Customer Reviews

Blog!: How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I thought this was a great book. So many people these days talk about blogs as though they are the answer to everyone¹s prayers or written by rightwing nuts. This book showed that the blogosphere, like society, is full of people from all walks of life, and it showed just how useful blogging can be in the

worlds of politics, business and culture. There¹s a little bit of

something for everyone in here.

I admit that I skipped a few of the business interviews when I found nothing there for me but if you run a large or small

business I¹m sure you¹ll find those parts interesting.

My personal favorites were the politics and culture essays, especially the interview with Michael Chabon¹s wife Ayelet Waldman. The introductory essays were also good giving a balanced introduction to each of the chapters and all of the commentary pieces pulled from newspapers and magazines were entertaining.

The book had a tendency to repeat itself slightly with different

interviewees saying the same thing in different ways, but I suppose you can¹t help that when you are interviewing so many different people.

On the whole I would say this looks like one of the best books out there on blogging at the moment.

David Kline and Dan Burstein have been around for decades as respected author/journalists. They may not have great "street cred" among bloggers, but I've never expected a crime reporter to commit murder before writing about it and I certainly wouldn't trust a political writer more because he were a politician. This book is a critical investigation into the many ways that blogging is rapidly changing our world -- from culture to business to science to politics -- and in the arena of such trend-synthesis, the author/editors reek of cred. The essays are far-reaching and insightful, and the analysis pulls them all together clearly and cohesively. A virtual Bible of the Blogosphere.

David and Dan really got it right with blog!. They take a meta view of the blogosphere looking at the political, business and cultural implications of blogs as a metaphor for the changes taking place in how organizations interact with their constituents.

This book review was a blog post on http://jimestill.blogspot.com/

I know a lot of bloggers read blogs. One awesome book that is a must read for bloggers is "Blog! How the newest revolution is changing politics, business and culture" by David Kline and Dan Burstein.

It talks of the power and influence of blogs. It uses political examples. Through these examples we can learn what good blogging is (honest, open) and what it is not (poorly written, blatant marketing). It talks about freedom of the press and countries and companies that try to suppress blogs. It also warns and gives examples of blogs that share insider or confidential information and what happens. Most of this advice is just "don't be stupid".

To quote from it:

"..most people - or at least most of the media's coverage of business issues in blogging - are missing the fact that the real excitement here is not how much money business can make from blogging, but how dramatically blogging will reshape the world of business from top to bottom and create new sources of competitive advantage for firms that learn how to use this new medium intelligently."

"Bloggers not only tend to be more passionate about their interests and hobbies than other people, they also have marketplace influence far beyond their numbers".

Much of the book consists of interviews with famous people who blog. It asks their view of the Blogshpere and what is happening.

This is a highly inspirational read for anyone who blogs. We live in revolutionary times and as bloggers (and blog readers) we see history being made. We are truly cutting edge. The world is changing before our eyes.

As A. J. Liebling a great 20th century journalist said "Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one". With blogs, anyone can.

This is a collection of short pieces, some written especially for the book and some reprinted from other sources. The authors have also interviewed a number of the more famous bloggers or other people analyzing the trend. This variety makes it an extremely useful introduction to the phenomenon. It certainly isn't a gripping read, but the ideas are fascinating. This is not a how-to book, except in the sense of explaining some of the capabilities of the format, and exploring what makes a good or bad blog.

Kline and Burstein have a fairly balanced view of blogs, expecting them to be quite significant, but acknowledging that they cannot be expected to creat a new utopia, and that the future is very much still forming. The book is somewhat slanted, but not uncritically, in favor of blogs, perhaps because the authors feel that love them or hate them, they're here to stay. They point out that the purposes of blogging are age-old, although the technology now allows communication on a grand scale.

The book acknowledges that most blogs are personal, i.e., intended mainly for friends and family (although still open to public view), but they concentrate on the publically oriented blogs, especially the political and the business.

Fortunately, having gotten me all gung ho on reading blogs, the book has appendixes giving guidance to various blogs of great general interest. They also have an blog updating the see future of blogs (see productwiki, below).

I recommend this to everyone, especially those who are not currently familiar with blogs.

As good as the ideas are in this book, from the perspective of a hardcore blogger, this author has zero street credibility.

I was introduced to David Kline as a public figure, per chance, by catching him on The O'Reilly Factor. While I almost exclusively watch O'Reilly segments through Media Matters for America, I tuned into this particular segment about slanderous websites, because I was interested in hearing O'Reilly spinning reality once again.

Kline was a guest, supposedly the balanced guest from the left, who was immediately blown away by the conversation and O'Reilly. How so? Kline couldn't even engage in the conversation, because he had never even heard of Media Matters, the site that O'Reilly focused his vengeance upon.

Huh?

So I go to Kline's blog and I get involved in a few of his posts. The first is basically an open apology to the left and to bloggers for how he allowed himself to be used and abused by O'Reilly. A ton of people posted comments, with many getting on him for his lack of preparation when appearing on an obvious ambush show.

