Weblogs: There's a Lot Out There, But It's Not Academic

Back in April I wrote a literature review for my communications theory class in grad school at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. It took a pleasant little poke at my ego (a classmate requested a copy today to help him with his own research) to overcome my laziness so I could post it. Thanks to Movable Type's built-in Extended Entry field, I didn't have to hard-code a static HTML page to contain the huge honkin' 4,060-word monster (which, despite slash-and-burn editing, was still 60 words over spec).

I will have to find some way to put in the footnotes. Look for that in Version 2.0 of this post. By Version 1.2.1b I may have the section headings bolded or something. If you've got the same tolerance for punishment my professor had, you can follow the link below to read it.

Weblogs: There's a Lot Out There, But It's Not Academic
by John Fulwider
April 29, 2003

Introduction

The academy seems to have missed the weblogging phenomenon, leaving the literature on weblogging in a state much like weblogs themselves: Essays that vary greatly in quality written by people who do not answer to editors.

There exist exactly zero communications-oriented peer-reviewed journal articles on weblogging, according to a search of the many journal indices subscribed to by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's great labyrinthine firetrap, Love Library. There are weblog articles in peer-reviewed journals catering to librarians.

Since Jorn Barger coined the phrase in December 1997, just one book has been written on weblogs that attempts to analyze what weblogs mean. We've Got Blog: How Weblogs Are Changing Our Culture is a loosely edited collection of essays and news stories that originally appeared either on weblogs or in print publications that have Web components, such as The Seattle Times. Several other books offer practical advice on how to create and maintain weblogs and may offer a chapter or two on "what does this mean," but nothing more.

Writing a literature review on weblogs, therefore, is at once a difficult and an easy task. On the one hand, it's difficult because there is no literature in the academic sense. On the other, it's easy because there is a wealth of non-academic material, some from respected communications trade publications, that is just a Google search away. This literature review attempts to sort through the thoughts of quite literally thousands of unedited writers, and those of a comparative handful of edited ones, to determine what weblogs mean. In so doing, this review attempts to avoid one of many controversies that have been debated among webloggers: Whether unfiltered, unedited prose from people who have no technical or financial barriers to worldwide publishing is a Good Thing.

First, some definitions. A weblog (pronounced inside the weblogging community as "WEE-blog" and outside it as "WEHB-log") is a personal Web page characterized by a central content area populated with frequent new posts, often brief and containing links to other Web resources the weblogger -- maintainer of the weblog -- finds useful or interesting. The posts, which can number a dozen or more each day on an active weblog, are arranged in reverse chronological order -- that is, the newest material is at the top of the page. Up to a week's worth of posts are included. Therefore, daily reading is not necessary to keep abreast of a favorite weblog; one merely reads from the top until arriving at the last post he or she read on another day. Weblogs in their current form have been around just since 1997, when Jorn Barger coined the phrase to describe his site, Robot Wisdom. When their popularity exploded is a matter for debate; this review is going to say 2001, and is sticking to it.

Abbreviations of weblog and weblogger are in wider use than the full terms. Therefore, this review will call weblogs "blogs" and webloggers "bloggers." "Blog," by the way, is not only a noun referring to a weblog. It is also a verb referring to the act of posting a weblog entry or of maintaining a weblog in general, as in, "I'm going to go blog the thought I just had about how blogs are a better news source than the traditional media."

Rebecca Blood's essay "Weblogs: A History and Perspective" is an often-referenced source for blog history. She notes several early milestones in blog development:
· Cameron Barrett published a list of blogs on his site, CamWorld. Just 23 were known to be in existence at the beginning of 1999.
· Blog proliferation made it difficult to keep a comprehensive list, so Brigitte Eaton took over and published a list still widely used today, Eatonweb Portal.
· The first easy-to-use blogging tool, Pitas, came out in July 1999. Today's most popular easy-to-use tool, Blogger, came out in August of that year.

