What the Blog just happened?!

What the Blog just happened?!
By Mahesh Shantaram (the blog)

"I wanna say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years either."

That was Trent Lott, then majority leader in the US Senate, irrevocably sticking his foot in his mouth while speaking at Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party on December 5 last year. Thurmond was the longest serving member of the Senate. In his political career spanning most of the 20th century, he is most remembered for advocating racial segregation in 1948. There's no way we would admit "the nigger race into our theatres, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches," said he. Thurmond lost, Truman won, and America was saved. While he eventually veered away from his stand, some people never learn, and so we come to Trent Lott.

What may at first seem like a speck of dirt on the political history of America became a turning point for online journalism. Mainstream media initially chose to relegate the news about Lott's remark to the inside pages. However, thanks to the spontaneous online buzz created by bloggers, the national poress corps was forced to yank it up to Page 1 where it belonged. Within two weeks, Lott had to quit office. Everyone got the larger story, but The Guardian got the point when it reported 'Bloggers catch what Washington Post missed'.

Who are bloggers and why are they in the news so often? What's a blog and how cool is it? Many reams of newsprint have been devoted to answering these questions. Blogging is a Web-age hobby in which one periodically records and shares one's expressions in any form—words, photos, voice, whatever—with the world. As a definition, that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of the Great Blogging Phenomenon. What made so many people, who wouldn't normally venture tweaking their desktop wallpapers, get out there and blog?

For an answer, travel back to the mid-90s, a time when free homepage services like Tripod and Geocities were in vogue. It took such effort to set up a basic fluorescent green webpage with dancing text that it made ordinary folks feel like geeks. But the real geeks were about to inherit the earth. They had software that automated the process of publishing their 'logs' on the Web (weblogs... blogs... get it?). In 1999, Pyra Labs went to town with their publishing system called Blogger. It was an instant hit as they delivered on their promise, "Push-button Publishing for the People", and how! 'Blog' is now an official entry in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Soon, the community of bloggers were growing exponentially. Closet writers were coming out with snippets and lengthy rants on everything from love to libertarianism, pasta to pregnancy, wine tasting to water conservation. They were stepping into journalists' terrain, and this drew attention. Media pundits used to teasingly speculate whether bloggers would make editors redundant and alter the great institution of journalism as we know it. That was until Trent Lott got bloggered. By the time America's invasion of Iraq began, reporters were assigned by the big names in publishing to blog from the trenches. As MK Gandhi would have said on the issue of journalists embracing blogs, "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, and then you win."

Of course, there can be too much of a good thing. Science fiction writer William Gibson, better known as the man who coined the word 'cyberspace', made news recently when he announced that he plans to quit blogging because he found it stifling his creative thinking. He may have a point. While few bloggers do come up with gems in their moments of inspiration, most of the stuff out there is insincere crap that's too hard to miss. After all, when you slam the traditional barriers of publishing down to the dirt, you can't expect The Times. Bloggers don't have to contend with the gatekeeping rules of traditional journalism. They're in the business of propagating news and fanning the flames when called for.

It's easy for us to take for granted our freedom of speech, one form of which is the freedom to blog. But blogging has become important enough to spawn its own code of ethics. In some countries like Iran, where public voice is hushed down to a whimper and free press is virtually unknown, it initially provided respite. People welcomed blogging like they would a rainstorm in the Sahara. An Iranian expatriate based in Toronto once tweaked some basic blogging software to enable blogging in the Farsi language and that opened the floodgates of another revolution. Iranians in the "blogosphere" now number over 12,000. But the government blew the whistle on the party when it arrested Sina Motallebi, a well-known local journalist, in April. He blogged too much.

Coming home, we find a blogging scene that is still largely in the "Look ma, I can blog!" period of evolution and is yet to find its sacred calling. That's not to say we don't have star bloggers. There's 115 million-dollar man Rajesh Jain and Rediff.com CEO Ajit Balakrishnan. Vikas Kamat of the illustrious Kamat family puts up a virtual encyclopedia of Indian culture. Journalists make good bloggers: check out Nidhi Taparia the social butterfly chaser at India Today and Sukanya Verma, Rediff's film buff whose life is one long motion picture.

Which is the best blog? Wrong question. It's better to ask who could write the best blogs—ones that'll rock boats. Roping in a few celebrities wouldn't hurt. To begin with, anyone standing for public office owes us a blog. Gary Hart almost became the first US presidential candidate to connect to the people by campaigning on his blog. But when he decided against contesting recently, he quit blogging too! Now Howard Dean, backed by a competant team of media managers, has taken over from where Hart left. And as I write this, bloggers are gathering at Westminster for a discussion with British MPs on how blogs can be used to further policy and public interaction.

Manohar Joshi meticulously maintained notes during his first year in office. Speaker's Diary was published in June, and Joshi has promised as many sequels as his tenure permits. What if he published a Speaker's Blog instead? Here's another thought: celebs who are forever complaining of being misquoted by the press should learn to speak for themselves. It's perfectly possible to imagine Vivek Oberoi posting a rant on his blog and Salman Khan shooting back with a rejoinder on his. And we, the Public, would be willing spectators to the spat in real-time. Wouldn't that take the wind out of filmi magazines' sails? Or sales, rather.

This report was originally published in Man's World, August 2003

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What are blogs?

Blogs are personal webpages. Most blogs belong to individuals and they can get very protective about it. If you don't like something that you read on a blog, move on.
Blogs are magazines. But they're not run by professional editors. Which can be good or bad, depending on how you look at it.
Blogs are extensions of the self. You are what you blog. Corollary: A man is known by the blogs he reads. Spend as much time on your page design as you would selecting a necktie.
Blogs are ongoing conversations. When you want to say a lot but can't say it all at one shot, consider blogging it. Writing a novel? Travelling around the globe? Share your progress with the world, one day at a time.
Blogs are PR machines. Whether you're the head honcho of a biotechnology major or a star who hasn't quite arrived yet, this is your chance to arrest control of your public relations. Because if you don't, someone else will.