I think I should use this post to provide some concrete examples and links to things that I mentioned in class today; if I forget something and you want to hear more about it, just say so in the comments, and I'll edit as necessary.

First, here is the TruthLaidBear blog ecosystem, with rankings by links. If you look at the box on the righthand side of the page, you can click and see the rankings via visitor traffic.

Second, here is a Washington Post article on blogger involvement with the takedown of CBS news anchor Dan Rather back in 2005. In short, Dan Rather and CBS presented documents about President Bush's military service record, and one blogger pointed out features that suggested the documents were forged. This sparked more research by other bloggers, who went looking on the Internet for experts on 1970s typewriters (on which the documents had supposedly been typed). In the end, the bloggers were right, and CBS and Dan Rather lost some credibility. And after this incident, bloggers were more successful in lobbying for rights accorded to more "traditional" journalists; and earlier this month, two bloggers were given media seats at the Libby trial.

One of the other major factors contributing to a rise in blogger credibility is the value of bloggers in emergency situations, most recently, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. In contrast to what we talked about this afternoon (the possibility of websites designed to look much more sophisticated than they really are), in national disasters, I would argue that established corporate news sources lose credibility, and while people who are writing from the inside of the situation gain it. Despite the fact that emergency situations often entail a loss of electricity, people in New Orleans were surprisingly resourceful about posting updates based on what they saw happening around them. And these were supplemented later on by aid workers who came in and then blogged their experiences each night after returning to places with power.

I also mentioned the academic blogging controversy. The two articles by Ivan Tribble aren't available for linkage, but you can access them online through the UW Libraries -- just search for "chronicle of higher ed," make sure your off-campus access is turned on, and then search the chronicle homepage for "tribble." You'll pull up Tribble's original article, "Bloggers Need Not Apply," as well as a couple of responses to it, and then his response, two months later. I particularly recommend the response by Rebecca Anne Goetz, who at the time, was finishing a dissertation in History at Harvard.

You can find many more responses, too -- just google "ivan tribble."

Finally (at least for tonight), it would be silly of me not to mention Second Life, which appears to be part of the vanguard of internet technology. And in many ways, it seems like it achieves the idealized, democratized, intelligibly organized medium that Landow is in search of. But oddly enough, it does this by blending technology and naturalism -- it tries to circumvent reader disorientation by putting information in the form of the everyday world. Does it work? Is Second Life the ultimate hypertext, and does it circumvent the problem of the rhizome by making it look familiar?

Well, I don't know. I don't even have a Second Life account, nor do I plan to get one. But if you want to read more about what other people think, then this page has stories of Second Life in the news.

I may manage to say more tomorrow; for tonight, I'm done.