Conceptually, blogs aren't entirely new creations. Any "what's new" list in any medium (but especially printed newspapers) qualifies as a blog forerunner. (Marc Andreessen, author of the first Web browser, maintained a seminal "What's New" page in the early days of the World Wide Web. ) In the printed newspaper medium, this author thinks specifically of The Wall Street Journal's famous front-page "What's News" columns, which feature synopses of all the day's stories. Stretching the metaphor, one could even say the information contained in the synopses on where to find the full story is a "link" to that content. Unfortunately for the short-attention-span Internet generation, a little more effort is required to follow these links. Printed newspapers can even blog themselves, as community website pioneer Jon Katz noticed the Christian Science Monitor doing: "[A]n editor provide synopses of articles of interest, wtih links and particularly notable quotes. The editor was providing pre-digested highlights of his paper, only without commentary. Thus ‘weblogging' has even come to journalism ...."

Blogs are not revolutionary, either. They're more evolutionary. Cameron Barrett compares them to fanzines, those sometimes-photocopied, sometimes printed newsletters that published everything one could want to know about narrow subjects. Says Barrett: "Like fanzine editors before them, weblog editors embrace a topic or theme and run with it."

Julian Dibbell looks even farther back in history for something to which he can compare weblogs. He calls them Wunderkammer: a " ‘cabinet of wonders' . . . that marked the scientific landscape of Renaissance modernity: a random collection of strange, compelling objects, typically compiled and owned by a learned, well-off gentleman."

A set of ostrich feathers, a few rare shells, a South Pacific coral carving . . . the Wunderkammer [reflected] European civilizations dazed and wondering attempts to assimilate the glut of physical data that science and exploration were then unleashing.

Just so, the weblog reflects our attempts to assimilate the glut of immaterial data loosed upon us by the "discovery" of the networked world.

(In his essay, by the way, Dibbell displays a quality valued in the blog culture: intellectual honesty. He notes he is not the first person to come up with the Wunderkammer analogy; he remembers seeing the idea on another weblog. Had he been doing what bloggers do -- recording the interesting things they find on the Web -- he could, and would, credit his source.)

Uses of Blogs

Blogs are used in all manner of ways. Two of the most popular are as Web filters and personal journals. In filter blogs, bloggers annotate the Web. They find interesting, useful, perhaps offbeat resources out there among the billions of Web pages and provide annotated links to them. This "linktext," used to describe why it's worth clicking on a link, has become somewhat of an art form where brevity and the catchy turn of a phrase are valued. People who don't have time to explore the Web for new resources relating to their many interest areas find blogs especially valuable. The Web has, in Blood's words, been "pre-surfed" for them. She adds: "Out of the myriad webpages slung through cyberspace, weblog editors pick out the most mind-boggling, the most stupid, the most compelling." Cameron Barrett sings the praises of the filter blog: "Weblogs have established a small island of rationality and stability among the sea of information the Internet has thrown at everyone." A strategy for overcoming the information assault is to find a blogger who thinks like you, and share their links to the things that interest you. Writes Julian Dibbell: ". . . Accept that the Web ultimately overwhelms all attempts to order it, as for now it seems we must, and you accept that the delicate thread of a personal point of view is often as not your most reliable guide through the chaos."

Journal blogs have ballooned in number with the advent of almost ridiculously easy blog publishing tools that eliminate the need to know about HTML (the language used to create Web pages) and provide free, unique Web addresses for new blogs. The most popular publishing tool, Blogger, makes it possible to go from nothing to a professional-looking first blog post in five minutes. This allows people to post minutiae of their lives that formerly would have been recorded only in paper diaries or journals. A journal blog might contain immensely valuable new perspectives on the human experience that otherwise would remain unknown. But it also may contain a preteen's deepest thoughts on why the latest boy band "is, like, sooo cool/hot/hip/square/etc. and if my parents don't let me go to their concert Friday I am just gonna die!" There is considerable controversy over whether this is a Good Thing. Some say dreams of worldwide democratization of the Web are finally realized with no barriers to personal publishing. Others say blogs, especially of the journal variety, cause only further deterioration in what they see as already poor-quality writing on the Web.

