Jonathan Taplin - What is a blog?

Jonathan Taplin, Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California. The clip was shot in Rome on January 29th 2006. - "A blog is a personal web log.

Meaning it's a personal diary that somebody is writing with a point of view that usually references and links many other web pieces.

Now, in it's early stage it was text, with links or hyperlinks.

But now, video blogs and audio podcasts are becoming more popular as more people have broadband.

And those are beginning to have a very interesting life of their own.

It's really... it's like a kind of personal journalism.

Not big named-brand like Fox, Murdoch... you know, New York Times behind it.

Small journalists. Joshua Marshall, you know, talkinpointsmemo.com ... those kind of things.

And yet they're having a lot of influence.

They can be a little ahead of the news. In other words, they can do investigative reporting that doesn't necessarily have to be sourced perfectly but can ask questions that maybe more mainstream journalists couldn't get cleared.

They can begin to open up stories about things.

For instance, in the US, we are going through a period of a lot of bribery scandals in the government. Jack Abramoff, Mr. Cunningham..lots of people.

Well a lot of those things were started by bloggers that started asking questions about these people.

And then they spurred mainstream journalists to begin looking at things and that eventually got prosecutors to look at things and that eventually has led people to being indicted.

So, you know, the blogs play an important role.

Now mainstream newspapers are beginning to cover the blogs!

And beginning to reference the blogs...

And in that sense there's a kind of ritual circle happening..."

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