Blog: A prank or a career trip?

Many people think that blogs can replace mainstream media, but most bloggers consider blogging to be a hobby rather than a serious career.

According to the latest report of Pew Internet & American Life Project (PIALP), about 77% of blog authors claim that they write articles to express their feelings and thoughts, not to "pay attention or earn additional income".

37% of bloggers say life and experience are the main topics on their blogs. However, politics and government are also a second concern when accounting for 11% of the blogs.

Surprisingly, entertainment was only modest in third place, with 7%, followed by sports (6%) and current news (5%).

Source: Reuters According to statistics, there are currently about 8% of the population using the Internet in the US, equivalent to 12 million people who are blogging. Blog readers are much larger, nearly 5 times (approximately 39%).

However, the majority of the blog's public is young. There are more than half bloggers, 54%, under the age of 30.

Blog or Newspaper?

According to PIALP, most blogs only use the "storytelling and narrative" method, but not the proper journalistic style.

34% of respondents considered blogging to be a new form of journalism, while the number of people opposed to this idea was overwhelming (65%). Only one-third of bloggers say they regularly conduct press activities such as data validation and links to other reliable sources.

There is a lot of evidence that bloggers' activities are mostly improvised: More than 40% claim they never cite the source or the mainstream media directly.

Only 11% have corrected false information and 61% have revealed that they have rarely or never been allowed to use copyrighted materials.

The number of images and audio file links used in the blog, though, is very rich. Up to 72% of bloggers regularly post pictures on their posts. In many cases, blogs are rated as "speedy", more diversified and updated than mainstream media.

55% of bloggers often use pseudonyms when posting. Nine out of 10 bloggers encourage readers to comment.

PIALP predicts that blogs will continue to be hot fields in the near future. Up to 82% of bloggers claim they will continue blogging for at least another year. Only 3% said they would abandon a lot of fun to play this time.

Thien Y