Businesses have found blogs valuable as tools for project management and intra-company communication. In both instances, blogs solve some of the problems inherent in managing projects and communicating with employees through a slightly older (but still comparatively new) communication technology, e-mail. Companies have found that posting in one place news and resources about a project's progress, say, or about new benefits policies or security procedures, is more efficient that sending out tens, hundreds or thousands of e-mails that will further clog already-bursting inboxes and put more strain on already-overstressed mail servers. The efficiencies come into play when something some people may be interested in is posted once, where anyone can access it, instead of being e-mailed to everyone (many of whom won't be interested) "just to make sure" all the interested parties see it. Mail servers are expensive to maintain and operate efficiently, and they can break easily under too much strain. When one considers that project updates sent by e-mail often include graphics, photos, presentations, spreadsheets and documents as attachments, one can see the great money and time-saving potential in putting all that material on a Web server, where it will go to the right people, instead of on a mail server, where it will go to everyone.

One more example to make this idea clear. Say a corporation has 10,000 employees in far-flung locations who qualify for medical benefits. Further say the open-enrollment period is coming up, necessitating some paperwork for those who'd like to change their benefits choices. The corporation could mail benefits packet to all 10,000 employees, which would cost a lot of money. The corporation could e-mail the packet to all 10,000 employees, which would cost less money but would bring its mail servers to their knees for a few days as it served up multi-megabyte file attachments. The corporation could post the packet on its Intranet and perhaps provide a link to it behind a "What's New" link on its Intranet home page. Or, the corporation could update its Intranet blog with a link pointing to the packet, then do the same as a reminder a week later, then post a "last chance" reminder a short time before the benefits-change deadline. Among employees trained to look at the Intranet blog daily for matters that concern them, the blog option is the most efficient and least costly.

A popular sort of site that reminds one of blogs but isn't quite a blog (in some people's opinions) is the headline aggregator. Sites like the highly popular Drudge Report pre-surf the web just like filter blogs, and offer links to outside content, just like filter blogs. But Drudge doesn't annotate his links, except by in some cases rewriting the headlines to make them more descriptive.

Problems in Blogging

Filter-type blogs draw the most attention because they are the ones consistently at the top of readership ratings (there being, apparently, a wider audience for individual perspectives on items interesting to many people than for individual perspectives on things interesting to just the individual). Now if the basis of the filter blog is the link to valuable and interesting outside content, what happens when blogs link only inward? A problem has emerged in blogging whereby links to the same content multiply because less-popular bloggers link to a more-popular blogger's link in the hopes that the more-popular blogger will provide a link back to the less-popular blogger's blog, thus increasing his or her readership (very temporarily, in most cases). Sometimes very little if any new information of value is added as the links layer upon each other. Blogging pioneer Derek Powazek describes the problem: "It was easy (and predictable) to foresee a future Web of ‘independent content' that consisted solely of pointing at people who are pointing at other people. All of a sudden, there was no more there."

But filter blogs done right can serve an important purpose by providing alternative voices and alternative information sources. In disputing the notion that individual participation in the media is impossible, Blood writes:

By highlighting articles that may easily be passed over by the typical Web user too busy to do more than scan corporate news sites, by searching out articles from lesser-known sources, and by providing additional facts, alternative views, and thoughtful commentary, weblog editors participate in the dissemination and interpretation of the news that is fed to us every day.

Greg Ruggerio in Douglas Rushkoff's Media Virus said, "You cannot participate in the media." Well, yes, you can.

This phenomenon raises a number of questions that can be addressed, including:

