Blog – With the arrival of the Internet, we see that everyone may be a self-professed columnist. Starting a blog is free and easy. Blogs are focused around a person or a topic, and thus well-visited blogs have a specific audience in mind.
Keep in mind that the word ‘blog’ comes from ‘web-log’ and is meant to be time sensitive. You can usually look through the archives of a blog, and they may, like columns, be newsworthy.
It helps to define blog in a very broad sense. Just as a ‘book’ is only really defined by two covers and some pages in between, so too is blog nothing more than a means of disseminating information online. The nature of blogs, just like the nature of books, can vary from genre to genre.
| How are blogs similar to these text types? | How are blogs different? | |
| Diary | Both are linear. Entries are archived. One writes about the ‘here’ and the ‘now’, to have a record for future reference. | Blogs are very public, while diaries are very private. |
| Essay | Both tend to be persuasive. A claim is supported with several illustrations. | Blogs do not have to be persuasive or academic in any way. Whereas essays are often read for school purposes, blogs try to capture a larger audience. |
| Opinion column | Both contain anecdote, newsworthiness, an appeal to a specific target audience. They have so much in common that one could argue that blogs are the new columns. | Whereas columnists usually have a readership, blogs may not be frequented regularly. They may be specific to a particular topic which is relevant to those who search for such information. |
| News report | Many good blog posts attempt to be newsworthy to some extent. In other words both readers want to know what is happening in a particular world. | News reports simply report. They do not offer opinion or reflection upon events like blogs tend to do. |
| Review | Both texts reflect on something. A journalistic review may comment on a performance, a new book or a movie. Many blogs fulfil this role as well. | A blog may have a broader scope that reviewing performances, books or movies. A blog may focus on a particular topic, such as Gothic trends, a possibly review a recent publication on this topic. |
| Journal | Journals, unlike diaries, are kept as a record of a particular topic. This is true of many blogs as well. People may blog about the UN’s Millennium Goals, for example, keeping track of successes and failures, just as a scientist might keep a journal on the behavior of a particular species. | Journals are not always public. They are kept for the sake of research. |
| Website | The term ‘website’, like ‘blog’ or ‘book’ could mean anything. Some websites are a collection of blogs, such as Wired.com, where blog entries are a bit like magazine articles. | Because websites can be so diverse, not all contain blogs. Think of online stores for example. Many websites are like brochures online. |
| Press release | In the ‘olden days’, a large corporation would send the media a ‘press release’, which they could then edit or insert into a news item or radio broadcast. These days, corporations (both large and small) can speak directly to a large public by posting news announcements on their website/blog. | Press releases are very much ‘for your information’ (FYI). Blogs tend to reflect, comment on or persuade. |
| Tweet | One could say that tweets are mini-blogs. Both are streams of information. In fact many tweets link to blog posts. | Blogs tend to be longer than 140 characters. They offer more depth and breadth. |
Examples of blogs
If it were done, when 'tis done 