."

Hudnall's blog and site serve as a channel for commerce, a place for him to preview and sell comics he's created. Other businesses are also using blogs to spur business. Jupitermedia Corp. boss Alan Meckler, for example, is using a blog to build interest for his company's new Computer Digital Expo, which will challenge Comdex this fall. Dr Pepper/Seven Up is using a blog to market Raging Cow, a new flavored milk drink.

Las Vegan Rager, a blogger since 1999, waxes sociological on his page while skirting the hot-button trilogy: politics, religion and sex. In addition to writing about his son, he recently mused about regional dialects and linked to an article on the topic in Slate, an online magazine. The subject stuck with him, he wrote, because many Las Vegas newcomers seem to use different words to describe like objects.

"I seem to frequently encounter the soda/pop and bag/sack dichotomy," Rager wrote. "I don't even want to go near dinner/supper."

Rager, 47, said he loves wrapping his mind around ideas with others. He likened blog talks to late-night discussions in college, when friends sat up late, discussing and dreaming.

"We'd start talking about the larger issues `Who am I,' `Where am I going,' `What am I going to do with my life,' " Rager said. "Then you use those questions as they apply to a group, and a people and a civilization. The conversation becomes a metaconversation."

Blood said blogs reflect some of the Internet's promise, offering an open-to-anyone, supermalleable forum. Businesses use blogs for business. Knowledge bloggers, who call themselves kloggers, use them as idea boards, working through problems and trading opinions. Armchair columnists use them as pulpits. All uses are valid, she said.

Some have argued that blogs are journalism's next frontier. Several news pros, including former New Republic Editor Andrew Sullivan, CNBC talk show host Chris Matthews and The Nation columnist Eric Alterman have widened their media presences with personal blogs.

Nevertheless, Blood and Jim McGee, an adjunct professor of technology at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, say traditional news channels are safe.

In traditional media, journalists aim to stay objective and away from editorializing, Blood said; blogging is unadulteratedly opinionated.

"It's certainly not reporting," she said. "Blogs are a place for people to speak what's on their minds, but it's not the same as talking to primary sources and trying to present a complete story so anybody can understand it."

Also, McGee added, reading a blog is less like reading a story and more like reading a reporter's notebook; thoughts are stream-of-consciousness and disorganized.

"The signal-to-noise ratio in a blog is much different," McGee said. "It's information and ideas they may not necessarily turn into a story. I think of a blog as a backup brain, a place to remember stuff and a place to work out ideas."

Although chat rooms and messaging software allow instant idea exchange, McGee said blogging may make for better conversation because it allows time to compose thoughts. Also, because blogs present ideas straightforwardly, they may beat e-mail for data sharing.

"When stuff is buried in an e-mail or conversation, it's hard to manage," McGee said. "When you move to e-mail to PowerPoint to Word documents, unless you get them printed, you may not know what's going on."

Utley, 26, discovered blogs in 2000 while searching for definitions to recently read British slang expressions. She liked blogs immediately.

"I discovered this huge community of people sharing their personal stories online," she said. "I thought I'd start mine for the fun of it."

Utley has kept friends and family close with her blog, sharing daily news better, she says, than she could with forever forwarded e-mail. In her early blogging days, living in San Francisco, she blogged to forge new local friendships. Those friends kept reading the blog even after she moved here.

"I think people are just interested in how other people are doing," she said, reflecting on blogs' appeal. "Maybe it's a way to gauge ourselves to see if we're normal."