ME and Ophelia

BLOGOSPHERE BOOSTER
8m Americans have blogs, another 32m say they read blogs

The following editorial appeared in the FT January 4, 2005:

Dan Gillmor, the doyen of Silicon Valley's technology columnists, has decided to give up the dead tree business for good. A writer for the San José Mercury News for the past decade, Gillmor has long had an interest in journalism's newest frontier: blogs, wikkis and other tools of do-it-yourself media. (Wikkis, for the neophytes among you, are communally created web pages that draw on the knowledge of a wide group of people.) His book, We the Media, has become something of a bible for those who believe the online medium will change journalism for the better.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project suggested this week that blogging is set to become the biggest pastime in the US this side of shopping. According to the study, 8m Americans say they have online diaries, and another 32m say they read blogs. For a long time, bloggers were typing into a void: now, the number of readers is rising faster than writers.

Gillmor is vague about his plans: according to his blog, he has financial backing from Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, to start "a project to inspire, enable and create what many have been calling a new kind of journalism".