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January 15, 2005

Blog

If the blogosphere had a press agent, it would be Hugh Hewitt. He has flogged the potential of the blogosphere for over a year on his website, and now he's got a book on the shelves (Blog) that attempts to bring the word to people who don't get their news from the Internet.

Like his previous work, If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat, Blog is an eminently readable work you can devour in an afternoon. Hugh's writing style is conversational and transmits information quickly and clearly. This makes Blog a good read regardless of your position on blogs and blogging.

Hugh's thesis is simple: blogs are the next wave in the information revolution, as important to the dissemination of information as the printing press was to the Reformation. While Hugh touts a number of blogs (oddly enough missing yours truly, but I'm sure that was an oversight), his discussion isn't about any particular blog, but about how the technology of blogs is changing how information reaches the public. He cites four significant instances of the blogosphere influencing the public discourse: the removal of Trent Lott from his position as Senate Majority Leader, the fall of Jayson Blair and Howell Raines at the New York Times, the takedown of John Kerry by the Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth and Dan Rather's immolation following the 60 Minutes forged National Guard documents scandal. Each case illustrates how the blogosphere was able to keep stories percolating (and even breaking, in the latter two cases) until the national media had no choice to take what the blogosphere was giving them, and in each case the results were markedly different than what would have occurred prior to the rise of the blogosphere.

Naysayers will probably ding Hugh for what notes as blogger triumphalism, but I think such readers are missing the point. Hugh is not arguing that any one blogger or group of bloggers is able to have this effect, but that the blogosphere as a whole is distributing the flow of information in such a manner as to make it far more difficult for anyone to control that flow. That will make life far more difficult for people accustomed to keeping tight control over information, but it also represents a great opportunity for people willing to take advantage of this new medium's strengths. And this is what Hugh is trying to sell: those people and businesses that jump into the blogosphere now are going to gain a serious competitive advantage on those who continue to stick to older methods of communicating. While this process in likely to move in fits and starts over the next few years, it is coming nevertheless, and Blog offers some good advice to those people looking to get out ahead of the blogosphere rather than ending up in trouble due to a failure to understand this new technology.

The definitive work on the blogosphere is yet to be written, because it's still too early in the development of the system to chronicle it all. But Blog is a good start and a valuable resource for anyone looking to understand more about what the blogosphere is and how it can help or hurt your business.