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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Tuesday, April 1, 2003

Web journals convey 'raw stuff' of Iraq conflict

By Janet Kornblum
USA Today

He called himself Salam Pax and said he was a 29-year-old architect living in Baghdad. Nobody knew his true name; some wondered if he was a real person. But thousands read his Web log on the Internet — until it ceased to be updated more than a week ago.

"Last night was very quiet in Baghdad," he wrote on the third day of coalition strikes as bombers approached. "The streets are empty, only bakeries are open and some grocery shops charging four times the normal prices."

And later: "On BBC we are watching scenes of Iraqis surrendering. My youngest cousin was muttering 'what shame' to himself. Yes, it is better for them to do that, but still, seeing them carrying that white flag makes something deep inside you cringe."

Readers kept coming back to Pax because, after following his journal (dear_raed.blogspot.com), they had come to care about him.

Pax is one of a number of self-styled chroniclers who keep Web logs — known on the Net as blogs. A blog can be written by one person or many, but the common denominator is their diary style, and the fact that when they're updated (sometimes several times a day) the newest entries appear at the top. This gives blogs a feeling of being both personal and immediate.

It is impossible to say precisely how many active blogs are on the Net, but it's probably hundreds of thousands, says Michael Gartenberg, research director with Jupiter Research in New York.

Born in the geeky corners of the Internet in the late '90s, blogs are coming of age, becoming an integral part of the Internet landscape. That is especially true now, during wartime.

"Reporters have an unparalleled ability to gather information," but blogs have the ability to convey unedited, raw personal drama as the war unfolds, says Diane, a New York blogger (gotham.realwomenonline.com) who has developed an e-mail friendship with Pax and is convinced he's real. (Like many bloggers, she does not use her full name.)

"Nothing really beats this raw stuff of life: What does bread cost? Where did you go to get it?" says Diane, who supports the war.

"When the whole (war) thing started, it was like fireworks far away," she says. But Pax's blog has changed her perspective. "It's strange to be in favor of a bombing campaign that could kill this guy."

Personal stories are only part of the blogosphere, as some call the universe of Web logs.

Sites such as www.warblogs.cc compile headlines from mainstream sources and blogs, pointing people to stories from sources such as CNN and the New York Times to Turkish newspaper Hurriyet and KurdishMedia.com.

Warblogging.com, which posts links to news and commentary, reports that it was getting up to 6,000 visitors a day before the war. But when war began, it says, the site was registering tens of thousands of visitors, including some from the U.S. House of Representatives, the Department of Defense, the British House of Commons and the government of Syria.

"Most of the news I've read about the war has been from blog links," says Nikolai Nolan, a University of Michigan sophomore and founder of the Bloggies, an annual Web log awards program.

He says he has found a popular community blog, www.metafilter.com, useful. "I get the news from whatever's linked, and I get opinions on it from the MetaFilter comments."

Others are turning to blogs kept by war correspondents, such as CNN correspondent Kevin Sites and several BBC reporters.

War correspondent blogs add "a new wrinkle," says Rebecca Blood, who, along with keeping her own Web log, is author of "The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog," which discusses the appeal of blogs and offers advice.

"The news media is picking up on what the Web loggers are saying and vice versa," said Paul Grabowicz, a journalism instructor at the University of California-Berkeley who taught a blogging course in the fall. "It's giving people a way to, in effect, publish their own news."