Blogging Editorial

By Amanda Vance

Yoani Sanchez is a university graduate living in Havana, Cuba. In school, she studied philology, a field that combines linguistics with literary studies; today, she blogs. Her site, Generacion Y, is a platform for her to air her grievances about the repressive nature of the Cuban government and society. It is also a place for her to advocate for the release of Cuban political prisoners, and to call on companies like DHL to refuse to do business with a government that won’t respect her human rights. In a country in which she has no ability to speak her mind, her blog has become her only vehicle for self-expression, while also offering the truth about Cuban life to foreigners.

Sanchez is just one of millions of young women and men who blog daily, and her style of writing is only one of many approaches that people have taken to this increasingly popular medium of exchanging information. These days, a mere ten years or so since blogs first became popular, there are blogs on nearly every possible topic, from celebrity gossip to music to art to politics, both domestic and international. Some are written by professionals or experts, while others are written by Sanchez, or another the girl next door. There are video and photo blogs and blogs run by institutions like the Council on Foreign Relations. Even the White House has one.

The ever expanding blogosphere begs comparison between some of the different types of blogs. What works better – a blog written by a woman like Sanchez, whose stories personalize the tragic facts of Cuba’s repressive regime, but whose writings express one opinion and one political agenda rather than multiple points of view and verifiable fact… or a blog like Politics Daily, that brings together professional reporters to write neutral, in-depth, and “smart pieces from across the ideological spectrum” that “challenge readers’ biases”?

Consider Sanchez’s site. Her writing reflects only her opinion, but it is one of the few glimpses foreigners have into the minds of Cubans, whose contact with the outside world is restricted. Most of her accusations (particularly those directed at multinational companies) are not easily verifiable, but her blog still offers valuable information and insight into another culture and a burgeoning movement of political activism in Cuba, especially when she tells inspirational stories about men outside of the party running for local office. It also brings readers together in an impressive effort to translate her writing into 17 languages. The blog may not be neutral or strictly factual, but it is clearly useful from a democratic, information-disseminating perspective.

Politics Daily, on the other hand, seeks to offer neutral, factual, and accessible information on a variety of topics, from the environment to foreign policy to immigration to abortion. The journalists who contribute are paid professionals, and this is reflected in their writing: unlike entries on Sanchez’s blog, nothing on Politics Daily is meant to change somebody’s mind. The articles focus mainly on news, with some opinion thrown in here and there and from multiple perspectives for a little extra flavor. The benefits of this kind of blog? It goes into more depth than your average news-site, the writing is good and accessible, and the information is generally trust-worthy. Still, it lacks the personal touch that Sanchez adds to hers, which makes a tired topic like Cuban human rights abuses come alive to your average, desensitized reader.

So then, given the pros and cons of each, why make a choice? Arguably, one of the strengths of the blogosphere is its incredible diversity of information, sources, insights, and opinions. Some sources are more trustworthy than others, but given the range of expertise available online, it is not particularly hard to fact-check should it prove absolutely necessary. Meanwhile, the internet can continue to give a voice to those like Sanchez, who lack freedom of speech, or in other cases simply feel unheard, and give more people more access to a variety of different ideas they might otherwise not know. For all its challenges and criticisms, when all is said and done, the blogosphere is rather beneficial and can only improve with time and growing popularity and efforts worldwide.

Blogs-difficult to choose, difficult to assess.

The great variety of blogs on every subject and area of interest and the fact that many people make money working as bloggers makes the assessment of the “blogosphere” a complicated process. The first criterion that could arguably set a blog as a trustworthy source of information is the type of the contributors and their familiarity with the subject they are writing about. The first example that I would like to bring up is the example of a journalist and writer, Mickey Kaus who does political analysis in the blog kausfiles.com for the magazine Slate. Mickey Kaus has studied politics and law and has contributed articles to well respected papers such as Newsweek. This information gives him credibility. However, his blog can not be considered a source of new information because he mainly provides commentary and his opinion on topics of concern for Americans. In addition, the people who respond to his comments also provide their views on the news and they do not offer anything new. This blog is a part of the online version of the magazine Slate and the blogs seems to add various perspectives on the news that the magazine itself provides.

