Six Great Blog Articles

1. Apostles of the Blogosphere (Financial Times)

Blogging as a medium has virtues: speed, spontaneity, interactivity and the vast array of information and expertise that millions of bloggers can bring together. But it also has its vices. The archetypal political blog favours instant response over reflection; commentary over original research; and stream-of-consciousness over structure.

2. The Invisible Hand on the Keyboard (The Economist)

With professors spending so much time blogging for no payment, universities might wonder whether this detracts from their value. Although there is no evidence of a direct link between blogging and publishing productivity, a new study … shows that the internet's ability to spread knowledge beyond university classrooms has diminished the competitive edge that elite schools once held.

3. Making Rain on the Net (ABA Journal)

A new wave of legal bloggers is now emerging, consisting of law firms—from solos to the nation’s largest—using Web publishing as marketing. Not only are blogs a good way to demonstrate a firm’s expertise and to give people a sense of a lawyer’s personality, but search engines like Google are designed in such a way that search results from blogs come up before others. For example, Martin Schwimmer has a blog called the Trademark Blog, and if anyone “googles” trademark lawyer, Schwimmer will be listed among the first results, above some of the nation’s largest firms.

4. Propopsed Attorney Advertising Rules Could Place Restrictions on Web Logs (NY Sun)

The rules do exempt submissions to publications, although whether a blog entry counts is open to debate, several attorneys said. Taken at face value, the proposed rules would require attorneys to send copies of blog entries to the disciplinary committee, a Washington, D.C.-based blogger, Greg Beck, said. It would also require lawyers to print the words "Attorney Advertisement" in large letters on their blogs.

5. In Court Blogs Can Come Back to Dog the Writers (Boston Globe)

First came the hard-learned lesson that e-mail can be used as evidence in legal proceedings. Now blogs -- basically, continuous public Internet journals -- are emerging as fair game in civil disputes, criminal cases, and government investigations, where they are used as evidence with growing frequency.

6. Bloggers and Parties – Can the Netroots Reshape American Democracy? (Boston Review)

Blogs are not only more open than traditional media; they are a better basis for argument. Newspapers, magazines, and broadcast media involve one-way communication from the originator of the content to the readers or audience. To be sure, there are letters to the editor, but blogs are more fundamentally dialogic. Bloggers are engaged in continual debate with each other. Many blogs also have comments sections, allowing non-bloggers to join the conversation. The result is a much more freewheeling, egalitarian form of communication than traditional media, one in which the distinction between author and reader is sometimes blurred to the point of near-irrelevance.