In Blogs We Trust

Few rules, good reporting and a flaming case of TMI (too much information!) make St. Louis' Web diarists some of the most interesting in the country

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It’s 7:45 p.m. in Susy Bergman’s home in Kirkwood, and for the stay-at-home mom, it’s been another long day. But she’s not unwinding in front of the TV. Bergman is unwinding online.

“I start looking at the news sites,” she says of her routine. “Then I go to some of my favorite blog sites.” Some of these include local St. Louis blogs, others are voyeuristic journeys into the lives of women she’ll never meet.

“I especially love these blogs by women, one in Utah and one in California,” she says. “They are funny, and they talk about infertility, postpartum depression, all kinds of gory stuff.”

Bergman is part of a trend. The number of Americans reading blogs jumped 58 percent in a nine-month span in 2004, to an estimated 32 million people, according to a survey by Pew Internet & American Life Project. Some are peering into the “private” diaries of those who feel the need to share their lives online, others are blogging about a specific trade or interest, and a large number are interested in politics.

Bloggers have jumped on several major national stories that traditional media either missed (the news of racist remarks made by then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., at former Sen. Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party was first seen on blogs and led to his resignation, and bloggers were the first to uncover the inconsistencies in a report by Dan Rather that cost him his career) or were overwhelmed by (hundreds of blogs on the tsunami disaster communicated a much more personal and accurate picture than any single media outlet could).

Yet anyone can blog. There’s no journalism degree necessary or formal expertise required. As a result, the blog world is filled with rumor, half-truths and innuendo.

“At their best, blogs function as a ‘Fifth Estate’ to keep traditional media honest,” says local blogger Brian Marston. “They play a role in framing issues and advocating positions. They also speed up the news cycle.”

And it may come as a surprise that seemingly staid St. Louis is on the forefront of this trend. We are home to an especially active blogging community that has yielded a few sites that are getting rave reviews nationally. Perhaps the most successful is Blog St. Louis. Atlanta-based Civic Strategies had this to say about the site: “Blog St. Louis may be the best [urban] blog around. It is witty, well-written and withering in its observations of St. Louis politics and political leadership.”

The ArchPundit (with the tag line: “This isn’t your father’s Jerry Berger!”) was begun in August 2002 by Larry Handlin, a Washington University political science student working on his doctorate. Handlin had just started reading blogs himself when he decided to start his site. “I was going through a weird time,” he says. “My wife and I were about to have twins, and that didn’t give me much time to do longer pieces, but doing the typical short bits on a blog was a way to keep [active].”

He chose to focus on local politics, in part because he felt the local media weren’t covering it as well as it needed to be. The depth Handlin is able to go into is impressive and has led to some influential discoveries: In January 2003, his blog reported that Carol Wilson, who was running for the 16th Ward aldermanic seat as a Republican, had ties to the right-wing separatist Council of Concerned Citizens. During the election, his site was getting up to 2,000 hits a day.

One of Handlin’s readers is Ben Jones, cofounder of Web Sanity, a Web design and development company specializing in working for nonprofit organizations. He’s also a blogger, but at the opposite end of the spectrum: his www.benjones.org is “completely personal.” Recent topics include a rant on Condoleezza Rice’s appointment as Secretary of State, antiques and sewing. “Blogging is really a more direct act of communication than anything else,” he says. “It has also become a way of collecting my thoughts and maintaining a dialog with numerous individuals simultaneously.”

Plus, unlike the coffee-stained, dog-eared traditional journal, blogs are searchable. Jones says sometimes he’ll wonder about something he may or may not have written, a thought not quite completed, and then be able to find it immediately. He just Googles, say, “Benblog Biscuit” and finds that particular entry in his blog. (Jones’ obsession with finding good recipes is something of a draw.)

“Also, it’s fun to look back at things. It gives me a glimpse into my own brain,” he says.

That glimpse can be embarrassing, as was one notorious entry involving an unexpected bodily function in a coffee shop. It’s the type of accident not mentioned in polite company, yet there it is on Jones’ site, in front of God and everybody.

“I write about and try to live my life in such a way that there is nothing I do that I’m so ashamed of I can’t tell a story about it,” he says. “It may be embarrassing, but I also found it funny. What do they say? ‘Comedy is tragedy plus time.’”

