Brownwood Blogging

Terry Eastland: When everyone has a say, sound will be hard to ignore

01:00 AM CST on Sunday, February 13, 2005
By TERRY EASTLAND
If you're reading this column in its original – which is to say, paper – format, you're having an old media experience. If you're reading it at DallasNews.com, you're getting it in cyberspace, and you're a click away from the so-called new media of the blogosphere.
If you're familiar with the blogosphere, you know that it's made up of blogs; that "blog" is short for "Weblog"; and that "Weblog" joins together "log," which is a daily diary or journal, and "Web," which is the place where the log is maintained. One person or several may contribute to a blog. Example: the one at DallasNews.com/opinion is run by the editors of these pages.
Not everyone has traveled into the blogosphere. A blogging pastor writes that a majority of his parishioners don't even know what a blog is. But my sense is that sooner or later, most of them will.
The first blog appeared in 1997. (There are actually Internet historians who keep track of these things.) Now there are 6 million blogs, with 35,000 being started every day. Not every blog stays around, but the total number is likely to keep growing.
You can find blogs on not only politics but also just about every other topic. And while the blogosphere is now an important development (as CBS News finally grasped), it is eventually going to make world history, according to Hugh Hewitt, a lawyer, radio talker and, not least, a blogger.
In his new book, Blog, Mr. Hewitt (full disclosure: We're friends going back two decades) argues that the blogosphere is helping effect "an information reformation similar in consequence to the Reformation that split Christianity in the Sixteenth Century." Part of this is wrong, but part also happens to be right.
Mr. Hewitt notes the invention of the first printing press with movable type (in the mid-1400s by Johannes Gutenberg) and how it made possible the mass production of books, the most important of which was the Bible. The printing and widespread reading of the Bible ultimately led to the challenge to a church hierarchy claiming authority over what to believe. As Mr. Hewitt puts it, "the democratization of the Bible" led to "the democratization of the Church."
The difficulty with the analogy is that it's hard to see how a modern information reformation (thanks to the blogosphere) could ever be similar in consequence to the first.
The problem is that today, there is no hierarchy of the same importance to society as the Catholic Church of old that might be democratized. Mr. Hewitt talks about how "old hierarchies" are vulnerable to bloggers. But the one he especially takes to task are the old media, meaning the traditional press and network news, and their influence is hardly comparable to that of the church Martin Luther protested.
That said, it's worth thinking about the role of a printing press compared with that of a Weblog. A printing press is a means of production, while a Weblog is essentially one of distribution. A publisher of a paper document has to print and then distribute it, while a blogger has only to post entries, whereupon they are available immediately to anyone with a computer and Internet access. The effect is immediate distribution – to those who come to the site (which emphasizes the importance of cheap, high-speed Internet access). And while a publisher may pay heavy printing and distribution costs, a blogger pays fees for necessary services that scare no one.
Here is where you find a democratizing effect, for the expense of blogging is so low we can all be bloggers now. And to the extent bloggers have reliable information or worthy opinions, "old hierarchies" will have to take notice – and adapt.
Adaptation on the part of pre-blogosphere institutions is, in fact, the story to come – indeed, one already unfolding. Major change, if not a reformation, lies ahead.

Terry Eastland is publisher of The Weekly Standard. His e-mail address is teastland@weeklystandard.com.

source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/viewpoints/stories/021305dnedieastland.8effc.html