This survey was done through telephone surveying to better understand bloggers, where they come from, what they are saying, and who they are. The survey had many findings. It found that blogging creates new voices in the online world of Journalism. It is inspiring many to share their voices with the world to benefit themselves or a certain cause. Thirty nine percent of internet users read blogs, eight percent of internet users have them. This is a big increase since the fall of 2005. The most popular topic among bloggers is their own life experiences. Most do not think of what they do as Journalism. Politics and government was the second most popular topic for bloggers followed by entertainment, sports, current events, business, technology, religion and faith, and specific hobbies, health problems or illnesses. The blogging population is generally young and evenly split among men and women. More than half of the bloggers were under the age of thirty. This certainly proves that we are the internet generation! More than half live in the suburbs. Sixty percent of bloggers are white, 11 percent are African American, 19 percent are English speaking Hispanic and 10 percent identify as some other race. Even though they are publishing their blogs publicly, most bloggers feel that it is a personal venture. Fifty five percent of bloggers blog under a pseudonym. Forty six percent of bloggers blog under their own name. Eighty four percent say they blog for a hobby or something to do. Fifty two percent say they blog for themselves and not for an audience. They are their own audience. The study found that the main reason for keeping a blog for many is creative expression and sharing personal experiences. I believe that it helps people get their thoughts out. I feel this is a very healthy outlet for many. Only one third of bloggers see what they do as a form of Journalism. Thirty four percent do consider it Journalism and sixty five percent do not. Many do try to check facts and give credit to sources. The study also found that bloggers are avid consumers and creators of online content and are also heavy internet users. They are major consumers of political news.
I am an active consumer of blogs. The blogs that I read are entertainment oriented (TMZ.com, Perezhilton.com, etc). Blogs are so much more fun to read than an actual news article. Some blogs are biased, some are neutral and just report the information. But, the biased ones are often very comical, especially when you agree! Blogs say things that many are afraid to see. Entertainment blogs stir up controversy and gives the voice to the people through its comments and its authors. They say what the public is actually thinking. As I mentioned above, I feel that blogging is such a healthy outlet for people. Not only does it get them writing, but it lets people see their thoughts and their intelligence. Not only can they read how smart they are and how valuable their thoughts are, but other people can also read them. Blogging has the ability to change what others think. I believe that they will become more and more powerful in time.

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I forgot to log in! Sorry!

Devin

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This article describes the explosion of blogging, based on a radom-digit dialing survey. Blogging has become the new craze, with about 12 million Americans claiming to keep one. The new medium allows people to express their voices to the world and to receive immediate feedback. Although there are numerous reasons for blogging, most blog about personal experiences. Pay is definitely not a major motive, as only 8% of bloggers reported receiving innome.

The sample revealed that 37% of bloggers cited their lives as the basis for their posts, which basically makes their blogs public diaries. Since most bloggers are young adults, with more than half under thirty, the youth obviously recognize blogs as their medium of expression. Three out of four bloggers claimed that they blogged to express themselves. This is not to say that blogs are only used to express personal creativity, as 46% of bloggers stated that they have gotten news from a blog and 26% do so on a daily basis.

Blogs are hard to follow because they are infrequent. The survey shows that most bloggers post when inspiration strikes, which makes it difficult to follow particular blogs on a daily basis. Only 22% of bloggers responded by saying they post daily, and even that was tempered with the addition of "usually."

Personally, I don't blog but I do find them useful. Most of the blogs I read deal with sports and entertainment, which are based almost entirely on personal opinion. When looking for news, I'd rather go to a site that is journalism worthy(i.e CNN, ABC, CBS) than to depend on a blog. As the survey showed, most bloggers don't consider themselves journalists. For that reason alone, depending on blogs can be dangerous. Not only did just 22% of bloggers claim to engage in "journalistic" practices, but just 11% reported to posting corrections on their blogs.

Judging by those statistics, I will not be changing my views on news blogs. Those numbers tell me that bloggers are posting things, whether they believe them to be fact or not, without taking the proper steps to justify them. Not only that, most bloggers are not willing to post corrections to the mistakes they make(and since they're not verifying their information correctly, mistakes are certain). Despite that, I don't see blogging fading out. It offers people an opportuntiy to express themselves on a public platform, without having to attain a degree. I think it's popularity will only increase.

