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Title: Blog: Understanding The Information Reformation
ISBN: 1589268504
Author:
Hugh Hewitt
Publicate Date: 2005-01-15
Publish: 2005-01-15
List Price: $27.99
Average Customer Rating: 3.5
Format: Audio CD
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $22.44
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $21.73
Amazon Merchant Price: $27.99
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Great Book on Blogs
Hugh is one of the pioneers of blogging. He presents a good summary of what blogging is and how blogging will impact our future.
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2: The big picture, from a political junkies slant
This impeccably well-written book (this dude can write!) is about blogs and how they are melting down mainstream media's influence and importance.
Hugh Hewitt asserts that "People's attentions are up for grabs" and blogs are capturing much of that attention. He is a national syndicated radio host and has one of the most popular political opinion blogs with over 100,000 unique visitors some days. His knowledge of the blogoshere is apparent. He examines recent events that have brought blogs into the mainstream consciousness including Dan Rather's recent disaster involving forged documents.
Hugh doesn't hide his political opinions or the fact that he is a political junkie. Although this book is a quick and fun read, those not interested in US politics may end up skimming some of the later sections including the 41-page appendix A, "Early Writings on Blogging."
Part 1 contains historical information on significant blogging events, all political in nature, a fascinating comparison of the development of the movable type printing press and blogs, and a brief history of text as it relates to blogging. Although I ignore politics as much as possible, each of his examples were familiar to me as they were "big deals" in the news. His concept of "blog storms" is interesting; when many blogs start examining the same events or story, an opinion storm brews and if it breaks, fundamentally changes the public's perceptions. Examples include John Kerry's Vietnam service in August 2004 and Dan Rather's blind faith in his forged documents in September 2004.
Part 2 focuses on the meltdown of mainstream media due in part to their extreme leftwing political bias and loss of trust with most news consumers. Hugh also comments briefly on a large number of influential and widely read blogs, primarily political in nature. He makes a good case that blogs have gained the trust that mainstream media has lost. "Why bloggers blog?" is an interesting question. Hewitt believes that bloggers are vain and blog for two reasons: to persuade, and to leave a record of having been there. He claims that both pursuits are a blast in real time and I concur. In the recent past, those who wanted to persuade had to persuade someone to let them persuade, for example a magazine or newspaper editor. Today the gatekeeper is gone. Anyone can start a blog, and if they have something interesting to say and some luck, might generate an enormous audience. The public takes on the role of editor by choosing what to read or not read. Bloggers have the same authority as big name columnists for the mainstream media, whether they have 10 or 10,000 regular readers.
Part 3 is the most fascinating but by its nature least detailed section. It concentrates on blogs and business uses, which are in their infancy. Hewitt suggests first developing a defensive blog strategy, as the destructive power of the blogosphere is immense. He then moves onto ways to use blogs for public relations and marketing purposes, including suggestions on finding appropriate bloggers for organizations, and advertising on blogs. Hewitt's "A Dozen Blogs I Would Start If I Were . . ." contains some fascinating thoughts on uses for blogs. The last chapter, "Getting Started: The Technology," contains very little technical advice as Hewitt isn't a technologist, but does have a superb list of key rules of "blogging success and significance."
I fully enjoyed this book despite despising politics. Since much of blog's recent rise into the public consciousness has been due to political events, some political content is unavoidable. Hewitt makes no apology for his political views or focus, and he shouldn't. He simply uses his experiences with blogs, which are unabashedly political, as his primary view into the blogosphere. The book is worth reading just for Hewitt's many insights, for example that bloggers run the spectrum from pure aggregators of other's materials to pure analysts, "blogs are about trust," and bloggers are part of a new culture of hyperscutiny.
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3: Too Political
Too much right-slanting political dribble in this book. Do we really need another book about blogging?
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4: The Power of Blogging - I Think You Already Know ;)
One of my current interests is "how to blog successfully", and when I came across Hugh Hewitt's book Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World, it inevitably peaked my interest, wanting to look for insights that can help me become a better blogger.
However, this is the wrong book for that - or rather, this is a prequel to the howto's that I was wishing for.
Hewitt's book is intended as a business justification for individuals and businesses that are still undecided on the virtue of blogging. He started the book by providing real world examples where the blogosphere generated impacts at national and world stages. That used to be the realm of influence for the Main Stream Media (MSM), but the toppling of Trent Lott and the Rathergate incident opened the door for the blogosphere as a legitimate alternative media outlet. Hewitt then further extrapolate the trend and draw parallels to Gutenberg's printing revolution to predict an oncoming media revolution, and ask reader to prepare and utilize for oncoming blog swarm. And finally, he shared some thoughts on what can people blog, and how to prepare a blog strategy for businesses.
While Hewitt gave extensive treatment and account on the historical blogosphere events and formulate his thesis on the blog revolution, it provides little information on implementation. Of course, the title of the book does not suggest an in-depth analysis of successful blogging, so it would be unfair of me to say this book did not meet an objective that it should not meet, but it would be interesting to see if the author would publish a sequel on that particular topic.
Now - I did not know of Hugh Hewitt before I pick up the book, and I was surprised to the amount of political overtones and the despise toward MSM in the book. He is definitely not shy about his views on some of these subjects, and it feels "in-you-face". If you are not a Hewitt fan already or you are not used to hearing people speaking in tones of "I know better than you", then you might not enjoy this book too much.
Who will get benefit from this book?
If you are thinking of blogging, either for personal or business reasons, but are still unsure about the possible impacts (or returns), then this book should do it for you.
On the other hand, if you are already blogging, or decided to start blogging, then you can safely skip this book without losing much. But of course, you can always buy the book for an interesting recount of what happened to Lott and Rather ;)
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5: Don't waste your money or valuable reading time!
Quite simply, I just couldn't get through the boorish political slamming. The author did not deliver on the promise "Understanding The Information Reformation That's Changing Your World". It's more about Hughy Hewitt's political tyrants than a serious inquiry on Blogs. He should take a course in writing, or run for office. Wish I could get a refund.
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