Here is a nice explaination of blogs and their implications to the news media.
from
http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/SunSpec/Jun03/index83.shtml A revolution is happening in journalism, right now; a revolution with huge political implications. Blogs are the cause. And the fall of Howell Raines this last week is like the first brick in a Berlin Wall. It will not stop tumbling.
Though made of words, a blog is a different thing, in kind, from printed articles in a newspaper or magazine, in which sources of information may be stated but must be taken by the reader on faith, unless the reader has the time, ability, and personal connexions to retrace them. And if he does, what he finds must then be taken on faith by his readers.
The blog may be updated by the minute or the hour, it remains accessible and searchable through its archives, but most crucially, it contains those Internet links. Through them, the bloggers are universally networked. They link each other's precise words, and -- comes the revolution -- are able to reference most of their sources almost instantaneously, in the original form.
The almost infinitely extendable electronic field of text, allows whatever space is necessary to delve into fine details. The "comments" that readers can append to each blog "post" provide a court of cross-examination, so the blogger himself is quickly exposed in any sharp practice. The bloggers also act as checks on one another, and cross-link when they contest each other's views and findings.
Example, bloggers have recently demolished one malicious misquotation after another of Bush administration officials, by leftwing newspaper reporters and columnists, simply by juxtaposing through links what the journalist tried to get away with, to the original transcripts.
In another breakthrough on Thursday, the Guardian, a British leftwing daily, found itself retracting two of its biggest recent stories. In the first it alleged Colin Powell and Jack Straw had had doubts about the evidence they gave before the war of Iraqi WMD, citing a meeting between them that -- had never taken place. In the second, it said Paul Wolfowitz had admitted the U.S. went into Iraq for its oil, quoting -- wilfully and dishonestly from a text retranslated through German. Bloggers had been all over both stories, and made the difference on the second.
A blog is pretty useless, and clogs up my browser with stream of consciousness rambling hits on topics where I'm looking for specific info.