Another interesting blog is a blog that is located in the site Big Think that includes experts’ opinions on various topics. These experts seem to have passed an evaluation process by the Editors of the Big Think and that adds credibility to what they say. One example of a blog is the Novel Copy that is a blog about the media revolution and how it’s shaking up the content of what we read, hear, and see. One of the bloggers is Francis Reynolds who has editorial experience and writes on the evolving ways that we receive our news.
The examples that have been given above are few among hundreds of blogs that exist in the web. In order to choose these blogs I used sources that I use for research purposes for a well-respected organization. The conclusions that I have reached are that in the case of the first blog, the reader might be able to see a point of view on the topic of his interest that he would not have seen by otherwise. I do not see this journalist’s blog being effective or ineffective. The effectiveness of a blog and a blogger depends on his political views and his background that will inspire people and make them trust him. As far as the Big Think blogger is concerned. I think that his blog is more accessible because he provides a comparative analysis on a topic such as the “Unpaid internships” that were discussed in the mainstream media. Francis Reynolds uses information from various sources in order to support the points that he makes.


In the blogs, the background, the name and the prestige of the blogger determines whether people would be willing to site this blogger’s opinion as a source of any type of information. However, blogs are unavoidably forms of marketing for organizations, experts and any other individuals because in this way bloggers advertise their accomplishments and make their voices heard.

It is hard to try to decide which blog or blogger deserves someone’s respect and time. In some cases, well-established blogs require subscription in order to be able to access them. That automatically eliminates the number and the type of the people who contribute to this blog depending on the subject. I think that what can differentiate a blog from a vehicle fro opinion or marketing is when the bloggers have a cause and they succeed in promoting their cause. None of the examples I provided fall under this category but I think that the blog Global Voices is a different type of blog that started as a university project but has been evolved to a media agent that collaborates with mainstream media.

Rethinking Democracy: Blog as a Tool of Social Change

by Marko Balazevic

Ronald Eyerman, Professor of Sociology at Yale University was noted to say: "It makes a strong case for the democratic power of blogging and the Internet, a form of empowerment for the voiceless." Yet, are those who are voiceless voiced through blogosphere? Are they being represented or taking active voice? And if so, should we talk about a public sphere, although such disclosure, even when labeled is ultimately anonymous? These questions arise when one brings up the problems of freedom of speech and public sphere as they are reified through blogs.

In taking an editorial point of view into blogosphere, a thing that seems like a contradiction from the beginning because of inherent lack of editorial constraint and control in most of blogging, I am going to look into two similarly aimed, but very different forms of blogs.

Avaaz, meaning "voice" or "noise" in many Asian, Middle Eastern and Eastern European languages, is a civic organization advocating for political and civic action in issues such as environmental protection, defending human rights, preventing armed conflicts and promoting peace. It aims at augmenting the extent of global democracy and voicing global public opinion by raising awareness and inviting people to take action in helping global cause. Such a mission would be impossible just a few decades before, but today, utilizing the Internet and its unprecedented capabilities of networking, Avaaz is able to mobilize astonishing numbers of people while employing just a handful of staff members around the world. What is amazing about Avaaz and similar organizations is that they have a great impact and a number of successful campaigns, while relying solely on resources provided by the Internet, emails, blogs and vlogs.

Although they are a grassroots organization, relying on very common and available means of reaching their audience, their job is not easy. They have grown to astonishing 4.2 million members in just three years, and a major part of that success is understanding how their target audiences' attention span functions. Being able to transfer great impact while being concise is major part of their success. In that vein, their blog doesn't slide into a classical form of blogging, that implies a somewhat intimate first person point of view even when we are talking about very serious blogs. Blogs on Avaaz.org are packed with condensed information and efficiently utilized photographs and videos very similarly to Paper Tiger Televison, a pioneer in independent TV production.

Professor Rick Wolff, one of biggest critics of capitalist project today, has a more profiled and narrower blog audience. A Professor of Economics Emeritus at University of Massachusetts in Amherst, professor Rick is one of major voices of left-wing economic theory in the US. He has a prolific posting of short analysis articles on his Web site and on Monthly Review Magazine. They are ranging from domestic to global political and economic issues and are marked by un unequivocal Marxist tone. Professor Rick holds that there is an alternative to capitalism, that is not a communist utopia dressed up as socialism, as was the case with the former socialist bloc. While rejecting reminiscence of communism, he has a firm belief that Western capitalist societies create great social and natural debacles, with far reaching consequences. Along with Stephen Resnick, he is an advocate of post-Friedman economic paradigm that he sees emerging after the turmoil of 2008. His analysis doesn't suggest a bright future for the capitalist system because it is overstrained, there is no more space for growth of wages and credit debt, and according to him the golden years of consumerism are over.