· How do the traditional media gatekeepers, such as newspaper editors and radio and television producers, react when their work is re-edited and re-produced? Do they change their approaches in response to the feedback they get from seeing what's done with their material on popular blogs?
· Are new gatekeepers -- bloggers -- going to be any more representative of the general public than traditional media gatekeepers? Cameron Barrett notes, "Most weblog editors/owners work full-time in the Internet industry." Would these people generally advance one point of view to the exclusion of others? Because of their work would they favor a technological solution to a social problem that might better be solved on a more human level?
· Will blog editors be any better than newspaper editors at condensing information from many different sources into an understandable story? Brad L. Graham, perhaps displaying a bit of "next big thing"-inspired hubris, thinks they will. He writes: "An old maxim states that editors separate the wheat from the chaff and then publish the chaff. As the weblog movement matures, our sites will wrest editorial authority from the few editors of today and divide it among the many. ‘They' can continue to publish the chaff, we'll be there to point our hungry readers toward the wheat."
· Will the quality of journalism increase as more print journalists do what San Jose Mercury News technology columnist Dan Gillmor has done? Gillmor blogs his column-writing process, gathering input from readers as he goes. His blog doesn't consist of "repurposed" (read: dumped) print content. "I want people to basically have a conversation with me," Gillmor says, asserting that results in better journalism.

Inter-blog linking like that seen in filter blogs can occur to an even more obvious degree in journal blogs:

These blogs ... were instead a record of the blogger's thoughts .... Links took the reader to the site of another blogger with whom the first was having a public conversation or had met the previous evening, or to the site of a band he had seen the night before. Full-blown conversations were carried on between three or five blogs, each referencing the other in their agreement or rebuttal of the other's positions.

Brad L. Graham describes the way some journal blog critics see this: "The tendency of identical or similar links to show up in several different logs, and the frequency of reciprocal links among webloggers is seen as perhaps unhealthy, a form of incest that -- we're told -- can lead to a flattened sameness among our pages."

Problems aside, one can see that the Internet dream of personal publishing and proliferation of voices has finally been realized. With which other communications medium can a person with no special technical skills or financial wherewithal potentially gain a worldwide audience? Writes Blood: "Each [blog] is evidence of a staggering shift from an age of carefully controlled information provided by sanctioned authorities ... to an unprecedented opportunity for individual expression on a worldwide scale." Blogger creator Evan Williams says blogs are about "content management -- specifically, lightweight content management -- the big, embarrassingly gaping hole still yet to be filled in order to make the vision of the Web democratizing media a reality."

Blogging as Journalism?

This review saves the question, "Are weblogs journalism?" for last because its author can't make up his mind on the matter. Certainly there are those who are convinced. "Weblogging will drive a powerful form of amateur journalism as millions of Net users -- young people especially -- take on the role of columnist, reporter, analyst, and publisher while fashioning their own personal broadcasting networks," writes J.D. Lasica, a former Sacramento Bee editor and columnist. And how will they do this? Lasica quotes an example from Paul Andrews, a former Seattle Times technology columnist:

Anyone connected with the WTO protests in Seattle and Quebec City knows that the protestors' viewpoints were either ignored or misrepresented by the radio, TV and newspaper coverage. . . .

Now . . . the protesters who want to get their story out can bypass the media by using live audio or a webcam to offer raw feeds during a live protest or forum. If you're . . . filming an event in a certain neighborhood and streaming it on the Internet and reporting it on your weblog, you're practicing a straightforward kind of amateur journalism.

Another possibility Andrews didn't cite because it hadn't been invented yet is moblogging -- blogging via cellular phone using a computer interface to post audio clips to your blog. The technology to support that kind of "amateur journalism" is laughably cheap and fits in a pocket. This may be the way amateur broadcasting goes, as camcorders haven't hit the cheap price point or compactness enjoyed by cell phones.

Blogs have been used successfully as supplements to traditional journalism. Perhaps the most well-known example is technology columnist Dan Gillmor, who writes for the San Jose Mercury News. His employer gives him prominent space on the newspaper's Web site for items that are either too short, too long, or too narrow or specialized for print. Gillmor, ever the pioneer, is now writing a book online in full view of the world and taking comments and suggestions from readers of his blog while he works.

