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The Blog Age

Continued from page 3

Published on October 28, 2004

So it's not surprising that blogging has caused much debate among "real journalists." In June, TV journalist and documentary producer Ron Steinman wrote about blogs on digitaljournalist.org. "The Internet with its freedom is in some ways the Wild West, lawless and unkempt, the Deadwood of what passes for new journalism," he wrote. "It is not for me. Reputedly, there are more than a million blogs and still counting. It is scary." Scary or not, bloggers -- many of whom call themselves citizen journalists -- are here to stay. And many have a huge readership: Political blogger "Instapundit" has claimed he gets almost as many hits as slate.com.

  • Courtesy of Elaine Mesker-Garcia
    The faces behind the blogs converge at Tiara Happy Hour.
    The faces behind the blogs converge at Tiara Happy Hour.
  • Matt's blog gets 10,000 hits per day.
    Matt's blog gets 10,000 hits per day.
But blogging isn't just for political wonks. For example, along with instant messaging, it's become popular among middle and high school students. And not everyone's happy about that -- there's a lot of name-calling happening on the Internet. "I think it's easier to be mean when you're not afraid of the consequences," says Matt, "whether it's an anonymous slam book or the Internet or a prank phone call." The Internet creates its own reality. "Certainly the buffer of not actually looking at the person or talking to them," says Matt, "it sorta creates, like, a separation between you and what you're talking about."

The Houston scene is dominated by what-I-did-today, stream-of-consciousness blogs. The most popular ones (aside from Matt's) get hundreds of readers each day. Bigpinkcookie.com gets up to 500 hits daily; she discusses things like the Astros, TiVo and the fact that the Cincinnati airport is actually in Kentucky.

But there are also some more structured, focused local blogs. "Houston Calling," for example, is about on the music scene here. It lists upcoming shows and includes entries in the journalistic "ten questions" format; the guy who runs it, David Cobb (a Houston Press contributor), has interviewed Tom Foolery and the Mistakes, Stiff Little Fingers and the Methods. A local sports blog, "Throws Like a Girl," focuses on the Astros. A recent entry includes this admission: "I couldn't sleep last night and kept awaking from feverish dreams about Roger Clemens giving up seven earned runs in the third inning." And there are a few popular political blogs. Charles Kuffner, a Democrat, does offthekuff.com (named best local blog by the Press), and says he gets from 1,200 to 1,500 hits per day. All in all, htownblogs.com links to more than 190 blogs. Twenty of them were added during the past month, and there are, of course, more that aren't listed there.

And in a clear attempt to stay up with the times, the Houston Chronicle has a blog called "MeMo" on its Web site. Writer Kyrie O'Connor seems to blog about whatever pops into her head, be it a popular thong or an owl loose in the Chron offices. The paper sent O'Connor to both the Democratic and the Republican conventions. A sample musing from the RNC: "Are Republicans -- as we suspect, irrespective of stances on key issues -- significantly more fun than Democrats?"

Photomatt.net is a mix of information about WordPress, other techie information and Matt's personal ramblings. It gets somewhere in the vicinity of 10,000 hits a day; according to technorati.com, he's No. 3 in the entire "blogosphere," which ranks bloggers by how many people link to them (lots of people link to him because of WordPress). He certainly uses the blog to give WordPress good PR, pointing out when prominent bloggers switch to WordPress and linking to online talk about it. He quoted one blogger who wrote, "I'll have you know that WordPress is sexy." Among his personal observations: "I didn't realize how fast time passes until I started buying milk." That observation got seven comments from readers.

Matt believes WordPress could have 100,000 users by the end of the year. The source of such a huge spike, if it occurs, won't be individuals but companies. They're interested in WordPress because the cost of using blogging software that charges would most likely be prohibitively expensive. He's in talks with dating sites, media sites and search engines that are considering using the technology. Lycos Europe recently expressed interest in using WordPress to offer a blogging service to its users. "They have a pretty significant penetration in Europe," says Matt, "so that could be very, very cool."

Matt took this semester off from the University of Houston, where, for the past two years, he's been studying philosophy and political science (he's not interested in their computer classes), to concentrate on his consulting gigs and a book he's working on about Web development. He insists the topic and the publisher -- which contacted him about writing it, not vice versa -- remain hush-hush, because the project hasn't been announced.

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