Blogs, Celebrity, and media

Although I haven't posted for several months (moving to a new home and WoW taking a lot of my time), I am struck by the increasing power of blogs in mainstream media and the creation of instant celebrity by some of the most famous bloggers out there. First, there is Amanda, of the Rocketboom fame, catapulted from a star of the hardcore net users to being on tv and in the press. Then, there is Josh Wolf, fighting for his rights as a video blogger - CNET is posting his story and noting that traditional media powers are now supporting his legal fees, which I find interesting.

Both of these are showing the power of blogging and how it beginning to affect even traditional media and how one can go from obscurity to being (a little) famous when fate grabs hold. I do have much more respect for this type of fame than that shown on the various reality shows that tv seems to not be able to rise above. I guess even the masses need something to cling to...

Other evidence of the growing power of blogs was shown in this weeks edition of The Economist, where a fairly large article was published about the increasing use of blogs by professional economists. While the Economist is fairly open to grabbing on to new movements in technology and society, it is amusing to see how what was once considered a thing of online nerds is becoming more and more accepted by media as being a legit way of reporting information.

Of course, the rights and responsibilities of bloggers are still being resolved as several people have been jailed, such as Josh, to people loosing their jobs for blogging, like Petite Anglaise (who I think has a kick-ass layout and color scheme for her blog).

Speaking of layouts and color schemes, definetly time to work on the css for this blog...