Skip to main content

They Blog, I Blog, We All Blog

Blogging could not be more topical given what has been happening in Iran - and bloggers and other mediums, a la Twitter and YouTube, being just about the only source of information of what is happening in the country post the recent election.

It is therefore timely that the Nieman Report - put out by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard - has an article "They Blog, I Blog, We all Blog" about blogging, its scope and impact and a recently released book, The Blogging Revolution:

"An Australian blogger interviews dissident bloggers worldwide, and in his book he explains why what they do matters and who is trying to stop them."

Some interesting stats from the article:

"When I started my News Dissector blog (www.newsdissector.com/blog/) 10 years ago, blogging was an emerging media form. No longer, and here are U.S. stats that offer a glimpse at the profound changes that have taken place (with more added every day):

Now more than 12 million American adults maintain a blog.

More than 147 million American adults use the Internet; 57 million read blogs. More than one-third of today’s blog readers started reading them in 2005 or 2006.

More than 120,000 blogs are created each day: Nine percent of Internet users claim to have created one, and included among these people are six percent of the U.S. adult population.

Among bloggers, 1.7 million Americans list making money as one of the reasons they blog. Of companies surveyed, 89 percent indicate that blogs will be more important to their business during the next five years. A bit more than half of blog readers shop online.

Technorati tracks more than 70 million blogs.

Nearly one quarter of the Web’s 100 most popular sites are blogs. There are more than 1.4 million new blog posts made each day.

Blog readers average 23 hours online each week."

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives?  In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t

The NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) goes on hold.....because of one non-Treaty member (Israel)

Isn't there something radically wrong here?    Israel, a non-signatory to the NPT has, evidently, been the cause for those countries that are Treaty members, notably Canada, the US and the UK, after 4 weeks of negotiation, effectively blocking off any meaningful progress in ensuring the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.    IPS reports ..... "After nearly four weeks of negotiations, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference ended in a predictable outcome: a text overwhelmingly reflecting the views and interests of the nuclear-armed states and some of their nuclear-dependent allies. “The process to develop the draft Review Conference outcome document was anti-democratic and nontransparent,” Ray Acheson, director, Reaching Critical Will, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), told IPS. “This Review Conference has demonstrated beyond any doubt that continuing to rely on the nuclear-armed states or their nuclear-dependent allies for l

#1 Prize for a bizarre story.....and lying!

No comment called for in this piece from CommonDreams: Another young black man: The strange sad case of 21-year-old Chavis Carter. Police in Jonesboro, Arkansas  stopped  him and two friends, found some marijuana, searched put Carter, then put him handcuffed  behind his back  into their patrol car, where they say he  shot himself  in the head with a gun they failed to find. The FBI is investigating. Police Chief Michael Yates, who stands behind his officers' story,  says in an interview  that the death is "definitely bizarre and defies logic at first glance." You think?