BOOK: blog!: How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture by David Kline and Dan Burstein

Title: blog!: How The Newest Media Revolution Is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture
Authors: David Kline and Dan Burstein
ISBN: 1593151411
Publisher: CDS Books
Year: 2005
List Price: $24.95

Review: In the introduction to this book, Dan Burstein likens blogging to such communication methods as cave painting, Talmudic tradition and Revolutionary pamphleteering. I couldn't help but remember these very same sentiments from a book I read while in my freshman year of college about 'zine culture called Notes From Underground. The only difference being that instead of likening Thomas Paine to a 'zine publisher, Burstein likens him to a blogger. Both authors are on the right track, but both try too hard to co-opt these traditions and historical figures for their own subjects. The real issue concerning blogs (or zines), is that they are a populist and effective way to communicate ideas to a certain type of person. One voice reaching the relative many. A single person actively disseminating and recording their ideas and voice for time immemorial. It was these ideas that caused me to read this book.

Despite the proprietary claim to history, it is these ideas that this book attempts to deal with. blog! is split into three sections, breaking the world of blogs into three broad arenas; political blogs, business blogs and culture blogs. Each section consists of an essay from neophyte blogger and veteran journalist/business consultant, Kline, which introduces and explains the tone of the blogs about to be discussed. Following the introductory essays in each section are several interviews with bloggers that fall within that category and a few editorial pieces from popular media discussing the impact that each type of blog has had on our society.

The interviews with who are ostensibly star bloggers, offer an interesting sociological insight into obsession and the personality traits that most bloggers possess that make them feel as if what they have to say needs to be heard. Highlights include interviews with the sex-obsessed political gossip hound blogmistress of Wonkette.com, Microsoft's outspoken (and sometimes contrarian) Robert Scoble and child-actor-turned-geek-hero-blogger, Wil Wheaton. Each interviewee discusses the reasons they got into blogging (which are more varied than the alleged reasons we are at war with Iraq), the particular strains that blogging can cause in professional or personal life and where they see blogging evolving in the near future. Occasionally, the interviews dwell on the money-making aspects of blogging and internet advertising. This was equally interesting and tedious to someone like myself who has blogged since the beginning of 2001. Every blogger flirts with the idea of making a living (or at least a nice bit of supplemental income) from blogging, yet perhaps not everyone who reads this book will appreciate the amount of space dedicated to the subject.

All in all, blog! is a welcome addition to my media theory library. The fact that both of the authors come from more traditional journalistic background makes this not only an insightful read, but an interesting crossroads between old and new media culture. As I was reading it, I got the sense that the authors were warming up to the culture of blogging as a significant form of communication and broadcasting the farther I progressed. Most interesting is that author David Kline started his own blog just as the book went to print and continues it today at blogrevolt.com.

Though blog! will not convey anything new to someone who still remembers usenet and bbs's, nor will it teach a blogging neophyte how to create a blog that attracts more than friends and family members, this book is an interesting piece of media history that accurately examines the zeitgeist of blogging while we are still in the midst of it.

Rating: 4.25 / 5

Buy a copy of blog! from Amazon.com: Consume.

Picture provided by Amazon.com.