Chronicling the Blogosphere

I read Hugh Hewitt’s latest tome, a chronicle of the blogosphere titled Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That’s Changing Your World. For the uninitiated, Hewitt is the unofficial historian of the blogging movement, with one of the highest traffic sites in the blogosphere, located at http://www.hughhewitt.com/.

As it states on the book’s cover, Hewitt articulates “why you must know how the blogosphere is smashing the old media monopoly and giving individuals power in the marketplace of ideas.” To that end, he does an artful job of explaining how Web logs are in the process of replacing mainstream media as the most influential, if not powerful, force in media today.

Hewitt cites the incredible growth of the blogosphere—which boasts nearly 5 million blogs in existence and is expected to double within the year—as indicative of a communications breakthrough comparable to the revolutionary printing press.