Creationists who believe the earth and everything in it was created by the Christian god some 6,000 years ago are called “young earth” creationists. One of them is also a young blogosphere believer:
And the political bloggers have been there for four years. We were the first ones to get there. But now business is rushing.
Actually, political blogging has been going on for close to ten years; here’s an entry of mine from 1998 via the Wayback Machine, and one of Mickey Kaus’ from 1999.
You should not bash Hugh Hewitt…. at least without mentioning Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf.
Hugh is a young earther?
Isn’t he?
He features prominently on stations that do feature young earthers, unlike Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf.
But are those examples of blogging? Yes, bloggers have been around, doing amateur political commentary, for ages. I don’t think that means blogging has. At the other extreme, some people think it’s not blogging unless it has the full complement of RSS/ATOM, trackback/pingback, blogrolls, etc. Blech blech blech. I don’t agree with that either. I think blogging as we know it is about being personal and being timely. A single entry doesn’t make a blog; a stream of them, over time, does. The examples you give both fail to qualify because they’re written in an impersonal “writing for posterity” style. A regularly updated personal mailing list, on the other hand, I think is functionally eqivalent to a blog because it’s both conversational and timely, and many of those predate the term “blog” or even the web by a long shot. A continuously-published diary probably qualifies too, and those go back centuries. In the only sense that matters none of us are old-timers at this, and we can ill afford to look down our noses at those who are only slightly newer to it than we are.
A blog is a frequently-updated log on the web, nothing more and nothing less. The examples I supplied are indeed political blogs, as they were frequently updated logs on political subjects on the web.
Amateur status and personal content have nothing to do with it.
Ahhh, Richard, as charming as ever. Why limit it to the web? Are you one of those “young web believers” who think the web represents a new era and not just a new way to talk? You are entitled to your opinion, of course, but without even your usual specious attempts to define terms or justify your position it remains just an opinion. That doesn’t stop you from presenting it as fact, though, sufficient to counter other more fully explained and logically defensible opinions on the same topic. We all bow to the superior expertise that comes from doing the same thing the same way for so many years.
Jeff Darcy asks why the “weblog” has to be on the web. What a brilliant question. I’ve often said that weblogs precede the web, because the web encompasses Usenet and ftp sites that pre-dated it, and there were logs on both of them. But that’s not what he has in mind, I fear. Jeff, please explain your point.
Etymology is not destiny, Richard. “Blog” is a new term for an old phenomenon, and doesn’t have to be about the web any more than a “log” has to have anything with wood floats. Diaries and journals don’t have to be kept daily, despite the derivation of the words. People had been blogging for ages before Tim Berners-Lee was even born. The Diary of Samuel Pepys was more of a blog in several essential respects than either of the examples you gave, and even he had predecessors stretching all the way back to the classical era.
I get a 403 when I try to access your blog, Jeff. What’s up with that?