Book Review: 'Blog' by Hugh Hewitt

Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World is one of the first books written about the blogosphere, which is inherently ironic -- something akin to carving a stone tablet about the printing press. Anyway, I had planned to read Hewitt's book for months and it finally fell into my hands yesterday.

I was disappointed. It could have been turned out much better if Hugh Hewitt hadn't made some critical mistakes:

1. Imbalanced. Hewitt mentions the Left end of the blogosphere, but largely in passing. If a person unfamiliar with the blogosphere read this book, he would get the impression that it was a predominantly conservative operation. With Daily Kos resting at the top of the ecosystem along with many other like-minded lefties such as Atrios and Smirking Chimp, to give short-shrift to the presense of the Left in the blogosphere is greatly misleading.

2. Misdirected. Hewitt is clearly marketing this book toward business executives, suggesting that every company should have a blog and that contract bloggers direct their image in the blogosphere. Pardon? Exactly how are executives in, let's say, Target or Shell Oil going to benefit from reading Glenn Reynolds or Charles Johnson? Blogs are wonderful, but Hewitt is asserting that blogs can do everything -- market your image, fix a flat tire, cook you dinner, etc. Well, maybe not the last two. But Hewitt does not provide a rational argument that blogging should be a major theme of activity for every organization.

Blogs are outstanding communication tools for fields that constantly change and are subject to opinion. I can think of three: politics, sports, and popular technology. Your image matters if you want to be competitive in these fields, but I don't think that anyone actually examines what the blogosphere thinks before heading off to Bed, Bath, and Beyond (unless it suffers a public relations catastrophe.

That being said, I agree that every major politician, such as a Senator or a Governor, should employ an in-house blogger to keep a finger on the pulse of the blogosphere. That would enable that politician to react to changes in events more rapidly than depending on the slow MSM.

3. Imbalanced. I'm mentioning this again because the slant is so striking. Like Hewitt, I mostly read blogs on the Right end of the blogosphere, with occasional trips into the Left. But that doesn't excuse ignoring the Left, or imaging that what is passed around in Kos or Atrios doesn't matter -- and that is clearly what Hewitt is implying.

Grade: C+