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The Pew Internet and American Life Project report really opens up your eyes in the number of actual bloggers that are out there. The numbers were just for America and it’s hard to believe that 12 million people in the US keep blogs and 57 million people read them. It really makes me stop and think about how big this country is and how big the internet is. It is a great tool that puts the rein in any ones hands and gives everyone a chance for expression.
In the beginning of the article when it said that 54% of bloggers have never been published and 44% have. I like to think of the 54% as students that are aspiring journalists or kids that are posting on blogs because it is the cool thing to do. When reading about how 29% of those surveyed said they no longer kept their blog or did not want to be interviewed further it made me compare blogging to a phase. I know that personally I would start a diary whenever I got one as a gift or my friends were doing it, but I never kept it up. I think that it was a phase much like blogging for many people.
I was not surprised to find out that although many blogs focus on politics, most people are interested in blogs on real life and their own personal experiences. I find it intriguing to read about other people’s lives, especially if it is true. It gives you hope as an individual. You can either be reading something that makes your life seem ten times better then you think it is at times, or it could give you a sense that others are going through the same thing and are facing similar issues as you. Using your own experiences when blogging also helps the blogger relate better to the topic being covered. I agree with those interviewed, I don’t view most blogs as journals, but more as personal documentaries. Some bloggers however definitely turn their blogs into personal journals.
Most of those that blog are under 30, which makes sense because they are the technology generation. Many grew up with technology at their fingertips and it is only natural that they are using in daily. Older generations aren’t as familiar with technology and many could care less. My mom for example, she just learned how to check her e-mail.
I think it is interesting to think about how long bloggers spend blogging. But it is not that crazy when you think about how long students spend on facebook or myspace. I think it is a great way to express yourself, practice writing skills and even get feedback.

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I entered a game with myself when I began my blog. I didn’t know what to expect when I started. And I slowly noticed that when I posted on a certain topic, my stats would go up. Instead of getting 20 hits per day, I was getting 40. I decided to see what my most popular posts were and played to that strength, just to engage the audience – whoever the audience was.

The topic most people seem to care about: Philly TV anchors.

I reached my maximum number of visitors ever on Aug. 22 – the date Larry Mendte pleaded guilty to e-mail hacking. I posted the video of his statement from philly.com, and 458 people found their way to my site on that day. Since then, my average number of clicks is between 60 and 100.

Most of the statistics set forth in the article confirmed my assumptions about bloggers. I’ve always feared bloggers because I thought they were purposely trying to take away from journalists, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that only a third see themselves as providing a form of journalism. I was also surprised to learn – even though it makes sense – that a majority of bloggers like to receive balanced coverage of news from multiple sources. Even if one has a partisan slant, media consumption is not limited to similar news sources.

I’d be interested to know how much the statistics jumped, especially if these are from 2005-2006. I feel like with every passing week, blogging gets more popular. It seems like it’s in its hey day now as more people pick it up as a hobby.

Most people seem to use blogging as a service instead of “self-approval,” which was another surprise to me. The report found that people want to share what they know, usually on multiple topics, as to provide a service to its readers – those they know or complete strangers.

The stereotype I have of bloggers, other than the journalist posers, are the techies who update as often as they can and allow the blog to consume his or her entire life. That, also, has been proved incorrect by this report. I was glad to learn that seven out of 10 bloggers write only when inspiration strikes – it’s a small percentage who update multiple times a day.

Reading this report made me feel a little better about the role of bloggers in media. They tend to link to multiple news sources, they are news junkies in every form (online, television, radio, papers), they like to engage their audience and they simply like to share tidbits they find interesting. Perhaps they’re not as threatening a breed as I originally thought.

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I agree with many of the points my classmates have made already. I was pleasantly surprised with some of the findings of this study. Like Chris, I am also a blogger. My website (www.theADDshow.com) was created so I have some sort of platform to build off of in my endeavor to become a sports broadcaster. I definitely wanted to use this blog as a form of journalism, but quickly realized that blogging was more a forum to insert at least a little bit of commentary.

To read that over half of bloggers blog for themselves and not to be an actual source of news was refreshing. In fact, 65% of bloggers don't believe blogs are a form of journalism.

Another thing that I found really interesting was that only 18% of bloggers offer an RSS feed of their content. Learning that on average bloggers only spend 2 hours a week added to the surprise, and definitely caused me to re-think my stance on overall blogging.

Being a blogger covering Philadelphia sports, I am in a rather competitive group. Sometimes bloggers step on other bloggers toes, and it can become a problem. For a couple weeks a new blogger seemed to have nearly identical content to me a few hours after I did. To read that most bloggers don't take their blogs so seriously is rather refreshing to hear for a person that has more of a competitive blog.

Although this study was random and had more to do with political blogs, it was interesting to read about the findings. While the results may not apply to me, it is good to know that not everyone takes it so seriously.

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Anyways...

