The art of blogging

Joe Carter has put together a particularly insightful series of comments on blogging:

1. How to start a blog
2. The beginners toolbox
3. Become an A-list blogger
4. The art of marketing your blog
5. Owning a micro-niche

Pejman Yousefzadeh also makes some good points on Blogging 101.

And a while back Tim Dunlop had some interesting things to say about the potential of blogs to put the public back in public intellectual:

"Just as punk rock shook a fist at the pretentious, bloated 'progressive' thing that rock music had become, and found a way for anybody with the guts, the inclination and something to say to pick up a guitar and command an audience, so blogging has risen up to challenge the soundbitten, amnesiac, pale little thing that PR-spun democratic politics has become."

The whole discussion around what blogs are and what they can do has started to splinter off into a number of narrower, but related discussions. Tim Dunlop has one angle, and Steve Outing at the Poynter Institute has another. Both interesting and relevant. Something is brewing.

And it's been brewing for a while. The experts have had a lot to say about it.