April 12, 2005

A Ramble on Blogs and Blogging

On Friday, SayUncle noted how strange it was to be talking about his "blog" with his friends.

I tend to agree that it's a strange thing. I've had my blog running for over a year now (that's not counting NashvilleFiles.com as a whole which has been longer), and I have hardly ever talked about it with the people I know.

In fact, several friends didn't know that I had a blog (much less a web site) until they saw the News 2 story the other night. I think the first time I've brought it up to a group was when I mentioned it to some church friends tonight when I told them that they should read tomorrow's Tennessean (oh yeah...be sure to read tomorrow's Tennessean for more on Nashville's Big Brother and blogging). It's interesting to see people's reactions...from, "What in the world is a blog?" to "Oh, you're one of those guys." Any of these responses requires me to explain the entire concept of blogging, what type of blogging I do, and so on...which I don't mind as it's a good, informative discussion to have.

This evening Rex Hammock links to a survey on blogging that was conducted the hosting company, Hostway. Among the questions: Have you ever heard of a blog? Have you ever participated in a blog? etc. I suspect that this survey's respondents were more than likely "computer savvy" (and I use that term loosley to mean someone who can get on the internet), and it's not surprising that 63% of them know what a blog is. Out in the "real world," and based on personal experience, that number is probably a lot lower.

Of course, the biggie is [Do] "bloggers have the same First Amendment rights (freedom of expression, protection of confidential sources) as traditional journalists do?” 51.7% agree, 27.3% neither agree nor disagree, and 21.0% disagree. This number I do find surprising. Call me crazy, but I do think that the Bill of Rights was meant for all citizens and didn't create special classes in the citizenry that had special or extra-ordinary rights above common citizens.

What blogging is doing is giving common citizens a voice that they wouldn't have had five or more years ago. It's promoting a huge network of people discussing and debating issues without the filter of a mainstream media outlet.

Detractors of blogs have the "any idiot with a computer" mentality saying that those "idiots" now have a voice and can say anything they want without an editor or fact-checking (even though it's the media that's being fact-checked by blogs on a daily basis). What's so wrong with that? Isn't this Republic supposed to allow for the free-flow of thoughts and ideas from the citizenry? Do you have to be a special kind of citizen to have that right? Was the Bill of Rights meant for only a select few? We all know the answer to that (at least I hope we do).

Blogging is new and innovative, and it will definitely evolve over the next few years. However, the concept of citzen journalism, if you will, has taken a hold...and there's no turning back.

Update: Oh yeah. When rambling about blogging how could I forget to mention BlogNashville coming in May? 300 bloggers from around the country will converge on Nashville for this one of a kind event. Be sure to check it out.

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