Dispatches from Blogistan: A Travel Guide for the Modern Blogger

Foreword

“Why would anybody write a book about blogs?”

So asked a blogger on learning of my own project to write a book about political blogging in America today. His rationale was logical. There are solid reasons that the book form is not the right one with which to address the phenomenon of weblogging.

Books are too slow. Blogging is changing so fast that trying to document it in a book is like using a stylus and clay tablets to describe a horserace in progress. The long lead time for publishing books is daunting. My own book is taking two years. Surely everything I have to say will fail its freshness test.

Blogging is in its infancy. Its earliest forms, online at least, go back almost a decade, but as a mass participatory exercise, blogging ...