University of Tennessee Law Professor, Glenn Reynolds.
Reynolds’ InstaPundit.com site, which had only been online
for a month prior to 9/11, immediately had a huge upswing
in traffic, and now receives upwards of 175,000 visitors a day.
His Weblog — a mix of moderate to libertarian political
views, commentary on news of the day, and discussions of
his favorite hobbies (digital cameras, Wi-Fi, and recording
music) — launched a thousand “blog children.”
One of those was a Weblog called Power Line
( www.powerlineblog.com), run by three attorneys (two
based in Minneapolis, the third in Washington, DC). For
their role in uncovering fabricated documents used by
CBS, their Weblog was the one that was named 2004’s
“Blog of the Year” by Time Magazine.
Writing the Book on Blogs
Power Line ( www.powerlineblog.com) — run by three
attorneys — was just one of the thousands of weblogs that
was launched by InstaPundit.com Time Magazine named it
2004’s “Blog of the Year.”
brutal Afghanistan winter! Remember the Soviets!
Seeking fresh news and opinions that didn’t seem to
be outtakes from the Johnson years, an audience of
Weblog readers began to build. And, in retrospect, sometimes it seems like everyone in that audience saw how
much fun the bloggers were having and decided to get into
the act themselves.
Meet Some Prominent Bloggers
One of the most prominent bloggers to gain notoriety on
9/11 and in the weeks immediately afterwards, was
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Prior to becoming interested in blogging, some of the
genre’s most successful practitioners had written lots of
material for what some bloggers, with tongue firmly in
cheek, call “the legacy media;” in other words, those formats that preceded Weblogs.
One of the most successful to make the jump was radio
talk show host and attorney, Hugh Hewitt, who has also
been blogging for several years at www.hughhewitt.com
In January 2005, he released a surprise best seller on the
subject, called — naturally enough — Blog (Nelson Books,
available from Amazon.com and numerous “bricks and
mortar” booksellers). It’s perhaps the most easily accessible book yet written on the Blogosphere — what it is, what
it’s accomplished, and where it’s going. It’s also unique in its
discussion of Weblogs as a potential business tool.
Perhaps what makes Hewitt’s book so user-friendly is
that Hewitt is no great technophile
himself. Unlike many authors of
Internet-oriented books, Hewitt doesn’t
consider himself on the cutting edge of
HTML code or XML feeds. James
Lileks, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune
columnist whose “Daily Bleat” online
diary ( www.lileks.com) is a Blogosphere favorite, is a frequent guest on
Hewitt’s show. Lileks once wrote that
“Hugh’s preferred method of putting
pictures up on his website no doubt
consists of taping them to the monitor
face in, so we all can see them.”
Hewitt doesn’t argue with that
description, saying with a chuckle,
“I’m a total technological idiot. What I
have is the ability to post, and I have a
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that point; and if the site breaks, I call
them. All I know how to do is post and
link. So I am as low-tech a blogger as
there is out there.”
P
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Circle #83 on the Reader Service Card.
JULY 2005
