Blogs are the information medium of the masses and they will change the way in which the masses distribute and receive information. “If you have a modem, you have an opinion,” writes Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds and that motto will be the driving force in decentralizing and finally democratizing the media!

Blog posts are apparently supposed to be short, but when you mention “change”, “the masses”, and “democratizing the media” all in one sentence, a more thorough deliberation is helpful. Consider this comment from Andrew Sullivan’s Blogger Manifesto, which I encourage you all to read in its entirety:

One thing we've learned from web journalism is that predictions of sudden change have tended to evaporate as months and years have gone by.

Blogs serve many different purposes today and are maintained for a variety of reasons, but most importantly for Sullivan as a published journalist, they are pushing the nature of his profession into new territories. Rather than changing how we all communicate information, blogs will primarily provide a new medium for those who could not be heard but have something to say. Information blogs will complement journalism, and the two will exist in a symbiotic manner; personal blogs will continue as they do, connecting people and creating new communities; filter blogs, photo blogs, foolish blogs— “Is it a real media revolution? It’s way too soon to tell,” Sullivan argues. Granted, blogs are a new medium on top of the Internet, but we’ve heard many utopian visions on information technology before; if we can learn from them, then let us consider the potentials of blogging carefully and realistically and evaluate “change” only once there has been enough time for it to take place.