Blogging and Online Publishing
An Assignment Submitted by
Name of Student
Name of Establishment
Class XXXX, Section XXXX, Fall 2011

Abstract An age of new information and digital technologies brought in our life many new and useful things. Appearance of new mediums such as TV, video games, the Internet was an impulse for cultural, economic and social development. In our daily life we cannot dispense with these things and it is hard to imagine that nearly 50 years ago all these technologies were only a dream. In this course paper I will try to find out why new mediums became so popular and whether old mediums will yield to new mediums.

Keywords: new medium, old medium, Internet, video games, TV

Blogging and Online Publishing
Description and a brief history Nowadays blogging is very popular. There are different types of blogs, for example, new blogs, music blogs, blogs for entertainment etc. Practically everyone is reading blogs today. The history of blogging started in 1994. The first person who created a blog was Justin Hall. He was a student of a Swarthmore College. The first blog was Links.net. Of course, nobody called it a blog, it was only a homepage. The term “weblog” was created in 1997 by John Barger. The first example of blogging was fixed at the news site in 1998. The first author of the blog was Jonathan Dube. He created a blog with information about Hurricane Bonnie. In 1999, the term “weblog” was shortened to “blog” by Peter Merholz. At first, the original blog was created manually, it was not easy, however, everyone could do it with the help of a programmer. There were no blogging platforms. After that, in approximately two years was created a blogging platform called LiveJournal. In 1999 Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan started a new platform for blogging that was called Blogger. This platform was responsible for bringing blogging to the mainstream. (Chapman, 2011) From 2000 blogging became very popular. The best evidence of this fact is the statistics: in 1999, there were only twenty-three blogs, and in 2006, there were fifty millions. The earliest and the most popular blogs were political blogs. Blogs became such popular because many interesting details, which were not noticed in the newspapers and magazines, were written on the blogs. During the year blog’s popularity increased, daily and music news were written on the blogs with many details, it was interesting for people. In addition, bloggers made comments about different news on the blogs. Blogging platforms developed very quickly, and in 2001 was released Version 1 of Movable Type. In 2003 the Word Press was created. In 2001, on base of Movable Type was created TypePad. The first audio blogger also was created in 2003 and the first video blogger was created in 2004. AdSense was the first advertising platform. In 2003, the developers of AdSense combined ads to the content of the blog. It was a break in blogging. With the help of AdSense people could make money without any huge platforms. (Basen, 2009) In 2007, developers created microblogs and tumblogs. The famous Twitter is a microblog. With its help people share their thoughts with other people. Most of politicians, pop-stars have blogs where they write main events of their daily life. (Chapman, 2011) Over ten years ago the first online publishing was made. It was made when people started putting text files into the Internet. It was made because of willingness to share information between different users.
Comparison between new and old mediums Nowadays, many newspapers are published online and people can read them anywhere and in the way they preferred (from computers, iPhones etc.). In my opinion, online publishing has a big plus because there is no need to waste trees for making paper and then newspapers and magazines. In America there were debates, which were devoted to new and old mediums. Statistics shows that blogs are catching up with newspapers and bloggers are catching up with journalists. Nowadays, blogging is very popular and it can compete with newspapers and magazines. Blogging has its advantages. For example, blogging is the way of finding more detailed information about music, economic and also it is the way of expressing thoughts and feelings. People can have a dialogue, in contrast to newspapers and magazines. So we can consider that blogging is a power because ordinary people have the chance to communicate with the blogger and express their negative or positive opinion in reality. It is very important because in our not easy life sometimes magazines write untruthful information about political or economic situations. A big advantage of blogging and online publishing is that blogging and online publishing are cheaper than printing. For printing magazine we need to create designs, to product it through the printing and people have to waste many resources such as money, time and nature. In addition, one of the biggest pluses that online publishing will be preserved for many years and paper issues are not protected, time, fire and dust can harm them very strong. In addition, online publishing is “eternal”. Of course, some people can say that newspapers and magazines are better because of computers the sight become weaker. However, as for me anyway blogging and online publishing have more advantages in comparison with newspapers and magazines. New and old mediums: challenging or replacement? Some new mediums went into our life, replaced old mediums and some new mediums only challenged old mediums. For example, vinyl, which was very popular in 1980s. The audience used vinyl gramophone records before they were replaced with CDs. Of course, nobody will return back to vinyl. First of all, it is not practical and that is why nobody produces vinyl gramophone records. Jam Willem Wijnen in his article “Journal Backfiles in Scientific Publishing” (2007) said: “Online publications are gaining importance and for the major publishers, online journal revenue is now higher than print revenue. Sales models are changing as well, with usage statistics becoming an increasingly important factor in negotiations between publishers and customers, because they are a good indicator of the value of the publisher’s publications.” (Wijnen, 2007, p. 5) Some magazines published their first issues online to help people to know more about those times events. Maybe not every person can go to the library and find the appropriate information. Moreover, online publishing is very convenient. Most books, journals and newspapers, which people need, could be found in the Internet. Blogging is not challenging to old media technologies; it is a new means of communication because people did not have anything similar to