“It’s the Links, Stupid”

“It’s The Links, Stupid.” Economist 20 Apr. 2006. 25 Feb. 2007
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(today’s date: 2/25/07)
http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=6794172

summary
The Economist gives the 411 on blogs. Really, it’s just the basics, like why a blog’s style is so appealing and why reader/viewer comments are becoming essential to all sorts of media.

quotes

Today a new blog is created every second of every day, according to Technorati, a search engine for blogs, and the “blogosphere” is doubling in size every five months (see chart 1).

On average, Technorati tracks some 50,000 new posts an hour.

Some 60% of LiveJournal users are under 21 and female

only 1% of blogs are in German, according to Technorati, compared with 41% in Japanese, 28% in English and 14% in Chinese.

“Just as everybody has an e-mail account today, everybody will have a blog in five years,” says Mr Sabeer Bhatia

Review/Analysis

One especially helpful aspect of this article will be that it breaks down what amakes blogs, well, blogs. It breaks down the important components of a blog and explains what they are. Specifically, it explains blogrolls (other blogs the blogger reccommends), what’s in a post (text, hypertext, links, photos, videos), permalinks (the archive page at which you can find the blog), and trackbacks (these notify–ping–a blog about a new link from the outside; a “gossip-meter”). Dave Winer, who maintains the longest-running blog, says a certain appeal of blogs is that the writers are amateurs and don’t have to answer to editors, so their writing is often more raw and more “real.” This, in part, explains at least the initial popularity of blogs as a form of expressing oneself.

Six Apart is the company that runs LiveJournal, which is a bloggin site aimed specifically at the more personal, diary-type blogs. Mena Trott, who runs the company with her husband, says the wide teen usage is due to the fact that teens see email as a thing of the past, because why would you waste your time sending a thousand emails when you could just post it online? Or when you could just IM your friend instantly?

Conversations are key to blogs and are what’s drawing the attention of the older, more reluctant audience. Conversations are also key to a democratic society, as everyone deserves a voice. Blogs give people that voice, and they allow people to respond directly on an event. The popularity of blogs is proof in itself that, if you give people a voice, they will use it.

“Compose Yourself”

Citation
“Compose Yourself.” Economist 20 Apr. 2006. 27 Feb. 2007 .

date accessed: 2/27/07

and a direct link for ya:
http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=6794240

Summary

“Citizen journalism” is on the rise and its credible, sources say. Now everyone can have “15 megs of fame.” Print newspapers are on the decline. They’re seeing the success of blogs and other amateur news sources and copying the most popular aspects of those, like feedback and comments on individual stories. However, their efforts have failed in some aspects.

Quotes 

“The more journalism the better; I don’t care who does it,” says Dan Gillmor.

In America, circulation has been gradually but steadily falling since 1990, according to Editor & Publisher, a trade journal. The trend in other countries is much the same. Most young people nowadays do not read a daily newspaper at all.

Their websites, Mr Murdoch said, “have to become the place for conversation. The digital native doesn’t send a letter to the editor any more. She goes online and starts a blog. We need to be the destination for those bloggers.” Soon after this speech, Mr Murdoch bought MySpace, an online blogging and social-networking site wildly popular with young people.

“Just as more blogs will look like newspapers, more newspapers will have blog-like aspects,” says Paul Saffo at the Institute for the Future.

As The State of the News Media puts it, “the worry is not the wondrous addition of citizen media, but the decline of full-time, professional monitoring of powerful institutions.” That, after all, is what a free press in democracies is supposed to be for.

Reflections and Analysis

This article targets the newspaper aspect which I haven’t been able to find yet. I can use it in analyzing how the big-name newspapers, like the L.A. Time or New York Times, are coping with bloggers and the popularity of blogs. It starts off with the success of “Ohmy News,” a South Korean online newspaper composed of “citizen journalists,” who are just amatuers who write in about the news stories of the day. It’s credible because so many people log on and its readership is so large it competes with the big newspapers.

The popularity of sites like “Ohmy” are forcing newspapers to change their style by incorporating feedback sections on their sites online. Places like Yahoo! news are combining amateurs and professionals. For many, it seems like it doesn’t matter who the news comes from, but rather what the news is. News is news.

Newspapers are now losing advertisers because the advertisers don’t get as much money from an online ad as they do from a print ad, and because of sites like craigslist.com, the classified section is becoming obsolete.

However, there is still a debate about the credibility of all these bloggers. The decline of professional bloggers could, in its worst case-scenario, mean that the press stops being a check of the government and bigger institutions. This would mean the press is giving up its most important function.

Sina censors blogs

2/13/07

Citation 

MacKinnon, Rebecca. "Chinese lawyers protest blog censorship by Sina.com." Weblog entry. 12 Feb.

     2007. RConversation. 12 Mar. 2007 <http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/>. 

http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/2007/02/chinese_lawyers.html

Summary

A popular Chinese blogger site, Sina.com, has begun censoring blogs without giving notice to the blogger and with no apparent reason. Posts are randomly deleted, as are comments. Some say that the comments are deleted so quickly that you can’t even copy what the post said after it was posted. After Sina deletes a post, bloggers report that it sends an email that says something like “We apologize for any inconvenience, but we had to delete you blog. If you have any questions, email us. We usually respond to emails within 24 hours.” While this may sound genuine, many bloggers doubt Sina’s sincerity when they say they’re sorry. Chinese lawyers are stepping in to defend the Sina.com bloggers, saying that Sina lacks business ethics and violates bloggers’ freedom of speech. While many blogger geeks admit that there are ways around this problem (i.e. creating their own sites, using other blogger services, etc.) it seems like this is more a matter of principle.

Quotes 

” While providing the space for our blogs, it [Sina.com] has also seriously violated our freedom of speech.”

Review/Analysis 

–these bloggers are making a big deal about being censored, and with reason. blogs are currently uncensored. newspaper articles, however, are censored, to a point. it seems to me that if bloggers want the same rights as journalists/reporters, they should be willing to abide by the same laws as reporters. this fiasco makes me think that bloggers will freak out if they’re censored, even just a little bit, maybe they aren’t ready for the full rights a journalist receives. Then again, these people are protesting the outright deletion of blogs by Sina.com, which is different than censorship. Maybe bloggers need editors, or the moderators of blogger sites can act as editors. Then again, what differentiates a blogger from a reporter at all?

I plan on using this article when I discuss how bloggers will be censored if they do receive rights, of if they should be censored at all. After reading this article, it seems to me that bloggers take a certain pride in being completely uncensored. I whole-heartedly agree with them; leave it to the newspapers to be censored by editors. Bloggers should have free reign. That is the niche they fill. I think that, if bloggers are not willing to abide by the same or similar rules that journalists do, they should not receive the same rights as journalists. I believe that part of the reason why reporters do have the various rights they have is because their stories get checked over multiple times so that the newspaper can be certain that there are no mistakes in the article. With an uncensored blog, however, a mistake can easily be overlooked and printed. This mistake, if presented as fact, will be taken as truth, which is false.