Writing for the Web

Blogging the Democrats

The print media continue to observe the blogosphere with a mixture of condescension and anxiety. The accreditation of 35 bloggers to the Democrats' presidential convention is evidently important enough for another story in the Globe and Mail.

Didn't think the story itself was as insightful as Jack Kapica's story just below, but it's interesting that the print media themselves are creating much of the audience for blogs. It was a Globe story about war blogs, in the spring of 2003, that got me really interested in this medium.

Bloggers at the Conventions

Jack Kapica, who writes about technology for the Globe & Mail online edition, has a good story about the role of bloggers at the US conventions this summer, and how they're filling a role that community papers used to fill before media conglomerates created "economies of scale" by feeding all their papers the same stuff from a single reporter. You can read the story at Globetechnology.

Thank You, Sir Tim

The only question is why it took so long to make Tim Berners-Lee a knight, but it's finally happened. BBC News online reports that Creator of the web turns knight.

He may be modest, but what would the world be like without him?

Michael Moore Blogs

My mentor Dalton Trumbo told me when I was a kid: "Crawford, all a writer really needs is ego and energy." He was right in my case, and positively prophetic about Michael Moore.

As I mentioned in my last post, the writer/producer/director of Fahrenheit 9/11 has a very lively website, a kind of megablog, and now he's taken up personal blogging. Both ego and energy are available in gargantuan portions at Michael Moore.com : Mike's Message : Blog. But he's obviously having a wonderful time, and who would begrudge him the delight he's experienced in making $60 million in ten days while kicking his enemies' butts?

Most Popular Blog in the World?

The current Online Journalism Review has a long article about the effect of Michael Moore's website: MichaelMoore.com: Lightning Rod for Political Debate, Action.

It provides links not only to Moore's site and supporting sites, but also to sites highly critical of Moore and Fahrenheit 9/11. This film has clearly sparked the media controversy of the year, so OJR's article makes a good spot for a tour of the issues.

For my own review of F9/11, see The Tyee, an excellent online newsmagazine here in Vancouver.