Hugh Hewitt's New Book: BLOG

Blog : Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World

It's Nov. 3, one day post-election, and talk-radio host Hugh Hewitt is ebullient with the GOP's victory. Broadcasting from a Southern California studio tucked into a mall behind an Asian noodle joint, the center-right conservative skips easily from topic to topic: the Bush victory, the Democrats' spectacular implosion, Osama bin Laden, the judicial nomination process. Simultaneously, Mr. Hewitt interviews guests, Googles, scans articles online, trades cues with his producer, chats with studio visitors, keeps one eye on CNN, and sips Diet Coke.



Through it all, he also blogs.

With 43,500 visitors per day, his blog, www.HughHewitt.com, has become for many a must-read stop in the new-media universe. An attorney, law professor, and evangelical Christian, Mr. Hewitt once worked as Richard Nixon's ghostwriter and served several posts in the Reagan administration. Now, he embodies the synergy between the key media developments of the '90s and the '00s: talk radio and blogging.

The radio show drives listeners to the blog. The blog raises subjects and provides information that lifts the level of talk-show discourse far above the mere trading of uninformed opinions.

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Blogs are revolutionizing journalism, politics, and American culture, but many people still don't know what they are. The word blog is a contraction for "web log," which was originally just a listing, or "log," of websites that an internet surfer has visited. Some of the earliest websites back in the early '90s were merely lists and links to other sites that visitors or someone interested in a particular topic might find interesting. Soon, though, bloggers began accompanying the lists with their comments and then the comments began to take center stage

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The blogosphere now offers soapbox space to everyone who cares about public opinion. Start-up is cheap and blogging technology is easy to master: "It is a marketplace of pure ideas," Mr. Hewitt says, "and not just a medium for the elite. It's no longer necessary to persuade anyone to be allowed to persuade anyone."