download FREE CULTURE(PDF)

discourse without the public ever needing to gather in a single public
place.
But beyond architecture, blogs also have solved the problem of
norms. There’s no norm (yet) in blog space not to talk about politics.
Indeed, the space is filled with political speech, on both the right and
the left. Some of the most popular sites are conservative or libertarian,
but there are many of all political stripes. And even blogs that are not
political cover political issues when the occasion merits.
The significance of these blogs is tiny now, though not so tiny. The
name Howard Dean may well have faded from the 2004 presidential
race but for blogs. Yet even if the number of readers is small, the reading
is having an effect.
One direct effect is on stories that had a different life cycle in the
mainstream media. The Trent Lott affair is an example. When Lott
“misspoke” at a party for Senator Strom Thurmond, essentially praising
Thurmond’s segregationist policies, he calculated correctly that this
story would disappear from the mainstream press within forty-eight
hours. It did. But he didn’t calculate its life cycle in blog space. The
bloggers kept researching the story. Over time, more and more instances
of the same “misspeaking” emerged. Finally, the story broke
back into the mainstream press. In the end, Lott was forced to resign
as senate majority leader. 18
This different cycle is possible because the same commercial pressures
don’t exist with blogs as with other ventures. Television and
newspapers are commercial entities.They must work to keep attention.
If they lose readers, they lose revenue. Like sharks, they must move on.
But bloggers don’t have a similar constraint. They can obsess, they
can focus, they can get serious. If a particular blogger writes a particularly
interesting story, more and more people link to that story. And as
the number of links to a particular story increases, it rises in the ranks
of stories. People read what is popular; what is popular has been selected
by a very democratic process of peer-generated rankings.
There’s a second way, as well, in which blogs have a different cycle
“PIRACY” 43