blogging in the past. If we take a view of television, we can say with great sureness that digital television started to replace analogue television. The revolution and transition from analogue to digital television started in 2006 and as for me, soon, all people will have digital television. Digital television is of good quality and of course, people prefer better quality. Digital television provides more channels than analogue from the same station. Using HDTV, people watch pictures in a wide screen and with better quality. I think it is a big advantage. J.P. McGovern says: “Disconnected media have the advantages of often being permanent and often unreliant on electricity, however, it is outweighed by the advantages that digital media has: searchable, transmissible, global, contextual, duplicable, transformable, sharable, etc.” (Whitney, p. 1) As for me, analogue television exists nowadays only because not everyone can buy a video tuner or television, which supports digital technologies. However, approximately in four years, the digital video will become less expensive and it will replace analogue. Progress is the process, which forces to develop and create something new, of better quality. Of course, there are different people who say that old medium will also exist but today we can see that for some older medium is hard to compete with new mediums. New mediums have many peculiarities which make them more advantageous and valuable for people. Day after day developers improve and make better such item of new mediums as video games. About ten years ago, the most luxury was to have video games, which connected to the TV. However, during ten years video games became very popular and such innovation as PSP, which is very popular among youth, reached big results. We can see that the world does not stand, it moves on and that is why new technologies will be improved and new mediums will be developed. Thus, we can say that some elements of new mediums started replacing with newer elements, for example diskette started replacing with USB flash drives. I think that in the future all people will use new mediums. Fifty years ago a computer was unbelievable machine, only some people could afford a computer. It cost a huge sum of money and it sizes was huge too. However, now most of people use different computers (PC, laptops, etc.). Approximately everyone has a computer at home and maybe not only one. Specific issues that face the new mediums As was mentioned before, most people have cell phones and access to the Internet and new mediums became an integral part of our daily life. New mediums wormed into all spheres of our life. Politics, economy, art and culture use new mediums in different ways. Once, the White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer, told the New Yorker magazine, “With the Internet, with YouTube, with TiVo, with cable TV, people are selective viewers now. . . People approach their news consumption the way they approach their iPod: You download the songs you like and listen to them when you want to listen to them.” (Cary, 2010, p. 1) It means that people can choose what to read, what to estimate. Blogs are effective in the way they spread all information both positive and negative very quickly. And sometimes some details in the magazines and newspapers are omitted. With the help of new mediums people became knowledgeable. Most politicians pay attention to people’s opinion as regards their expressions. People click “thumb up” or “thumb down” for estimating politician’s deeds or decisions. Bernhaut hosted radio program online and it brought him $500 per hour. It was the first program, which reached a global audience. It was convenient because handful radio itself received only a weak signal. “I have listeners contact me from South Africa, Israel, Europe, Australia,” he said. “The number of people who visit Charliebernhaut.com is not in the thousands yet, but it will get there.” (Kaplan, 2009, p. 1) Results In my opinion, the internet is very useful and interesting thing. And of course, every young person is “addicted” from it. The internet is not luxury as it was fifteen years ago, it is a strong necessity. New mediums become more and more popular and in time it will replace old media. All media technologies are connected through internet and messages fly very quickly from once place to another. The new mediums help us to live. Smith Wayne in his book wrote: “Blogs and online publishing are the best way to inform the public about the population, society, economy and culture of the nation. This guides the public in doing their jobs, raising their families, making purchases and in making a multitude of other decisions. Also blogs and online publishing demonstrate the relevance of the statistical agency to government and the general public. As a result, the agency can anticipate greater public support for the importance of its programs, as well as improved respondent relations and greater visibility of its products and services.” (Smith, 2005, p. 2) I completely agree with the following statement of Daniel Downes: “The Internet challenges the old media (either negatively because audiences are drawn away from the old media, or in a more positive manner as a corrective to the failures of the old mass media). New media afford the opportunity for people to correct errors and scrutinize the media—hopefully improving the overall quality of the press. This assumption is an expression of the view that the Internet is a more democratic form of communication than was the process of mass communication.” (Downes, 2012, p. 123).

References
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Basen, I. (2009). News 2.0: The Future of News in an Age of Social Media. CBC News.

Cary, M.C. (2010). 5 Ways New Media Are Changing Politics. U.S. News Weekly.

Chapman, C. (2011). A Brief History of Blogging. Retrieved from http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2011/03/a-brief-history-of-blogging/

Downes, D. (2002). What’s new about the new media landscape? Oxford University Press.
Jenkins, H. (2006). Eight Traits of the New Media Landscape. http://henryjenkins.org/2006/11/eight_traits_of_the_new_media.html

Kaplan, R. (2009). Preserving an old culture on a new medium. NJJN Features.

Kehoe, S. (2010). The Digital Media Landscape. NMRLS.

Medford, M. (2006). Why Is Digital TV Better Than Analog TV? http://mm.wrytestuff.com/swa32583.htm

Smith, W. (2005). Statistics and the media. IASE / ISI Satellite.

Whitney, D. (2009). Column: What’s the Difference Between Old and New Media? http://www.tvweek.com/news/2009/05/column_whats_the_difference_be.php

Wijnen, J.W. (2007). Journal Backfiles in Scientific Publishing. British Library.