2.4 Commentary

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"It's all about the words." That's where this module began, and it's a point to which we will return again and again throughout. The style and content of blog commentary is too varied to be easily classified, but some qualities are common enough to justify a quick mention:

Personal. While not every blog is a literal diary of the author's day-to-day life, the vast majority are written in a personal voice, meaning that they are in the first person and in a style that reflects the author's online personality or ethos.

Opinionated. Freed of editorial restraint or any faux-journalistic notion of objectivity, blogs are the talk radio of the world wide web. Bloggers are, by and large, an opinionated lot, and the Internet is their bullhorn, pulpit, stumping block, and printing press, all rolled into one.

Topic-Oriented. By virtue of having a single author (or, in some cases, a small collective of authors) each blog typically focuses on a particular topic. That topic might be as broad and open-ended as "John Doe's Life and Wide-Ranging Interests" or as narrow as "Tips for Coding Cascading Style Sheets." One popular trend, for example, is photoblogging, wherein authors post their latest pictures, often without any textual commentary whatsoever. Likewise, mp3 blogs post links to digital music.

Irreverent. The same editorial freedom that allows bloggers to shout biased opinions—combined, no doubt, with the anonymity of web writing—also encourages a certain irreverence in some writers. Topics such as sex, politics, race, and religion, which are still generally treated with kid gloves by the mainstream press, are openly flayed by bloggers, occasionally with wit and genuine insight, often without.

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