Net Playing Growing Role in Elections

We're barely a week into 2003 and already I can safely declare this the Year of the Blog & Vlog. Mainstream behemoth America Online has plans to offer its teeming masses the ability to blog to their hearts' desire. The British are agog over a daily weblog that will run Samuel Pepys' saucy diary from 1660 onward in real time for about 10 years. And insiders like Rafat Ali of PaidContent.org are dreaming of old-school media companies buying up the best weblogs, business models be damned ("it could be a savvy PR move," he offers).
· Blogs Go Highbrow and Lowbrow [OJR]

InstaPundit

In Washington, just about everyone wants to be a pundit, the wise and respected quotable somebody who keeps popping up in newspapers and on television.
In this effete world of the opinion-makers, buzz is important. Buzz -- word-of-mouth among the power elite, often occurring at cocktail and dinner parties -- has anointed a number of men and women. These "talking heads" seem to become part of the wallpaper, they show up so often in publications and on the insatiable 24-hour cable news.
Currently in Washington, there is very good buzz about a talking head who doesn't live anywhere near Washington. And, for that matter, he doesn't actually talk. He types. In fact, a lot of people don't even know his name.
He is simply called InstaPundit. InstaPundit is Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a 42-year-old law professor at the University of Tennessee who lives and works in Knoxville.
· The famed InstaPundit is blogger from Tennessee
[Chicago Tribune]

Some people are looking for people to say bad things about bloggers. I guess we've been picking on exclusive boys clubs, Carrtels, and the loud lefties and righties who are rudest to the secretaries and copy-room people too much!
But there are no secrets in the blogosphere. Heh.
· Pundits [Fiachra via InstaPundit]