Columbia Journalism Review looks at Blogs

Under the heading “Emerging Alternatives: A brief history of Weblogs”, Mallory Jensen of the Columbia Journalism Review has looked at blogs from the point of an emerging alternative. Whilst the article does not shed any new light on the role of the blogosphere in the great scheme of things, it does demonstrate a recognition by journalists, and in this case, at the prestigious Columbia Journalism Review, on the emerging place blogging has in breaking news and in serious journalism.
A Brief History of Weblogs | Columbia Journalism Review
“The growing power of Weblogs, or “blogs,” has hardly gone unnoticed. Bloggers have been credited with helping to topple Trent Lott and Howell Raines, with inflaming debate over the Iraq war, and with boosting presidential hopeful Howard Dean. Suddenly, it seems, everyone from Barbra Streisand (whose site is a lefty clearinghouse) to guy-next-door Bruce Cole (a San Francisco foodie whose blog is called Sauté Wednesday), has been swept into the blogosphere. But blogs aren’t as new as you may think. They have actually been around since the early days of the Internet. In the strictest sense, a blog is someone’s online record of the Web sites he or she visits”