Behind the Blogs

A recent article by Russell Smith of The Globe and Mail gives an introspective look into how blogs are measuring up in media. Titled "So Many Blogs, So Little Cash," the article details how blogs are being used by newspaper reporters, freelance writers, and book authors in addition to many other types of professionals. Smith says there are several forms of a personal blog, but the main three types are:

1. The compiler or aggregator of information about a specific subject, with links to various news stories and updates, which may have a clear journalistic function.

2. The professional journalist's blog, paid for by a news organization, which reads very much as his or her regular reporting does, and has the same financial resources behind it, but happens to be online.

3. The amateur opinion column, which can often degenerate into a diary.

He also cites an interesting 2008 survey conducted by Technorati.com that included 133 million blogs. The survey found that only 7.4 million of them had been updated in the last four months and concluded that 95 percent of blogs were essentially abandoned.

Click here to read the full article.