“Day of the Warblogs
: Reuters declares this the day of the warblogs.
In addition to news sites, blogs — pithy, opinionated commentary in the form of Web logs filled with links to other Web sites — have also attracted heavy traffic.
“One thing that is rocket hot is the rise of the warblogs,” [New York University Prof. Mark] Dyer said. “We are really seeing the rise of the warblog as a corrective to the biases and errors of mainstream media and also as a platform for alternative voices that are being muzzled or not offered exposure in the mainstream.”
A popular warblog among media junkies is “Back to Iraq” (http://www.back-to-iraq.com/) from independent journalist Christopher Allbritton, who offers daily insights and is trying to raise funds to be sent back to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.
There is also a warblog portal (http://www.warblogs.cc), which aggregates blogs about the war, Dery said.
“This war is a ratcheting up of the significance of the ‘Net and that significance came into play with the Trade Tower disasters because people had a lot on their minds,” he added.
“They needed to vent and there was no room for that in the traditional media space,” he added. “So the Web becomes a virtual commons where people can talk about anxieties, swap morsels of information and it’s a many-to-many medium, unlike television.”
Yup.
Weblogs bring a few important advantages. First is not opinion but speed. All these bright eyes reading news sources all around the Web bring the most important and best-reported news to the top immediately. It is editing by mob. And it works. The stories I blog tonight are the stories I’ll hear on Today tomorrow.
The second advantage is, then, opinion — and community. Pro or anti, this or that, all these webloggers get to express their opinions and fears and feelings, speaking for themselves and often their audience. Never before has the audience been so involved in the media coverage of a big story.
This may be the day of the warblogs. But it is the age of the weblogs.
[Also posted to my Warblog]
