Nothing new under the Web. (Beat the press: the hand that rules the press ... rules the country--Judged Learned Hand).(blogging, also known as web journals)

Opinions are like Dershowitzes (my term for a portion of the human posterior not printable in magazines of this caliber ... you get the point): Everyone has one.

Just because a person has something to say doesn't mean it's worth hearing. But don't tell this to the bloggers, of whom you've probably heard by now. Indeed, considering their growing numbers you'll probably be one yourself by the time this column is published.

Just in case you still don't know what a blogger is, here's the quick tutorial: A blogger is someone who runs a Web log. What's a Web log? Just another word for a World Wide Web page that is updated a lot. Blogs are lone-wolf sites that report and dissect the day's news as the author or authors see fit. The form and content vary wildly. There are fascist blogs, gay blogs, Star Trek blogs, Catholic blogs, science blogs, and blogs for every flavor of conservative and liberal. New blogs are reportedly created at the rate of 40,000 per month. There are between half a million and one million blogs out there, depending on how you count.

The only thing growing faster than blogs is the hype over blogs. Bloggers talk about an ever-expanding "blogosphere" which will transform the way ideas and news are disseminated and consumed. Because a lot of journalists and academics spend a scandalously large fraction of their time surfing the Internet, and because bloggers tend to inflate the importance of established journalists--even when they are criticizing them--the mainstream media has largely fallen for the story. Newsweek, for example, recently asked "Will the Blogs Kill Old Media?"

The answer, of course, is no.

First, blogs are nothing new. The number of bloggers has grown because of new software that makes it easier for people to post their opinions on the Internet. Yet millions of people had their own personal Web pages before this software came along. Matt Drudge, the only person to get rich off of blogging as far as I know, was an ur-blogger.

Bloggers admit this all the time but they miss what it means for them. Doc Searls, a "well-known blogger" ...