A Brief History of Blogging Mark Tremayne Assistant Professor School of Journalism University of Texas at Austin

What is a Blog? According to blog veteran Rebecca Blood: l John Barger coined the term weblog in December, 1997 l As of 1998 there were only a few in existence l In 1999 Weblogger Peter Merholz decided to call the growing collection of sites wee-blogs l This caught on and was shortened to “blogs”

Blog Explosion l In 1999 pitas.com began offering a free “build-your-own-blog” software l Pyra.com, blogger.com, and groksoup.com followed later that year l By 2000 there were thousands of blogs

What do they look like? l They typically appear as a long column of date entries in reverse chronology. l Some are personal in nature and are written in a very informal style. l Others engaged in discussion of current events & writing is often more professional l Links to source material and stories on traditional media web sites are common l Some blogs allow readers to post their own responses to the blogger’s entries

Questions raised by this phenomena l Is blogging journalism? l Do traditional journalists and amateur bloggers go about their work in similar ways? l Can a news employee run his or her own personal blog (and not get fired)? l Should traditional media outlets use the blog style and what are the ramifications of this if they do?