I finally have finished the term paper. I am posting a link to it here:

The Blogging Phenomenon: An Overview and Theoretical Consideration (currently in MS Word format, I'll provide an html version later)

Here is the introduction of the paper:

In this paper, I will seek to explore the meaning and significance of the blogging phenomenon. I will begin this exploration by looking at the definition of the term, the origins of the phenomenon, and how individual blogs might be classified. From there, I will look at the strengths and weaknesses of the medium, and finally examine the phenomenon though several theories of Mass Communications.

I would appreciate any and all comments, critiques, flames, etc. via my email or icq addresses listed above.

posted by J.M. Branum at 6:08 PM | link

• It's 3 a.m. and still working on the term paper. Look for it to be posted here at www.jmbzine.com sometime late in the afternoon. As far as I know it is the first academic paper written on the blogging phenomenon. (Or at least the first one that is published on the web.) Other papers have mentioned blogging, but I haven't seen one that focuses on it. BTW, once it is up I would appreciate any and all comments, critiques, flames, etc. Just send them to me via my ICQ or email listed above. Your thoughts will be considered as I rewrite and revise it for a planned revision. (In an informal sense, this will be a kind of "peer reviewing" of sorts here in the blogging community.
  

• The Flag Burning Page - Not that I support flag burning, in fact it disgusts me...but like it or not, it is protected by the First Amendment. As much as I love the flag, I love the First Amendment more. I don't think you can truly value freedom until you are willing to permit someone to do something you hate with the freedom that they have.
  

• Checking my stats, I found out that simorghsleeps.blogspot.com refers visitors to me. I couldn't find the link, so I'm assuming it is through a web ring. Wierdly enough, I think this guy is from San Marcos, TX (my home until Dec. 17 when I'm moving to www.pineridgeoklahoma.com) or something. That is strange...
  

• On another note, tonight as I was taking a brief break from my term paper I saw a few minutes of Fox News Channel. I knew it was terribly biased, but I had no idea what a joke it has become.
  

  Picture this... Geraldo Rivera in Tora Bora itself calling himself a "war correspondent." I'm more of a real journalist than Geraldo is. How in the **** did he get press credentials to go over there? We all know the US military controls press access to the war zones, so this proves that they the US military cares nothing about true journalism or they would have kicked his pathetic rear end back to trash TV where he belongs...
  

  Hold it, he's already there if he's on the Fox News Channel.
  

• Last of all, if you do a google search for the phrase "John Ashcroft is a fascist" you'll get 1,540 results. Haha, it looks like I'm not the only one to notice Ashcroft's true colors.

• NY Times: Accused of 'Conspiring' with Al Qaeda, Suspect is indicted as 20th hijacker
  

• NY Times: In 27 cities, U.S. carries out raids in software piracy case
  

• NY Times: Witnesses recount Taliban dying while held captive
  

• NY Times: More hurdles for EchoStar-DirecTV Plan
  

• NY Times: Observatory calls budget plan a threat to survival
  

• MSNBC: U.S. to withdraw from missle pact
  

• MSNBC: Online health a big draw for teens: Net may provide a conduit for researching sensitve topics
  

• CSMonitor: US had fewer executions in 2000 - This is certainly good news, unless you live in Texas (#1 with 40 executions) or Oklahoma (#2 by number, #1 per capita with 11 executions) These two states have become a dark blot of injustice on our nation.
  

• CSMonitor.com: Why wait? Colleges try 'instant admission'
  

Here are some more links on the topic of blogging and New Media Journalism:


• Online Journalism Review - the best online journalism journal I've come across thus far
  

• Aaronland: Weblogs, theory and practice - This site describes itself as a very casual and unscientific project to keep a record of the various writings on and about weblogs.
  

• Weblogs and the News: Where News, Journalism and Weblogs Intersect - another listing of articles and resources on blogging
  

  Also while doing my hunt for blogging journal articles, I found this unrelated gem from the Columbia Journalism Review: The Worst Newspaper in America - an expose on the Daily Oklahoman (a.k.a. The Daily Disapointment)
  

• www.damnthepacific.com - Well it looks like Stu is going to get to be with Lane after all... thanks to the power of Blogger.
  

  The next few links are some that I've found while working on my term paper on the the weblog phenomenum. (I'll post the paper in a few days once I finish it.)
  

• Rebecca's Pocket: weblogs - a history and perspective. A thoughtful essay dated 7 september 2000.
  

• Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies is an excellent listing of academic resources and journals for cybermedia research.
  

• Com Tech Online - regretably the attrocious web design takes away from what has the potential of being a very useful tool for New Media research.
  

• Courier-Journal.com: Let there be Blogs! Imagine writing a diary that everyone on Earth could read . . .
  

• Christian Science Monitor: The nature of the blog
  

• Ockhamsrazor.blogspot.com: A typology of weblogs
  

• The Guadian Unlimited: As simple as falling off a blog
  

• Washington Post: A Day-by-day in the life
  
  "Blogs are known for personal information, much of it boring," concedes Keaggy, who spends 10 minutes to two hours a day compiling his logs. "But they can be a great filter for knowledge-sharing in business. They are not going to go away."
  

  Personal blogging is almost a cottage industry, especially among young people who make a habit of reading other people's blogs much as their elders peruse magazines and newspapers. Hyperlinks to online resources surrounded by fresh, personal commentary are evolving into a specialized Web publishing form, one no other medium can replicate.

  
  

• Eadventure.com: Triumph of the Weblogs
  
  Many Weblogs are pointless, self-indulgent or interesting only to a small circle of people. As with everything else on the Web, though, there are plenty of diamonds in the rough. One person’s meat is another’s poison, and even sites with a tiny audience may satisfy their creators and readers enough to stay vibrant for a long time. Notes Userland ceo Dave Winer, “As a writer and a lover of good writing, I look forward to lots of great new ideas coming from people I’ve never heard of before.”
  

  Weblogs address several aspects of the terminal information overload we face today. First, there’s just too much stuff out there for anyone to read through all of it. Keeping up with breaking news and developments in specific fields of interest has never been more challenging. Second, the proliferation of content on the Web reduces the authority of traditional media brands and gatekeepers, who no longer have a lock on audience eyeballs (see Release 1.0, November 1999).
  

  Weblogs let humans serve as filters and amplifiers of content from many sources, and allow users to choose the editors they like. As we’ve discussed before (see Release 1.0, July/August 1999), this vision requires good syndication mechanisms for people to find Weblogs they like and dynamically to filter and aggregate content from several Weblogs. Such tools are still in the early stages of development. However, the rapid adoption of extensible markup language (XML) formats for distributing content as well as dynamic Web services is a hopeful sign.

  
  

• NY Times: U.S. detainee is questioned, but his fate is still unclear
  

• Washington Post: U.S. succession plan criticized - Constitutional crisis, chaos foreseen if top leaders killed - Strangely enough, I find this story to be hopeful. Not that, it would be positive that a horrible catastrophe would happen, but rather that there is such a determination to ensure that our Republic would survive even the most devastating of disasters.
  

• NY Times: In 5th season, 'Ally' seems to be stalling

• PBS.org's American Roots Music mini-series was an excellent program. I only saw episode #4, but I was very impressed by it.
  

• Motherearthnews.com - includes reprints on selected articles from the print magazine

• MSNBC: A long, strange trip to the Taliban - a fascinating story on how alleged American Taliban, John Walker came from a life in Northern California to being an al Quaeda fighter.