Blogging: Its for everyone

Recently, Merriam-Webster announced that, based on “online lookups,” the number one word of the year was “blogs” (Morse, Page 1). Their definition of a blog is “a web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer” (Morse, Page1). This definition is inaccurate based on my research, as blogs are not always “personal” and can include more than one author. Throughout my research, many bloggers in the blogoshere have referred to websites as blogs that discuss business only, business and personal details, and more than mere “reflections” of a personal nature. As blogs become more popular and affect different forms of communication with a higher degree of magnitude, I am confident that the definition of blogs will morph closer to my definition of blogs (short for weblog, a web site that contains an online journal including, but not limited to, reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer(s)) than the Merriam-Webster definition. This paper will discuss blogs (what they are), bloggers (who they are), blogging (should you do it and is it profitable), and the impact of blogs on media. I will start by talking about how blogs started, and who some bloggers are. Next, I will discuss the amount of revenue that can be made, and how that revenue is made, from starting a blog. Finally, I will show the impact blogs have had on the mainstream media, specifically, the most recent Presidential Election.

The culture of the internet has created a subculture of bloggers that, as evidenced by the number of persons looking to find a definition of the word (however inaccurate the definition may be), is growing in popularity and is therefore a prescient topic for persons to be informed about. Blogging started, albeit without a proper name and with an even more vague definition, as soon as the internet was invented. Just as writing a journal started with the first writers thousands of years ago, blogs arose at the same time as the medium of the internet was born. This created some new challenges to the conventional writer. According to The Handbook of Digital Publishing, the greatest strength of publishing online material is “displaying the interrelated nature of information connected with hyperlinks” (Kleper, Page 197). The use of hyperlinks is extensive in blogs...

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... power of a blog, everyone now can own their own version of Leibling’s press, and the power of that concept is freedom at its highest form.

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