Blog!: How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture - Hardcover

David Kline; Dan Burstein

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1593151411 ISBN 13: 9781593151416

Publisher: Vanguard Pr, 2005

Synopsis

A collection of essays, interviews, and commentary about the political, business, and cultural aspects of blogs and blogging.

About this title

About the Author

Dan Burstein is the editor of the New York Times bestselling Secrets of the Code: The Unauthorized Guide to the Mysteries Behind The Da Vinci Code. An award-winning journalist and author of seven books, he is the founder of Millennium Technology Ventures, a New York-based venture capital firm that invests in innovative new technology companies.

A Pulitzer Prize finalist in international reporting, author David Kline has broken some of the most important domestic and international stories of the past 25 years. He has written for The New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Atlantic Monthly, Wired, Rolling Stone, and the Harvard Business Review, as well as CBS and NBC News. He is the co-author of the bestselling Road Warriors: Dreams and Nightmares Along the Information Highway.

From the Inside Flap

The sensational emergence of blogging as a popular means of individual expression and public discourse has captured the world s attention. And it s not hard to see why. Political bloggers have used their online journals or web logs (blogs) to bring down high and mighty politicians like Trent Lott and force the resignation of such media bigwigs as CBS anchor Dan Rather. Consumer bloggers, meanwhile, have turned struggling enterprises with deserving products into overnight successes and at the same time, ruined firms that ignored their justified complaints about defective products.

Who are these amateur "pundits" and how have they used this new communications medium called blogging to transform not only their own lives but the larger society as well? What s going on inside this revolution of the voiceless against the heedless?

blog! how the newest media revolution is changing politics, business, and culture takes you inside the minds and hearts of the world s most influential bloggers. People like former Howard Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi, who pioneered the use of political blogs as grassroots organizing tools and fund-raising vehicles and in the process changed political campaigning forever. Or Robert Scoble, a Microsoft employee who, through his candid, fair-minded blog postings, accomplished what hundreds of millions of dollars in Microsoft image advertising could not the humanizing of a company once reviled as a monopolistic bully. Or former child star Wil Wheaton (Stand by Me and Star Trek: The Next Generation), who captivated millions with his blog postings about the humiliations of a struggling actor and eventually launched a new career for himself as a respected author with two books to his credit. From celebrity-activist Arianna Huffington to the Web philosopher Clay Shirky, this book brings you many of the world s A-list bloggers in their own fresh and uncensored voices.

Any powerful new technology inevitably brings with it a hurricane of hype and hyperbole. Some of the medium s more extreme evangelists claim that blogs will replace traditional media, nullify the influence of the rich and powerful over electoral politics, and by putting the power of the printing press in the hands of ordinary citizens enable a million new Shakespeares to emerge from the heartland.

Don t bet on it, say authors David Kline and Dan Burstein. They point out that while blogging will certainly transform many areas of politics, business, and culture, it cannot free us from the limits of human nature or the constraints of social and economic reality. The authors thus give us the first book that pierces the bubble of hype and confusion surrounding this new medium with a real-world analysis of the ways that blogging will and won t change our society and the rapidly expanding universe of the now and future blogging phenomenon.

Reviews

Blogging, at least in principle, is far from new. It could be argued, as the authors do, that Thomas Paine was a proto-blogger whose blogging paraphernalia consisted of pamphlets instead of free software and an internet connection. In this dense and entertaining analysis of the "new paradigm for human communication," journalists Kline and Burstein examine the notion that weblogs, or "blogs," are redefining journalism and media consumption and conclude that, while blogging may not signal the death of big media, it has measurably impacted everything from political campaigns-as evidenced by Howard Dean's presidential bid-to the life of former child star Wil Wheaton, who found his "second act" in a tell-all blog about the humiliations of show business. Soliciting the thoughts of well-known bloggers, such as Andrew Sullivan and Jeff Jarvis, the authors create a venerable blogosphere bible that navigates and interprets the cyber-verbosity informing the way journalists do their jobs, from fact finding to steering coverage. Using specific examples of blogger power, such as the release of an Iranian dissident from prison, and employing Q&A interviews with movers and shakers like Microsoft's Robert Scoble to discuss blogs' current and future marketplace utility, the authors offer a lot to consider about our information-saturated culture and what cream might rise to the top of it.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Just in case you've been living in the woods, blog is short for Web log, which is the online, collaborative, interactive, interconnected writing tool that is allegedly changing the nature of public discourse. Kline and Burstein, who also wrote Road Warriors: Dreams and Nightmares along the Information Highway (1995), are unabashed proselytizers, finding precedents for blogs in cave paintings and the "commonplace books" of later Europeans. Now, they say, blogging "may be nothing short of a new paradigm for modern human communication." After a persuasive introductory essay by Burstein, the book is divided into three sections: politics, business, and culture. Each begins with a thought-provoking essay by Kline and then includes interviews with and articles by a well-selected array of qualified commentators, including former Howard Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi, commercial blog mogul Nick Denton, and, surprisingly, former MTV veejay Adam Curry. Books on technology trends often have a short shelf life, but Blog! focuses on the larger issues that make this such an exciting cultural moment while steering clear of details that will date quickly. Well worthwhile. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Vanguard Pr
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1593151411
• ISBN 13: 9781593151416
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320
• Editor: De Keijzer Arne J., Berger Paul