Nonfiction review: Say Everything

NONFICTION
As Scott Rosenberg's informative "Say Everything" persuasively suggests, the blogosphere now belongs with those other influential spheres that shape our lives. Initially ridiculed as a passing fad, blogging now threatens traditional media, changes the way political campaigns are run and expands information sources for millions.

As a co-founder of Salon.com, Rosenberg is obviously biased, but his account of how blogging began, its growth and the changes it has made is nuanced and thoughtful. This is no wild-eyed plug of the new, but rather a wide-ranging survey of an innovation that has created an enormous "outpouring of human expression [that] should delight us."

He begins with the early pioneers of the medium, people such as the eccentric Justin Hall, who in 1994 put up a Web page that included photos of himself and other personal data. Hall was not the first to build a personal site but the first to find a wide audience, soon becoming a "human transmitter beaming forth on all possible frequencies."

Others soon followed. Young and idealistic, they were happy to write for small audiences, but by 2001, blogging began attracting advertising and an expanding pool of customers. Rosenberg then details the political blogging that really started with the disputed 2000 presidential election, when journalist Joshua Micah Marshall began his Talking Points. There, Marshall provided knowledgeable updates on the legal maneuvers preceding the Supreme Court decision.

The Drudge Report, Daily Kos and the Huffington Post are now familiar and respected news sources. Independent and not bound by editorial or time restraints, these blogs -- relying on legwork, well-connected political junkies and, paradoxically, the daily press -- are able to offer continuously updated news and scoops that challenge the traditional media. Rosenberg not only describes the rise of political blogs but also such popular personal blogs as the Mommy blogs and the blog of a Savile Row tailor who writes about bespoke suits.

Currently 77 percent of active Internet users read blogs, and worldwide about 184 million people have started them.

To reassure those who fret about blogging, Rosenberg suggests that despite its novelty, blogging is literary. People must write and read them. They are also record keepers; writing about our world, bloggers resemble not the barbarians at the gates but "the studious scribes within -- saving what matters."

A comprehensive overview, slow to start, but increasingly compelling, this is a must read for those who'd like to be more Web-savvy.

Judith Chettle is a Richmond-based book reviewer and writer.