Another technology columnist, Glenn Fleishman of the Seattle Times, had this to say about why he blogs: "Issues kept coming up in my reporting that I couldn't include in my report, often because I was expressing an opinion and my story wasn't an analysis or how-to piece." Fleishman can also write "on his own authority," to borrow a phrase from academia. "As a reporter, it's nice to be able to present an informed conclusion, based on your own experience, without having to go to the requisite two dozen so-called expert analysts who cancel each other out," he says. Finally, Fleishman can further inform his writing as a result of what J.D. Lasica calls a "chain of interaction." Fleishman describes it thusly: "Someone spots an article or commentary you've posted, which triggers a blog entry, which triggers further responses, and before you know it your blog becomes part of an interactive discussion in this obscure backwater of the Web that's being read and cited by thousands of people."

Blogs can be supplements to journalism in another way -- not as outlets for space-starved writers, but as outlets for information-rich media consumers. Gillmor hears from readers after a column of his is published; they bring up items of which he hadn't heard or thought. "I doubt there is a beat at any newspaper or publication or program where it is not the case that the readers know more than the reporter," he says. ". . . Anyone who's familiar with networks knows that the network knows more than the individual." Readers, this former reporter supposes, likely often say to themselves, "I wish that reporter knew . . . ." Well, now that reporter can.

Readers can also find out more than they otherwise would have known when sources reporters' sources post transcripts of their interviews on their blogs. Blogger Sheila Lennon did this when New York Times reporter David F. Gallagher wrote a piece about blogging. "It seemed natural for me to publish ‘the rest of the story' online for readers who might be interested," Lennon says. Gallagher, who had room for one sentence of the interview in his story, didn't mind.

Blogs, of course, are unedited, which may be a dream for reporters who hate editors poking and prodding their purple prose. The old saw, "Behind every good writer is a great editor," doesn't apply here. Even some former newspaper editors, like J.D. Lasica, think that's a good thing. He writes: "Weblogs are the anti-newspaper in some ways. Where the editorial process can filter out errors and polish a piece of copy to a fine sheen, too often the machinery turns even the best prose limp, lifeless, sterile and homogenized."

Some would say blogs are self-editing. Indeed, it's a value in the blogging community to quickly and comprehensively correct your mistakes -- usually, after a reader points it out. There's a bit of an unofficial style to corrections: 1. Add an "Update" section to the original, erroneous post, with "Update" usually in bold type. Sometimes the erroneous information is changed, sometimes it's not, but the update explanation usually makes clear what has happened. 2. Post a new blog entry as soon as possible saying "I goofed," or words to that effect, and offering links to correct information on the topic at hand. With updates added to the erroneous post, the false information stops spreading immediately because everyone who subsequently accesses the post sees the correction. Further, the "I goofed" post is prominently displayed. This is a marked improvement over printed newspaper corrections, where the erroneous articles remains that way forever in its printed form (and sometimes, what with widespread newspaper library staff cutbacks, in its electronic form). To make matters worse, the corrections are rarely timely and almost never prominent.

This review has already discussed journal-style blogs' heavy reliance on traditional media for material. There have not been enough instances yet of blogs offering original reporting, in this writer's opinion, to classify them as new journalistic outlets. But they have provided some original news. When demand for news after the World Trade Center attacks made news sites like CNN.com inaccessible, first-person accounts of the destruction could be found on blogs hosted on servers that were accessible because they were under far less strain. (An archive of some September 11 blog accounts is at http://911archive.org.).

Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher sees blogs contributing to the decline of traditional journalism outlets like his own. "We've made it all the easier for consumers to spurn our products because we've bought into the notion that all voices are equal . . . or that opinions dumped onto a random Web site are as useful as a story written by a reporter who knows every deputy secretary in the agency he covers," Fisher writes.

Distaste for blogs has found its way into journalism's management ranks as well. Journalists working for the traditional media who start their own blogs are getting fired in increasing numbers for "competing" with their own publications, or for risking their news outlet's reputation by publishing ideas untouched by their editors. An early example was made of Houston Chronicle reporter Steve Olafson, fired for an on-his-own-time blog that commented on family life, local political figures and the smaller newspaper in his hometown.

As this writer composed this review a classmate suggested the academy may not have missed the blogging phenomenon, but rather may be waiting the three years required to get an academic article published. One hopes such processes can be speeded up, as blogs are developing so fast that it would take another 4,000 words to describe the ways in which this review is already obsolete.