They cover every subject you could imagine, and a few subjects you probably couldn't. Their numbers are said to double about every six months. At the same time they were being belittled by the media as not worth noticing, they helped bring down a media titan.
Wherever you go these days, from political conventions to the Olympics to the local Starbucks, they're a force to be reckoned with. In short, they're everywhere—and multiplying fast.
I'm talking, of course, about Web logs, or "blogs" for short. Now as you may know, blog is a term that can be defined in more than one way. In some cases, it's an online journal written by one person; in others, it's a running commentary on current events compiled by a group of people. Blogs can be powerful forces—just ask Dan Rather, whose use of forged documents dealing with President Bush's National Guard service was first exposed by bloggers. And of course, there are blogs out there from every conceivable perspective.