Alive and Kicking in the Blogosphere

Julie Ball, Staff Writer at the Citizen-Times writes "Gene Policinski, executive director of the nonprofit First Amendment Center, sees modern-day bloggers as similar to the pamphleteers from early in the nation’s history.

They wrote what they wanted, printed it and distributed it in their towns.

“Blogging is very much in the spirit of the First Amendment,” Policinski said.

Only now, the potential distribution is far wider than anyone could have imagined.

Research conducted in 2005 by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found 9 percent of all adults using the Internet had created a blog. Technorati, a search engine that allows users to search millions of blogs, estimates that 70,000 new blogs are created daily. A blog is a personal online journal, or Web log.



Local bloggers are letting the world know their thoughts, personal, political and otherwise.

“What blogs do is they open the public square again. That’s their strength,” said Paul Van Heden of Asheville, who writes the political blog Brainshrub. “The weakness of blogs is it’s still to be determined whether blogs can cause serious social change.”

Van Heden was a journalism student but says he became disillusioned with journalism. Van Heden says he can get away with a lot more on his blog than a journalist.

“My problem with the mainstream media isn’t that they are biased. It’s that they pretend that they are not. That’s what frustrates me,” Van Heden said.

And anyone can do it, says Anne Fitten Glenn, 41, of Asheville. Glenn, a freelance writer, started blogging to market her writing. She said she writes for three blogs, including www.edgymama.com..."



"...Gordon Smith doesn’t consider himself a journalist but a commentator.

He says his blog, Scrutiny Hooligans, is a great place to “put all those opinions,” but also “a place to highlight issues that maybe are getting shorter play in some of the print media or corporate media.”

But Smith worries all this freedom may not last..."

Read the rest of the article at the Citizen-Times Online.