Will the Real Bloggers Please Step Forward?

In my very, very humble opinion, the media has given blogging a pretty bad name. I TOTALLY understand educators' concerns based on the information we get from our average media resources - newspapers, TV, etc. Anymore, when people hear the word blog, they think pedofile. When that's all the information we get, what are we supposed to think - right?

Here's the good news. These scary, nasty people are not the real bloggers (or at least not ALL of them). There are still some good, interesting people in the world.

I wanted to share this "bright spot" in my day! I ran across a study (thanks to Wesley Fryer's article on the MTI2006 wiki) by Pew Internet and American Life Project titled Bloggers: A portrait of the internet's new storytellers, published on 7/19/06.

Here's a taste of what they have to say. Read the rest by clicking on the title above:

Blogging is bringing new voices to the online world.
A telephone survey of a nationally-representative sample of bloggers has found that blogging is inspiring a new group of writers and creators to share their voices with the world. Some 54% of bloggers say that they have never published their writing or media creations anywhere else; 44% say they have published elsewhere. While generally youthful, these writers otherwise represent a broad demographic spectrum of people who cite a variety of topics and motives for their blogging.
Eight percent of internet users, or about 12 million American adults, keep a blog. Thirty-nine percent of internet users, or about 57 million American adults, read blogs – a significant increase since the fall of 2005.

Just sharin' - comments?
Thanks!
Lee Anne