DAWES: LIVE FROM YOUR DESK

Feb 22, 2005, 3:21:12 AM by Rufus Dawes - FAQ

Every morning, millions of working men and women – and many more than a few who are out of work – rise from their beds and turn on the coffee pots and subsequently their computers. No more looking outside for the boy on his bicycle who is bringing the morning newspaper, they turn instead to the humming sounds of their machines and enter the blogosphere and, perhaps, become bloggers themselves.

Drawing upon content from the world’s media and the World Wide Web, bloggers operate in a world of new agenda-setting power ranging from politics to American football. What began as merely a way to pass time has suddenly become a powerful tool to influence world leaders, journalists, and the person who sits at the desk next to you.

The word blog didn’t exist until a few years ago. It’s short for weblogs, which are periodically updated journals, providing online commentary with minimal or no external editing. They are usually presented as a set of “posts,” or entries of news or commentary on news.

Blogs often include hyperlinks to other sites, enabling the commentators to draw upon the content of the entire World Wide Web. Some are personal diaries, analysis, or offer advice on any number of subjects. Many bloggers operate under pseudonyms (ahem!) and risk termination from their jobs for operating them on company time. Blogging, says Jonathan Segal, an employment attorney, “is inconsistent with the business mission,” advising that “most employers as of now do not have blogging policies, just as 10 years ago they didn’t have e-mail policies and now they do.” (Amy Joyce, Washington Post, February 11, 2005)

According to blogger Ed Driscoll, “the cost of putting up a Web site ranges from free to a hundred bucks or so a month.” The number of blogs continues to grow at a dizzying pace. In 1999, the total number of blogs was estimated to be around 50; five years later, the estimates range from 2.4 million to 4.1 million. The Pew Internet & American Life Project revealed that there are eight million personal Web logs today, but I’ve seen estimates that by the end of this year more than 10 million blogs will have been created.

The site you are visiting right now is not a blog but it has features that are blog-like and they are among its most popular. The official site of the Chiefs (www.kcchiefs.com) is really a blend of conventional news – much of it decidedly pro-Chiefs – transcripts from official events or media sessions, injury reports, cheerleader appearances, official history, and opinion columns. This column has many more of the features of a blog than what you will find in ones written by Bob Gretz and Jonathan Rand. It takes what’s out there and comments on it and although Gretz does it from time to time, he does less of it than this author does.

Conventional media have gotten into the act, a sure sign that they feel the growing pressure of competition from the blogs or other independent sites. Even non-print media like radio stations have their own sites where they include audio of programming along with personality profiles of hosts or disc jockeys. Driscoll remembers when “Rush Limbaugh began his national radio show in 1988, Ed McLaughlin, his producer had to go from station to station to get them to buy his show.” By comparison, when Limbaugh went on the Net, he was able to reach a national audience almost immediately for the cost of a Web server.

Now let’s not lose our minds and believe that a couple million bloggers can change the world. Howard Dean took an early lead in the Democratic primaries because he was able to tap into the power of the Internet but when it came time to push the buttons to elect a candidate he fell well short. But bloggers did help take CBS News down a peg when they exposed documents as forgeries purporting that George Bush received special privileges in the National Guard. Moreover, blog sites really took off around 9/11 when the Web servers at CNN and New York Times were maxed out and the breaking news was coming from small sites around the city.

Some bloggers have become so adept at fact-checking that we now see many more retractions and corrections than we used to see. Well, not always. Still, it’s fun when a blogger points out when a local columnist turned talk show host prattles on how Marty Schottenheimer is such a great coach, the man who truly turned the franchise around, conveniently forgetting in the meantime, that only a few years earlier he had taken special pride in promoting Schottenheimer as the personification of what was wrong with the team, going so far as to take credit for running him out of Kansas City. “We’re going to run Carl Peterson out of town just like Marty,” he once boasted. (KCTE-AM, July 20, 1999)

I’d like to believe that those of us writing columns on this site have turned a few lights on for readers who readily follow what’s being said about the Chiefs, maybe cleared up a few misconceptions or just given you a different perspective. But I’d be totally out of line to suggest that everybody buys what we’re selling even when we’re required to cite figures or supporting evidence that what we’re writing about is true.

In the final analysis, what’s great about the blogosphere is it’s so accessible. Find the ones who share your tastes and leanings, and you’ll have attained the ne plus ultra of bespoke media: the ghastly double of yourself.

The opinions offered in this column do not necessarily reflect those of the Kansas City Chiefs.

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Prodigiously well-researched, informative and opinionated, Rufus Dawes examines media coverage of the Chiefs occasionally throughout the year.