Greetings faithful readers. As I ring in a new year I thought I would take a moment to, much like our re-elected commander in chief will do soon no doubt, give you a bit of a state-of-the-blog address.
This past year has indeed been quite a year for blogging in general, in fact Time named "bloggers" the people of the year. In addition, The Economist noted recently that the actions of bloggers contributed resignation of CBS anchorman Dan Rather after rather erroneously claimed to have information about President George W. Bush's questionable admission to the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War. As The Economist points out, the rise of the internet sources such as Drudge Report and more basic sites such as blogs is not really an end of liberal media or conservative media, but rather an end of orthodox media in general. In the past the information industry- be it print or T.V.- was essentially dominated by oligopolies as a result of the cost prohibitive start up costs involved in starting one. As a result of the internet times have changed. This site costs less than $4.oo per month and is relatively basic, but it gets the job done. A more elaborate site could be established for the princely fee of $50 with a hosting fee of $10 a month- hell- you could even hire a consultant like Hugh McLeod from Gaping Void to help you try to drum up readership and even then you would be considering costs utterly crumblike and miniscule compared to a local newpaper, let alone CBS.
So how does this all relate to Sanity Hearing? As of right now I am not breaking any secret news stories about Dick Cheney's secret love trysts with Cher nor do I have snap shots of Tara Reid's botched boob implant scars; however, I would like to think that I am at least creating something. I think, as Hugh McLeod has pointed out, the internet in a lot of ways is about conversations. When I started law school I read a bunch of websites by law students, especially Mixtape Marathon, as well as some other sites like RLUG that complimented the questions and conversations I had with my real life friends every day. I think we increasingly live in a surreal kind of world where our contact with other human beings, our friends, and our families is extremely limited. The internet in many ways is a rebellion against the Orwellian environment we would fall into if we were left only with traditional media and the papers in front of us at our respective cubicles/offices/study rooms.
I hope all of you are enjoying the site. The statistics seem to indicate that you do:
| Total number of hits: | 5200 |
| Average per day: | 36.36 |
| Today: | 80 |
| In the last hour: | 1 |
| This week: | 171 |
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