What is significant about Rick Wolff is that he is a renowned economic expert, yet has a very unpopular political and economic outlook, at least in the US. That is a limiting factor to the impact and reception of his analysis. Yet, that seems to be the case with most profiled, expert blogs. Being blogs is what grants them more freedom and a necessary bias. That implies a loyal, but limited readership, which in most cases doesn't have to be persuaded. Allowing commentary on blogs might be a weak remedy for broadening, but in most cases the only people that post are the ones that a diehard supporters or the other extreme, so it usually turns into ugly mudslinging.

In both cases, blogs are not the sole means of expression, but they pose a very significant form of transferring the content. Having sometimes overlapping goals, these two blogs differ very much, mainly in the way they approach targeted audience. But what separates these blogs from thousands of other lay blogs that pretend to do the same job? How do we discriminate between experts and laymen? Subjectivity and bias are the quintessential traits of a blog. Lack of editorial restraint is what makes them blogs. But what separates them from the rest of the blogosphere is the genuine pretension on fact-based analysis and external credential, while not rejecting their bias and agenda. And that is fine with me. That is the reason why I read them.

We Blog and in Incredibly Diverse Ways

By Indra Baatarkhuu

The term blog we use today has truly changed its initial starting point to this moment and now grasps every possible way and style of reaching the audience. For those who are interested in reading about politics there are blogs ranging from the ones written by experts such as Asia Unbound at Council on Foreign Affairs to the ones that are written by anyone who wants to wrtie. Photographers have their own photoblogs to share their work with others, “vloggers” use videos, while others publicize their opinion on philosophy, arts or promote certain ideas, and the list goes on. Today, a new blog is created every second of every minute of the day, Technocrati reports, and certainly majority of them are not much read by others.

So why people blog and what makes some blogs more successful than others?

Looking at the number one political blog Huffington Post, according to Technorati – a popular tool for searching blogs – seems like reading a usual newspaper at first. The head articles are news-style pieces that report some kind of action – mainly on international affairs. Actually, Huffington post defines itself on the top of its page as an online newspaper. The writers for this blogs are journalists, experts, and respected professionals whose opinion is worth listening to. Some links lead to New York Times articles, some to youtube videos; you can also find posts consisting of funny pictures and a paragraph explaining the picture. In short, Huffington post writes about a variety of issues in different ways focusing on news and commentary, and this is what helps them reach a big audience. The Observer in London named Huffington Post “the most powerful blog in the world.”

The expert blog, on the other hand, has a narrower audience than those that cover health, fashion and entertainment at the same time. Bloggers provide them in response with solid analysis, opinion or interesting information not covered by major news media or covered, but has interesting points that are in their view worth highlighting again or topics that are written differently in different news coverage and experts have their take on it. Asia Unbound blog posts are not too long and bring points taken from a number of selected writings, coming in the end to the small conclusion about the initial topic, which makes it more different from news style articles. They give answer in more simple and lighter ways than academic articles. It is certainly pleasant to hear views from senior fellows of the Council on Foreign Relations not having to read all of the background information or thorough analysis if readers do not want to do it now.

Although these two blogs differ greatly in their style, design and audience, both seem to be a good tool for outreach whether it is sharing their opinion or disseminating news already published by others. The word "weblogs" were broken first playfully into “we blog” by Peter Merholz in 1999 and “and somehow the new term—blog—stuck as both a verb and a noun,” says the Economist article.

Whether it may be your online journal about your travel, another place to post news, a way to share opinion, self-expression of teens, blogs should be regularly added new materials to it in order for it to survive in the sea of blogs.

“Higher authority bloggers are much more prolific content creators, posting nearly 300 times more than lower ranked bloggers,” Technocrati study says. There is no one way to create a successful blog, weblogs reach different people who are appealed to a range of styles and posts. If you find your own way to attract readers, what remains to do is post more and more.

Blogs of Today

By Eleanor Albert


The Internet has transformed the dissemination of information and communication. As a result, social media technologies—notably the blogosphere—have exploded. Blogs now carry a role of crucial importance and influence in the world due to the reach of blogs worldwide, the easy accessibility of blog tools, the continuity of content that can be adjusted via editing and comments, the immediately timeliness that trumps the time lag of traditional media, and the usability of blog production technology.

