The Internet pioneer Bob Kahn used to joke about how the Web was growing so fast that eventually every atom in the universe would have its own site.
The world is different now. Forget websites; at the rate things are going, it won't be long before every atom in the universe has its own blog.
For those unfamiliar with the term, a blog, or weblog, is an online diary or journal. It can be as modest as a weekly rumination on cats for ailurophiles, or as weighty as a daily dissertation on foreign policy. There are now 10 million blogs, or maybe 35 million; no one is sure, because many get established (and perhaps rapidly abandoned) by users of free hosting services like Google Inc.'s Blogger that don't disclose figures.
And here I have a disclosure to make.
I am a blogger.
As of today, my blog will appear online at www.latimes.com/goldenstateblog.
Starting with this piece, my Monday and Thursday Golden State columns will be posted on the blog simultaneously with their publication in the Los Angeles Times. But Golden State the blog won't be merely Golden State the column in a new format.
Blogs differ fundamentally from newspaper work. Parcels of personal online real estate, they reflect the tastes, interests and styles of their proprietors more than do even newspaper opinion columns, which represent a compromise between the columnist and the mandates and standards of the newspaper. Golden State the blog will offer my thoughts and findings on a wide range of topics, many outside the portfolio of the column. These thoughts will be subjected to my audience's praise, endorsement, patronization, or ridicule as they wish: We encourage readers to post their own comments publicly on the site.
This is a multifaceted experiment. First, it's a test of whether I can balance a schedule of twice-weekly columns with the daily demands of a blog and the rest of my normal life without melting down.
It's also an attempt to figure out how the sponsorship of blogging by the corporate media should work. Can a company that derives economic value from its reputation for literacy, judiciousness and taste comfortably lend its imprimatur to an unfiltered online diary? Blogs are by nature almost impossible to censor. Where, and how, will the lines that were once well-understood be drawn now?
