St Louis Fox 2 News Report on Blogging

Here's the Fox 2 News report on blogging that ran last night on the 9:00pm news:

BLOGGING

There is a new buzz word in town and it's blog, short for web-log. And, a growing number of everyday people in St. Louis have one for the world to see. In the Fox Files, Kevin Steincross explains what a blog is and who uses one.

Howard Dean has one. John Kerry has one. Even soldiers in Iraq have blogs. Blogs are basically an on-line journal about your life. “I blog, my wife blogs and we blog for our baby. And, my mother blogs, my father blogs. Everybody blogs. It's just a really good way to talk with people that you don't necessarily keep in touch with everyday, but you would like to.” Ben Vierck not only blogs, but he has designed free blogger software called Bloghorn, to make it easier to blog. “We've had more than a thousand people use the software. It's all open. It's all free.”

So what exactly do people blog about? “If you are interested in knitting, for example, you can write all about knitting in your web log. And the people that are interested in knitting will find you eventually and they will say, ‘Wow, I like this knitting idea that you had and here's something that I did.’” There is blogging software out there. They are website based, so you don't even have to download them, and instantly, your life is an open book to the world. “This last weekend, for example, our baby was sick and everyone was concerned. So, we posted an update on our baby’s web log and all of our friends and family just watched that and didn't inundate us with phone calls. There was a web log that was pretty popular that was being written by an Iraqi during the war over in Iraq and people were reading this. We also saw some military personnel doing the same thing. What does it mean to get into the head and to see the thoughts of these people, both the Iraqi people and our troops, while this is all going on? These politicians are listening to the people that are blogging, because what spreads amongst the blogging community will probably spread amongst everybody else.”

One St. Louis blogger is known as Mae Midwest to the world. “My blog started as a showcase for me as an actress and a voice over talent. I decided to write stories about my experiences in the field, and suddenly people are e-mailing me and responding and saying, ‘tell me more about your life,’ which of course is so flattering.” A section of her blog is patterned after Mae West, where she can say and do anything, but another section of her blog deals her past infertility experience. “Just reaching out and getting comfort from total strangers, it's making me believe in people again.” Some even as far away as England send in gifts to her and the baby. “It is a community. Oh, definitely. We have get-togethers and have gone to each other’s weddings and baby showers and become a part of each other’s lives. Some people want to talk about politics, some people want to open up about their lives, some people say way too much, but that's what makes it so fascinating.”

Finding a blog that you’re interested in commenting on is easy. Just go to any search engine and then type in the name of something that interests you. Let's say,based on the Superbowl, you pick Janet Jackson. Just go into the search engine, type in that name followed by blog, click enter, and you are likely come up with thousands of blog sites to visit. And Ben says blogging isn't likely to go away. “Some people say eventually everybody will blog, everybody will. I think it could permeate society, where we have 10-20% of people that you interact with are blogging.”

For blogger software, visit www.bloghorn.com.
to meet st. Louis bloggers, visit www.stlbloggers.com.