Blogs and Pamphlets

In a somewhat bizarre echo of Tim Rutten’s June 23, 2002 piece in the Los Angeles Times, Emily Eakin of the New York Times (where they also require registration) writes:

It seems Orwell may have been underestimating contemporary society. If he had lived to surf the Internet, for example, he might have been cheered to discover a flourishing new breed of pamphleteer: the blogger. Like its ink-and-paper antecedent, blogging is quick and cheap. Anyone with access to a Web site can post a weblog (or blog) linking readers to other online sources and promoting all manner of original opinion—serious, scurrilous, seditious and otherwise.

I can’t link to Rutten’s piece, since it’s moved to the pay-for-use archives of the Los Angeles Times but you can read about it here and here. What’s odd, is that Eakin, had she done any research at all on blogs and blogging, must have seen either Rutten’s piece or a blog that linked and discussed it, yet there is no mention of Rutten’s piece. Others have noticed this oddity as well. It’s not a terribly cohesive piece—I’m not at all clear what her thesis is, for instance. Best just go read it for yourself.