When Amanda Doyle isn’t working as assistant editor of Where magazine, she’s hunched over her computer running online magazine TheCommonspace.org, which is dedicated to St. Louis’ grassroots civics and culture. The corresponding blog is managed with her husband, Brian Marston. (Marston also manages www.stlsyndicate.com, an umbrella site for St. Louis-related blogs of note.)

“TheCommonspace.org’s blog section allows us to fill in the gaps between monthly issues,” she says. “We just kept coming up with little bits throughout the month that we felt people should know about. It’s part marketing tool, showing that we’re on top of what is happening culturally in St. Louis.”

Doyle herself reads a lot of blogs, including some personal ones. One of her current favorites is www.jodiverse.com, a funny and well-written blog by a woman in New York who likes to show pictures of the food she eats.

Marston, who also freelances as a Web developer, says: “I was slow to warm up to blogs because so many of them seemed to be of the ‘This is a funny thing my cat did last night’ variety, but I eventually saw the potential of the medium.” He also sees his syndicate of sites as an opportunity to promote the good things happening in St. Louis.

Marston follows a lot of politics on blogs, and he isn’t concerned that the person writing is not necessarily a professional journalist. “There is a value in having a journalism degree, but a lot of [blogging] is common sense and trying to be fair. Blogs tend to be more advocacy writing, more op-ed than hard news. But in some ways that’s cool because you get points of view you wouldn’t normally get.

“The flip side that worries me is you can get your news solely from choices you agree with, and that just hardens people and conversation just breaks down. It used to be everybody watched the same news. A lot of times it was wrong, and also biased, but you had this shared idea of what was going on. Now you have an event happening, say Iraq, and you can have a completely different version of what is going on than your neighbor, depending on the source of the news.”

In perhaps a hint of things to come, Scott Granneman has turned his interest in blogging, technology and the Web into a paying gig, joining the small and elite but growing ranks of professional bloggers.

The Marshall, Mo., native moved to St. Louis in 1985 to attend Washington University, graduating with a doctorate in 17th century British literature. He taught at local schools as his interest in technology continued to grow, finally outpacing his love of Milton and Donne. Faced with the dearth of jobs in his field, he built a career teaching technology courses, doing Web design and consulting, and he is a columnist for SecurityFocus and Linux Magazine. As someone who once had his own personal blog, he says he now views 200 a day.

“People blog because it’s an extremely easy way to publish,” says Granneman, who is writing for The Open Source (opensource.weblogsinc.com). “A blog is a title and text, that’s it. You write it in and it’s already there. Blogs are finally fulfilling the hype that was given to the Web 10 years ago.”

And as with the Web, many believe that blogs, having revolutionized the ideas of personal revelation and media watchdogging, will become a permanent part of our culture.

“I think it’s here to stay because people are narcissistic,” Doyle says. “And the personal bloggers, they will keep going forever. Or until their moms find out.”

What’s a blog?

“Blog” is short for “Web log” and is an online journal that covers topics ranging from daily life to technology to culture to the arts. In 2004, Merriam-Webster named it the Word of the Year.

“I tell people blogs are Web sites that focus on a ‘post’ instead of pages,” professional blogger Scott Granneman says. “The post can be any subject imaginable and usually has a unifying theme and is in reverse chronological order from most recent post at the top. Group blogs allow others to post comments and reactions to each other.”

There are many free sources to help you set up your own blog, including www.blogger.com.

[blogging can be hazardous to your career]

“It’s very interesting to me when grown-up people have these semi-anonymous blogs and give out enough details that people can figure out who they are,” blogger Brian Marston says.

Such is the tale of Daniel P. Finney, a former St. Louis Post-Dispatch writer who was suspended and later forced to resign when his blog was discovered by the higher-ups at the Post. In the biting-the-hand-that-feeds-him department, he decided to use his blog, written under the pseudonym Roland H. Thompson, to slam a certain daily paper in St. Louis.

“As a journalist, it was a kid’s mistake,” Finney told the Riverfront Times. “I’m old enough to know better, and I regret it.”

Bloggers often get lulled into thinking it’s a private thing, Marston says, that it’s some diary they keep under their pillow. “They treat it like, ‘It’s my own private thoughts.’ They are putting it on the Web and are shocked when anybody finds it.”

>> A few good blogs

Local:

National:

  • www.jodiverse.com: Humor and insights from a New Yorker, with an emphasis on food.
  • www.wonkette.com: Humor and insights from a Washingtonian, with an emphasis on national politics.
  • www.louschuler.com: Health, sports, humor and politics from a fitness expert and onetime St. Louisan.
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