Dec. 30, 2004 - A blog -- short for "web log"
-- is an online personal journal that covers topics ranging from daily life to
technology to culture to the arts. Blogs have made such an impact this year
that Merriam-Webster named it the word of the year.
"There's a blog for every
niche. There's a blog for every interest," said technology writer Xeni
Jardin, who co-edits the blog boingboing.net.
Dylan Verdi, an 11-year-old known
as the world's youngest videoblogger, says she covers "things that I've
seen that I like or that I've heard of, or just anything that happened to me that
day that I'm thinking."
There are millions of blogs on
the Internet -- a new one is created every seven-and-a-half seconds. More than
10,000 new additions are added to the "blogosphere" each day.
This week, their influence has
become readily apparent. Dozens of bloggers have been filing firsthand reports
from the areas devastated by southern Asia's deadly tsunamis.
"There is kind of an
immediacy that people can relate to -- can't help but relate to that in a very
intimate way," said Jardin.
"Day three," one
blogger writes from the scene, "this may be an unexpected challenge and
responsibility, and it hurts to see people in pain. But it's also a remarkable
experience to be on hand to do something modest, but useful, in the aftermath
of a disaster."
Bloggers around the world have
made themselves useful, encouraging donations to relief groups, posting the
names of the missing and expressing sympathy for the victims.
As a driving force in politics
this year, bloggers covered the 2004 presidential campaigns and election.
Political candidates also used them as valuable campaign tools.
"The Internet taught us,
rather than the other way around," said former Democratic presidential
candidate Howard Dean.
This year, for the first time,
bloggers were permitted to cover the national political conventions firsthand.
Bloggers have taken the lead over
traditional media on a number of stories, including racist remarks made by
then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., at former Sen. Strom
Thurmond's birthday party.
"Suddenly the mainstream
media, the nightly news, on all three networks and on cable, picked up the
story and the papers picked up the story and the next thing you know, Trent
Lott's resigning and gone," said Democratic strategist Joe Trippi, who
masterminded Dean's groundbreaking online campaign efforts.
Some of the most compelling
images of 2004 found their way to blogs first, from the Florida hurricanes to
the war in Iraq. It was a blogger who got the first photographs of coffins
carrying U.S. soldiers arriving in the United States from Iraq.
But for Verdi, it is the simple
pleasure of knowing that someone is listening that makes blogging worthwhile.
"On my blog it allows people
to post comments, and I have gotten comment upon comment upon comment,"
she said. "It makes me feel really good that somebody else cares about
what I have to say."
ABC News' Elizabeth Vargas
filed this report for "World News Tonight."
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