WORLD: Bloom of the blog marks internet's rising tide of influence

The burst of blogs has put internet writers on the same level as journalists, giving them the power to aid elections and disprove claims

South China Morning Post
Wednesday, December 29, 2004

The American Merriam-Webster dictionary publishers dubbed "blog" as word of the year for 2004, to mark the rise in influence of the sometimes anonymous internet posters who are simultaneously courted, ridiculed and feared.

The word is short for "weblog",another word for an internet diary that makes anyone a published author and allows real-time, online discussions on any subject.

The blog boom made a big splash during the US presidential campaign, as blogs went head-to-head with the traditional media giants, sometimes even criticising their coverage and methods.

Some bloggers, such as law professor Eugene Volokh, of the University of California, Los Angeles, assert the same prerogatives as journalists, such as the right to keep sources confidential.

For the first time, the conventions of the two major parties - the Republicans and Democrats - invited bloggers to cover their political conventions on the same level as journalists.

Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean used blogs as a fundraising tool and to mobilise volunteers.

Perseus Development, a company that specialises in tracking and analysing the "blogosphere", said there should be more than 10 million blogs in the United States by the end of the year, including about half created by people under 20.

Some blogs are merely rumour mills.

Others specialise in fact-checking media reports or candidates statements made in the 2004 election, with some degree of success, in spite of some media figures who claimed they were just "journalists in pyjamas".

One of the most famous victims of blogging is CBS News anchor Dan Rather. Bloggers discovered that his report on the network's 60 Minutes news programme about President George W. Bush's National Guard service was based on forged documents, forcing Rather to make an embarrassing admission. The veteran news anchor will step down in March.

Bloggers also helped cast doubts on the reliability of media exit polls during the November 2 election, after some websites posted results showing Senator John Kerry far ahead of Mr Bush.

Senator Kerry, a Democrat, lost to the Republican incumbent.

Most blogs are labours of love, but some bloggers do make money. One of those is Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, who writes the liberal "Daily Kos" political blog, one of America's most visited, with nearly 300,000 hits a day.

Date Posted: 12/29/2004