Blogging Speech

More than 175,000 blogs are created every day. That’s a little more than two every second. With the rapid development of the Internet, blogs have become an undeniable part of online culture. Many writers and businesses are becoming aware of the importance of blogs and their ability to reach readers on a faster and more personal level. Today we’ll discuss exactly what a blog is, who is blogging, and the use of blogs in mainstream media.
What is a blog? The word blog is a contraction of the term Web Log, and it has its origins in the daily logs of sea captains. A blog is simply a web site maintained by an individual consisting of regular entries. Merriam Webster defines a blog as “a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer”. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the first blog was created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1992 “to outline and render visible the ongoing development of the Web and the software necessary to navigate this new space”. From that point on the development of these personal web logs shifted from the technological elite to the average individual.
In Scott Gruban’s article “Think Twice Before You Type”, found in the Georgia Law Review in Winter 2008, he states that in “2005 surveys showed that nineteen percent of U.S. Internet users between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine have created blogs compared to just five percent of those fifty years and older, leading the study's director to assert that "[b]logging is very much the province of the young”. But young people aren’t the only ones writing blogs. Up and coming and unpublished authors have tapped into this new form of self-publication. In the article “Why I Blog” in the November 2008 issue of Atlantic Monthly, Andrew Sullivan says, “The simple experience of being able to directly broadcast my own words to readers was an exhilarating literary liberation”. Not only is it easier than traversing the often rejection filled road toward publication, but it also offers one thing that regular publication doesn’t: a personal connection with the reader. In his article, Sullivan also comments that “alone in front of a computer, at any moment, are two people: a blogger and a reader. It renders a writer and a reader not just connected but linked in a visceral, personal way”. Blogging has also become an important player in News Media.

More and more people are discovering blogs as a source of news. In the article “This Blogging Life” on the Los Angeles Times website Patrick Goldstein, a longtime contributor to the paper says that the LA Times “now has 40-plus blogs, with more being launched all the time” and that his guess is that “someday soon our blogs will be the backbone of the paper”. Almost every major news outlet has a blog portion of their website and rely heavily on it to provide rapidly updated information for online readers. Blogs are becoming increasingly relied on to provide news for all different categories. For up to date information on all things Hollywood, readers can simply check out the world of Perez Hilton, whose fame was built out of his blog. Movie buffs can get their fix at cinematical.com and romance readers at smartbitchestrashybooks.com. Blogs are everywhere, providing news coverage on every subject. But are they a reliable source for this news?
Since a blog is widely considered to simply be one person’s opinion, can we trust any blog to objectively convey what is going on in the world? The increasing reliance on blogs for news seems to indicate yes. However, in a note to the Los Angeles Times, longtime reader Lori Morse wrote “I do not care for the blogs, I just see them interfering with real news reportage. Everybody has an opinion but what are the FACTS”. The same blogger/reader connection that Andrew Sullivan celebrates seems to also hinder the credibility of the news reporter. The personal connection of the writer creates too much of a barrier between the reader and the facts in the reporter’s world. It seems even though blogs have definitely become an important part of the World Wide Web, it still remains to be seen whether or not they will be considered as a reliable news medium.
Today we’ve seen how the blog developed from the singular journal of one technologically savvy man to the daily creation of over 175,000 web logs. We also discussed the blog as the domain of the younger generation and the aspiring writer and how blogging has also become a growing part of the News Media. Blogging is a new and simple way of sharing information with thousands of readers, so if you have an opinion you want to share, check out blogspot or any of the other hosting sites and create yours today. I’ve already posted this speech on mine.