Page 200 - 4188

198

02/26/politics/main502099.shtml) is a similar digest of what is
happening the in the nation’s capital.
Blogs are a phenomenon with analogies to the birth of printing.
They are easy to create and cheap to maintain. However, unlike the

printer’s craft that kept some out of publishing and rewarded others,
there is no skill needed to start and maintain a blog. Several sources
offer easy and inexpensive ways to set up and run one. However, there is

craft in starting and maintaining a readable and useful blog.
Blogs as personal diaries have little application for PR
practitioners unless associated with someone with name recognition. For
example, a celebrity blog is a great way to reach a fan base. Blogs

without a distinct purpose for existence are of less use. On the other
hand, companies have shown the way to using blogs productively in
reaching customers and others. Blogging is a proven public relations

tool that practitioners should know about.
Blogging Defined – Sort of
There is no easy way to define a blog because they are a little bit of

everything. When they started back in the early to middle 1990s, they
were principally link-driven journals that individuals kept on a Web site.
That is, someone would find an interesting link and would post it for

others to read, usually with commentary as to why it is important.
A blog now does not have to be link driven. It can be anything in
the form of a time-date-stamped journal. Jennifer Balderama of C/Net
news said it with a bit of rhyming, “Web logs give voice to people

whom just a decade ago, you never would have heard from. There are
war blogs, peace blogs, food blogs, crude blogs, humor blogs, and
culture blogs to occupy your day.

Geek blogs, freak blogs, teen blogs, mean blogs, fantasticals and
radicals who like to rant away. Worker bees and histories, punditry and
poetry, diversity, adversity and spicy verbal play. Optimists, pessimists,
enthusiasts and hobbyists, journalists and journal – ists with something

big to say.”
Balderama is a blogger herself. Blogs are variously described as an
individual’s way to speak out, as a view on the world that one would not

find in established journalism, as a way to discuss things with peer
groups and more.
Sometimes the effort is interesting and sometimes curious. For

example, the blog-author of Inluminet Net marketing