At first glance, I shrugged it off as a poor showing and gave the guy a break. Today, my perspective changed. Why? Go to his site, blogrevolt, and scroll down to the lower right side of the page. His "site" (his nomenclature) is being managed by Christian Sarkar, a marketing guy that has coined his own website marketing strategy called, "Double Loop Marketing."

Let me get this straight; a guy with no hours put in as a blogger (his archives go back two months at the time of this review) writes, authoritatively, about the future of blogging ("Blog! How The Newest Media Revolution Is Changing Politics, Business and Culture") and has someone "managing" his "site?" Apparently, creating a blog template is too much for this "blogger" so he hires a marketing guy to build his blog, along with providing a strategy to pitch his book on the future of blogs to a demographic, which includes bloggers that come to his blo... I mean... "site?"

No wonder Billy Boy's staff picked this guy.

Kline is the one representative of the "blogging community" O'Reilly finds to placate the balanced coverage that Media Matters so devilishly demands... and he just so happens to not know who they are?

This a perspective from the outside, someone who created a blog to promote the sales of a book while looking inside his subject matter.

According to one of the greatest scholars of the 20th Century, Dr. Walter J. Ong, SJ, who taught and inspired countless students and media experts for many years at St. Louis University; any new technology starts out in the path of older technologies and gradually finds its place, purpose, rules, and forms as people get used to it.

A striking example is the fact that the first cars were basically horse carriages with a motor. Gradually, people learned about aerodynamics and developed more sensible shapes although there is a car out there which I will not name which does look like a perfectly rectangular carriage with a motor, fancy that!

Now Prof. Ong did write somewhat about computers but he retired before the Internet became the Web with its accessible, visual format. Now how would he approach Blogging?

First, obviously when a reporter or a student starts a blog, he/she has some responsibility to follow journalistic practices just as a student still has to give credit for sources even if it comes from the Internet. Obviously these standards are changing because what a 12-year-old writes in a blog on Madonna ( what a skank!) should not be judged by the same standard as what a reporter writes on her latest relationship (judging by the fallout of her latest adventure, it would appear that Madonna is following the judge-me-or leave me paradigm, blah blah.....)

Now as Dr. Ong would point out, blogs and the Internet in general are making great changes in such basic areas as how we learn (many teachers and profs. are terrified of students who can make them look stupid by finding materials on the Internet which directly contradicts the teachers' favorite notions); how we process information; how we communicate and what and how our literature and art operate.

BTW, I have spent over 10 years trying to promote discussion topics (or lists, or whatever the site calls them) as a means to improve thinking, feeling, communcation and writing skills in students at whatever level.

Why? Because just as is the case with blogs, young people love to have a forum to express their personal ideas, likes, dislikes, preferences etc. They are trying out attitudes, styles, etc. and learn much when they are either praised or blasted for their efforts.

However, discussion topics and blogs are still in the Wild-West stage where often anything goes. Now, slander is slander in any form but our laws are not ready to discriminate between teen-age (or journalistic) ranting or praise; and speech and acts which are slander or treason.

Obviously if we are really at war, (sorry, but I don't think so unless you mean the drug wars which are all over the world); then free speech in blogs or anywhere else should be limited but not too much if we don't want another Hitler.

So, blogs are important. History will show how they are developing and how they will continue to develop (if you can believe history.)

If you want to read about some interesting blog developments and some socio-political analysis of the blogging phenomenon, this book will introduce you to such topics, but it does not reflect the blog universe from the perspective of the serious blogger. The phenomenon of Blogging is metamorphosizing so quickly, that much in this book is getting out of date. If you recall why cable TV had a 'buzz' when it first came out, it was basically for three reasons: a) to offer greater access to production; b)commercial free programming; and c) better quality images. The first two have been co-opted by the cable industry and the third is largely irrelevant thanks to DVD programming (unless you are a sports freak whose idea of ecstasy is to watch emerald green grass in a ball field. Blogs already exist that are shills for major corporations (for example, there are blogs that look like 'on-line journals' that are sponsored and produced by corporations--really a form of P.R., and unless you can get paid full time for blogging,or have an organization/interest group supporting you, or form a co-op blog of writers, who could possibly maintain a first rate blog besides a) college professors and b)stay at home with lots of free time people (these two categories are not mutually exclusive).

I have read a number of books about blogging. This one is by far the worst. It is a bunch of essays and interviews. Lot of focus on politics. Not really much focus on blogging. This title of this book should not be "blog!". Although I have never written an Amazon review before, I felt I had to warn everyone about this dud.

I was very disappointed in the book. Unfortunately, there's at least as much ranting from the author about his views of what's wrong with the political left, and as much of his glorifying of the political right, as there is info about blogs. Info about blogs seemed to be only a backdrop from which to share his strong right-wring political views. If you are a strong right-winger, buy the book. Otherwise, if you are a centrist, on the left, or interested primarily in blogs, don't buy this book.