With the plethora of voices interacting online, bloggers come in all forms (music, art, celebrity gossip, domestic issues, and of course the international community) and from a large variety of platforms (experts, institutions, newspapers, as well as the ambitious young adult that decides to share their wisdom with the “connected community”). Numerous experts of the world have seized the opportunity to engage in a dialogue with the global public in creating blogs of their own: for example, The Atlantic’s James Fallows and “The Road to Hell is Paved…” by David Rieff at the World Affairs Journal. While the two experts have joined the blogging bandwagon, it would be impossible to say that they share the same approach to how they blog.

James Fallows is National Correspondent for The Atlantic. During his 25 years with the magazine he has been based in Washington DC, Seattle, Berkeley, Austin, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai, and recently Beijing. Previously, Fallows was the editor of US News & World Report as well as the chief White House speechwriter for Jimmy Carter. His credentials are without a doubt impressive, but his personable writing style, energy, and wit make all the difference in the world when reading his straightforward and uncensored opinion posts on a wide collection of subjects.

Fallows enlightens readers with key insight into international issues—notably with tensions between U.S. and China due to his experience living and reporting from China, but his posts most certainly stray elsewhere, too. For example, promoting his wife’s book on understanding modern China through learning Mandarin and at the same time he coyly recognizes his bias, giving way to his charm with words. Fallows finds a balance in his content, educated commentary on international issues with China, domestic issues including our overly-tension filled healthcare reform with a mix of cultural and personal commentary on new individual aviation devices, great tasting new beers, and the latest developments in smart phone technology. Readers are never left bored after the thirty seconds or ten minutes spent sifting through the site due to the flavor of Fallows’ prose.

David Rieff, like Fallows, is a journalist and author of eight books with expertise primarily on foreign policy, particularly in relation to Europe and the Balkans, as well as humanitarian aid issues. (Fun fact-other than being a well respected liberal journalist making it onto The Daily Beast’s list of the left’s top 25 journalists, he is also the son of American author and activist Susan Sontag) In the 1990s, Rieff covered conflicts in Rwanda, Congo, the Balkans, and Central Asia. Currently, he is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and even more recently a voice among many bloggers at the World Affairs Journal.

World Affairs is a bimonthly journal on international affairs that features the big ideas behind U.S. foreign policy published by the nonpartisan World Affairs Institute. Due to the mission and platform of the journal, David Rieff writes to a more focused audience, contrary to Fallows’ appeal to the masses. Rieff’s blog comments on “American exceptionalism,” references the great philosophic work of Marx and Edmund Burke, and draws metaphors with themes from world history; these elements ooze tremendous meaning to anyone with a slight political science background, yet not of the average citizen making Rieff’s “The Road Paved to Hell…” a niche blog, rather than an all-inclusive-all-accessible blog for all audiences.

Many preach that commentary is a critical component for the development and expansion of a blog. Yet here are two expert blogs with either no direct comments (Fallows’ at The Atlantic) or well-developed comments from fellow bloggers and experts (Rieff’s at World Affairs Journal). Of course, dialogue between the expert and readers is encourages, you can email Fallows and further comment on Rieff’s blog—however, many of the blogs or forums throughout the internet are plagued with unwarranted and misguided commentary. The presence of comments of that nature is destructive and is a discrediting agent for the quality of a blog.

In the world of social media, content is no longer the sole element that determines the effectiveness of a message. The aesthetic layout and formatting is crucial for the growth of a blog. The Atlantic as a whole is a platform for marketing via advertising, a source of that will generate more traffic. Contrarily, the World Affairs Journal targets a smaller demographic and consequently is more focused on the content voices by its bloggers. Despite their differences, the blogs of David Rieff and James Fallows share well executed designs that are clear, uncluttered, attractive, and interactive at the same time. Web aesthetics are often disregarded in analyzing social media, but that is a crucial mistake. People voluntarily make time during their day to read the opinions of others—if the site is physically unappealing to the eye, you can kiss goodbye to all readers.

Both blogs are effective—although effectiveness tends to be subjective…

Different Approaches to Blogging: The Daily Dish and Marginal Revolution

By Elias Isquith

While both Tyler Cowen's Marginal Revolution and Andrew Sullivan's The Daily Dish can be described as political blogs, their approach to blogging is considerably different. In no small part, this can be attributed to the differences between the two men - insofar as we can claim to know them (and blogging, like so much else in the internet world, is rife with the fudging of lines between persona and personality, and other such post-modern silliness).