I think I have made known my opinions known, but just to make sure, I'm don't agree with the people who say blogs will take over as a form of journalism. Apparently the bloggers who like talking on the phone agree with me. When the bloggers were asked "do you consider what you do journalism?", their response is no! In fact 2/3's of the bloggers who responded to the survey, said no. I know we as journalism majors that math=bad news bears so, I'll make sure we understand. According to this survey, if 100 people had a blog, only 33 would consider themselves journalists, and 66 wouldn't, and 66 is greater than 33. Got it? Good!

I know what you are saying, "well Andy what about those later on who admit to checking their facts and citing original sources"? My response to that is...I think it makes sense to check your facts. If you put something on a blog for the world to read, you should have the correct facts. Maybe this is the journalist in me talking, but you have a responsibility to your reading public to provide them with the facts to make their own opinions. Plus if you are going to put something on the web for everyone to see, I think you are doing yourself a favor if you check your facts, because you don't want to make yourself seem like an idiot posting incorrect information.

This is a big reason, I think blogs won't ever take over a legitimate form of journalism. Bloggers don't treat them as legitimate forms or journalism, and their readers shouldn't have to be the fact checkers.

Back to the reading...this article asked bloggers to respond to better qualify who is blogging, why are they blogging, and how often they are blogging. In order to do this, they (Pew Internet & American Life Project) asked bloggers to fill out a survey. A year later they called the bloggers and asked them about who they are, why they blog, and how often they blog. PIP got 233 people to respond, and analyzed their data in this report.

They found bloggers to be young, men and women of all races. (This I think was obvious information. Because who is using the computer? Younger people, all kinds of younger people.)

In addition the number that I already mentioned, other numbers that stuck out to me where the number of bloggers who said they get their news from other places. Like Chris, I noticed bloggers do tend to be "news junkies", they aren't just getting news form blogs, rather from all over the place.

In conclusion, I feel better about reading this article/survey knowing there are people out there who also don't feel as though blogging is real journalism.

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I wanted to add one more thing.

I don't think you can really trusts surveys either. It's hard to get a "random" sampling. I would have to see the questions they asked. Also, you can get surveys to say anything.

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I never knew much about blogging until my sophmore year in college and even then I knew very little about it. Blogging is definitely growing and it gives regular people to chance to be their own journalist. In the article it says that 37% of bloggers blog about their lives and experiences. Politics came in second by a distance. It’s not surprising to me that people like talking about themselves, but if I was reading blogs, I would get bored with blogs about people talking about themselves, people that I don’t even know. I would want to know people’s views about common topics and topics that everyone has an opinion on.
It seems like the topics that everyone can talk about like religion, technology, business, news and so on are the ones that have the lowest percentage. What really caught my attention was in the survey where it said that bloggers are less likely to be white but the percentage of internet users is higher for whites than any other group. Why is that? Although 65% of bloggers don’t believe that their blog is a form of journalism I think that it could be. You can definitely give reports, talk about things that happened in the news or other things that are newsworthy. You’re doing some form of storytelling about an event, and since journalism is shifting more to the internet these days blogging is and can become more of a changing point on how news can be told.
For instance, I like Denise Clay’s blog because she because it is thorough. I don’t remember if she went the Democratic Convention primarily for her blog, but she definitely uses her blog to report. She went, she was there so I wouldn’t definitely be willing to read someone’s blog who was at the convention and blogged on it instead of someone who has just blogged on it and hasn’t actually been there. I have nerver blogged before and I was never one to read any so taking this class will be the most exposure I will ever have with blogging. Although I believe that blogging can be a new thing foe journalism I don’t think that it will be take over like Andrew said. I also don’t think I will ever really get into blogging myself unless it was about something that I feel so strongly about that I must blog about it.

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Blogging is the future. That is one thing I have come to accept. There is going to be no avoiding it, and there is going to be no stopping it. As the article I just read states, the majority of blogging is being done by youth. That makes sense to me I guess, considering a good number of older people still are adjusting to certain interesting things the Internet can do. It did not surprise me that blogging is pretty spread out in terms of gender and race. I did not think men were blogging more than women and visa versa, or at the same time any one race was blogging more.
Just fifteen short years ago, most people had no idea what blogging was, even if it existed back then, I am really not sure. I cannot even imagine what the next fifteen years will bring. I truly believe that blogging is still in its very beginning stages. It will continue to evolve and it will continue to expand. As our generation gets older and the next few generations below us begin to blog, it will soon be that almost everyone is blogging, or if not blogging, reading a blog to get his or her daily information.
In my last post on here to our other reading assignment, I really ripped into blogging and said there was no place for it. As I go back and think now, I realize that I was very hypocritical while writing that response. I read blogs everyday, and even write them from time to time. I am a daily subscriber to the website hockeybuzz.com. It basically is a blogging site where members of the hockey media, and fans, go on and blog about their favorite teams. That is where I go to gain most, if not all of my hockey knowledge. There are certain things on there I will not read because I know it probably is not true or the truth is stretched, but the majority of the content is credible and also very entertaining to read.
Overall blogging is something we as journalists will have to come to accept, and I believe we will have to eventually embrace. It is the future of our profession. All you have to do is look back at the last fifteen years or so of broadcasting and see how it has evolved. It is almost scary to think what it will be like in another fifteen. Hopefully we are all still around in the broadcasting business to find out.

