I still cannot say the word ‘blog’ in any non-blogger company without being confronted by blank faces and puzzled expressions. The medium isn’t really ‘out there’ yet.
But gradual recognition in the circles of orthodox journalism gathers apace although I am not, perhaps, as wildly enthusiastic as I ought to be about this BBC editorial:
“Weblogs, for those of you still outside this ever-increasing loop, are personal web sites, updated frequently, and increasingly interlinked and interconnected to such an extent that some people have started to think of them as a kind of “hive mind” for the internet community.
As American technology writer Dan Gilmor, who first reported the Google/Blogger story, has realised and publicly stated many times: with the advent of weblogging, the readers know more than the journalists. And the journalists had better remember that.”
The hook of the editorial is the acquisition of Pyra by Google but I suppose that it’s a good sign that they’ve been interested enough by blogging to write about the medium in fairly glowing terms.
They do mention one or two blogs specifically and, naturally, both are left-wing but then the BBC can hardly be expected to even acknowledge the existance of anyone or anything that isn’t.
Do you think they’ve noticed this one yet?
I’m pretty sure it’s precisely because they have noticed biased-bbc.blogspot.com that they have picked up on other blogs.They don’t like it up’em.