On the warpath
Blogs are now so powerful that the media are playing catch up, says Glenn Reynolds, a rightwing commentator and pioneer of the medium
Glenn Reynolds, The Guardian, February 20, 2003

I didn't expect this. When I started my weblog InstaPundit.Com in August 2001, the world was a very different place, and InstaPundit was a very different kind of weblog. I wrote about the greed of the music industry, the importance of allowing stem-cell research, and the ineptitude of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. (OK, not everything has changed.) [...]

Phrases coined in the "blogosphere" - as it is called these days - now percolate out into the real world with amazing rapidity. Scott Ott, who runs a humour weblog called ScrappleFace.com, coined the term "Axis of Weasels" in reference to the Chirac/Schröder alliance. Within a day it was the headline for the New York Post, and it was repeated on CNN, Fox, and, most gratifyingly, in French and German media.

And, as the Daily Telegraph reported, officials at the state department and the White House were chortling over a Chirac caption contest that appeared on another weblog. [...]Traditional media generally aren't fast enough to match this. To use a military term, weblogs are "inside the decision curve" of Big Media. Traditional media are trying to meet this challenge by creating weblogs of their own (the Guardian pioneered this) but for it to really work, someone has to read a lot of email and other weblogs.

James Lileks said it best: "A column is a lecture. A weblog is a conversation." The weblog world is a remarkably open and interesting one - pseudonymous Iraqi blogger "Salam Pax" has met a warm reception from the warbloggers,
--and he's getting his information on how to prepare for war from Israeli weblogs! [...]

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Eat a third and drink a third and leave the remaining third of your stomach empty. Then, when you get angry, there will be sufficient room for your rage.
--Babylonian Talmud, tractate Gittin
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 4:32 pm