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It seems like everyone and their mom has tried to start a blog. Most people who start a blog lose interest and can’t keep up with blogging on a regular basis. For those who can make the commitment, the opportunities in blogging are endless. The Pew Internet and American Life Project show just how many people are out there blogging.
Most blog for personal reasons and don’t think of themselves as journalists but try to get the facts right when they can. Political and entertainments are usually the most high profile and well known but they are in the minority of blogs. Most bloggers do it for own personal satisfaction since other than the top blogs, there isn’t any money in it. Even some well known blogs don’t generate revenue.

I am an avid reader of http://stephanieklein.blogs.com/ (ladies, I suggest you all read her, I love her), a blog about a young woman who used to live in New York City living the single life but has since moved to Texas. Klein began her blog just to keep her friends updated on her life. The blog then turned into two book deals and she is currently working on a pilot for NBC. Even though she has had all of this success, she still is very devoted to her blog, updating on a regular basis even though she doesn’t make any money off of it.

I’m surprised that so many people keep up blogs. Very few blogs are recognized by large amounts of people so I wonder what makes these people keep up with the rigors of maintaining a blog.

Blogging is definitely going to be a big part of the news in the future. I think the hardest part of making a blog successful, either a personal or news one, is the maintenance, updating regularly enough to keep readers around.

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This article supports what I've been thinking all along, though not quite in the way I thought it...

I always thought a journalist who blogged would blog more about the news than about themselves. To hear that most people who blog do it about personal experiences as opposed to current events was a surprise. When I actually get around to blogging, I'll choose something that's happening in the world (mostly in the sports and video game world) and comment on it. I'll blog about personal experiences on like MySpace or something, but my actual blog I try to focus on current events.

However, this did prove that blogging is quickly becoming the way of the future. It's easy to see why blogging is steadily becoming more popular. It's a lot more personal than other forms of expression. Whatever one writes about in a blog, he or she writes his or her opinion on the subject, no one else's. The blogger might include the opinions of others he or she had spoken with, but primarily the point the blog is trying to get across is that of the author. This makes blogging all the more appealing, because who has the right to tell someone that his or her opinion is wrong?

That's my two cents. Blogging is certainly one of the most popular ways of getting your voice online, and it won't be long before every journalist in the US has their own blog to write on.

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Before becoming an avid blog reader, I used to think of blogs as simply public diaries. I remember that journal website “xanga” (or something like that) in middle school; everyone had one. Back then I didn’t know what a blog was, and I definitely didn’t think of “xanga’s” as a form of journalism. It wasn’t until college and my discovery of Perezhilton.com that I realized the scope and popularity of blogs.
I only read entertainment blogs. I read Perezhilton.com multiple times a day. I consider Perez a journalist in the fact that he wouldn’t post anything to his blog without legitimate fact checking. However, I do not consider him a journalist in that he interjects his opinions in every post. He posts about news worthy topics. Yesterday he posted multiple times about the Wall Street bail out. But, he didn’t do so without inserting his personal opinion on the subject.
I think that’s what blogs are for… expression. You’re allowed to get personal and give the public your opinion. I never considered them anything but a venue for expressing opinions to the public. I think this is why the report found that a lot of young people blog. Our generation is very open to sharing our lives with the public via the internet.

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It wasn't until recently that I realized how huge blogging is actually becomming. I was really surprised at the statistics that stated that about 12 million people have their own blogs and that there are about 57 million people reading these blogs. I think blogging is definitely a great way for journalists as well as the average writer to express their opinions as well as state facts. I like the fact that journalists can do this in a more informal way.
Although I currently do not have my own blog, I plan on starting one once the 76ers season starts. I want to eventually be a game analyst for the team so I feel as if this would be a great start. I think that by students blogging, it is really giving them great practice for their careers in journalism. Blogging is a great way to practice your writing as well as to develop your own style that will set you apart from all of the other journalists out there.
I remember in a journalism class I took two years ago, the teacher required that we all set up a blog. A lot of people thought that blogging would be a waste of time since no one would really be reading their blogs. When I look at all of the time I spend on the internet, I feel that if I start spending some of that time blogging, it will definitely be a lot more productive and also benefit me in my career.

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