Sullivan is excitable, passionate, occasionally overwrought, and, above all else, idiosyncratic. A day reading The Daily Dish will entail a wide variety of topics and mediums - links to articles about atheism or faith; videos of dogs doing frequently bizarre, but always cute, things; longer posts about President Obama and his critics; Sullivan's take on what the national political discourse says about the contemporary American soul; a video embed of one of his favorite moments in the long-running "South Park" television show - but in their own kinetic way, these disparate subjects gradually begin to be seen as comfortable residing beside each other under the umbrella of Andrew Sullivan's mind.

Cowen, on the other hand, is calm, deliberate, understated, and genial. And while the George Mason economics professor is exceedingly intelligent, and capable of conversing on many topics beyond his primary area of expertise, unlike Sullivan, Marginal Revolution tends not to stray far from its comfort-zone, in which Cowen, in unpretentious prose, shares his pragmatic libertarianism (with an emphasis on the economic, rather than political or philosophical, portion of the ideology). While Cowen will at times talk about contemporary politics or even some aspect of life that has nothing to do with political maneuvering or the Rational Actor theorem, such forays are brief and measured.

But while their blogs' differences can be easily related to the men as we imagine them, there is likely also a clear economic motivation. Although Sullivan still periodically writes longer pieces for The Atlantic (his blog's home-base website), and maintains his regular column for the London Times - and although he first ventured into the spotlight as the editor-in-chief of The New Republic in the 1990s, and is the author of multiple books - the success of his blog has indisputably catapulted the man into another level of fame and recognition. The Daily Dish's audience is huge (and growing) - in the millions. It would be unfair to say that Sullivan caters his blog to as wide an audience as possible - he often gets into arguments with his readers, seen through his daily "Dissent of the Day" feature, in which he reposts a perturbed reader's email - but it would be foolish not to see that the Daily Dish's many interests help to underwrite its primary one: traffic.

If you don't care much about Barack Obama, then that's fine; you can ignore all of Sullivan's posts about the President's cunning and skill and instead focus on his writings on the Catholic Church. Don't care for the Church? Then ignore those posts, and see what he has to say about Gay Rights, or, as he calls it, small-c conservatism, or Israel, or facial hair (one of his more endearing obsessions), etc. With a truly insane output - around 50 posts-per-day - it's no exaggeration to say that one could find a full 30% of the Daily Dish's discussion tedious, and still spend half-an-hour lolling through its many links and quotes.

Being an academic first and a blogger second, Cowen can afford to keep his audience small with wonkish musings on whether or not taxicabs are "allocated optimally." He doesn't shy from using phrases that are confounding to those who've not had the privilege of taking an economics course or spending their days surfing the blogs of economics professors and gaining a layman's understanding, and his post-rate, while far from sluggish, is nowhere near Sullivan's manic output. Unlike the Daily Dish's ethic of instant-gratification, Marginal Revolution is where one goes if one is looking for a smart libertarian's view on the bailouts or perhaps, if Cowen's feeling provocative (which he almost never is) Milton Friedman's legacy.

Perhaps one of the biggest differences between the two websites, though, is commenters. While it may seem a trivial thing, allowing users to comment or not, I believe that it can have profound effects upon a blog's overall marketability. For although commenters can frequently bring a lot to a blog, and the establishment of a community tends to be vital - especially in the early days - towards a blog's ultimate success, commenter communities intimidate those who've stumbled upon a blog for the first time (or, as long-time commenters would call them, n00bs). Further, comment threads can often devolve into the kind of name-calling and mud-slinging that defines much of the internet - and it's this kind of stuff that's not only bewildering, but scary, to browsers who've not yet formed allegiance to one blog or another.

Cowen's got commenters and, unsurprisingly, they're overwhelmingly as civil, thoughtful, and seemingly well-balanced as Cowen himself. But the commenting ability reinforces Marginal Revolution's self-presentation as a sort of well-meaning club. The Daily Dish, meanwhile, has long been comment-free, and as its traffic continues to inch upwards, it's unlikely that this will ever change. After all, if it's hard to get a few thousand mostly anonymous people to get along, imagine how difficult - no, impossible - such an endeavor would be when dealing with millions.

If you don't believe me, check one of the more popular messageboards on the internet, 4chan.

On second thought, don't.