Monday, June 26, 2006
Continuing the world's first blog . . .
Posted by Harold Henderson on Mon, Jun 26, 2006 at 11:49 AM
Wikipedia says that blogs combine "text, images, and links." By that standard, the Reader has had one since August 16, 1985, when the ink for "The City File" first hit the back pages of the paper. (Check out an image of that column below.)
Of course, back then we had neither the word "blog" nor hyperlink technology. "Google" was just a way to misspell a very large number, and any reader who questioned the information in an item had to make phone calls and/or visit a public library. But a bloggy substance was already there in that first column--short snips that referred to original sources and occasionally provoked conversation.
In that first blog entry I noted that local entrepreneurs had to find venture capital in Minneapolis; today Marshall Field's is set to become Macy's, dancing to a tune played at regional headquarters in--Minneapolis. Other items back then chronicled drug-war insanity and racism in schools and public housing, and one quoted now-famous new urbanist Peter Calthorpe's case that city dwellers are doing the environment a favor just by . . . being city dwellers.
The medium has changed, but the stroboscopic alternation of insight and idiocy goes on.
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I see the ever truculent and tendentious Henderson has been given free reign to assualt your readers with with twice-daily left wing fulminations. Real men don't blog. Teenage girls do. Woosies blog. Real mean watch Fox News.
Not to rain on anyone's parade, but my pick for the world's first blogger is Walter Benjamin. Although, given that the Arcades Project never made it out of beta, perhaps HH can still claim the title.
Nonetheless: what does exist of the Arcades Project is some great high-class bathroom reading
And not to be a Philistine, but Reader's Digest started publication in 1922, eleven years before Benjamin came to Paris.
well, and the fact that by definition a blog is a WEBlog, it would seem the people fighting for the title of "world's first blogger" would have to be people who have actually turned their thoughts/links into something that is on the internet.
Seems like you guys saw my posting on Eric Zorn's blog re Richard Roeper. http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2006/06/_shameless_tabl.html Here it is for those too lazy to click: Personally I always hated Roeper's item columns -- they seemed like he didn't have strong enough material to make a whole colum, so he'd string together a little bit of this & a little bit of that. Harold Henderson's "City File" in the Chicago Reader was the most sophisticated item column in town, and it resembled the sensibility of the best bloggers by lifting material from various sources -- in other words, it wasn't just about him. Of course, "City File" ran back when the Reader was sophisticated . . . and good. That was pre-9/11, before the world changed. Gee, I'm only 34, and already I sound like an old goat. Posted by: william sanchis | Jun 14, 2006 1:31:56 PM
But I did love "City File," Harold. If this is the only way old Reader fans can get it, we'll take it.
umm, I love City File, but if we go with the wikipedia standards Harold has listed (which are cut so as to not include being on the Web as a qualifier), then any enclyclopedia article qualifies. encyclopedias, btw, deserve some credit for the "hyperlink" concept anyway, as at the end of an article they always provided article titles of related interest. Wikipedia says that blogs combine "text, images, and links." By that standard, the Reader has had one since August 16, 1985, when the ink for "The City File" first hit the back pages of the paper.
It might be that Dale Debber was the first blogger. Here is his profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/debber
Bee products http://beelead.com
Gas http://gasprice.host.sk/map.html Gas gas prices
I have no idea what you're talking about. The world's first full-service blog is on full display, with daily updates, right here: http://worldsfirstblogger.wordpress.com/
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