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BBC NEWS | Technology | Global voices speak through blogs:

"Ethan Zuckerman is not just the co-editor of Global Voices, he is also a passionate and prolific blogger himself.

'What blogs are doing for the first time is letting people talk about what's going in their own universe, in their own local news, and get it out to a global audience,' he says.

Inspired by these bloggers and their stories, Dr Zuckerman, set up the Global Voices website."

About time someone got positive about bloggers. I haven't even been running this blog for a year and already I can see the value of the blogosphere, not just for me but for all the bloggers out there.I id it to find out what blogging was about. Discovery learning. It's hard to imagine a world without blogging. I can't believe people are pooh-poohing them, denigrating, criticising or maligning them. Blogs represent real people in the real world. They are colourful, bright,trite, hard hitting, diverting, amusing, bemusing, challenging, off putting, stimulating, ennervating...they are a colourful tapestry in cyberspace. I've said before, I first discovered blogs because there was a Vietnam vet who put together an amazing blog trying to interpret all the stuff to do with Iraq. Without him I would have been clueless. Mainstream media at the time was too something or other to forge a real debate or get their teeth into it. Not now. Mainstream media and its journalists have put themselves right in it and out there in terms of bringing us news and information.There is no threat from bloggers because blogging can plug in very readily to the mainstream media and it can be mutual. Bloggers can pick up things journalists are trying to say and would get ignored in this rat race world and mainstream media can run blogs along side their formal pieces and get the daily snapshot response pieces. That anyone sees blogs as a threat needs to blog. As a blogger you get to see and hear an awful lot of blogs. Some make you laugh, some make you cry, some make you think, some put you right off. But it is blogging and you get a feel for it. You get bloggers block and you get blogspurts and you even get blogsperts but a blogger can interpret the blogosphere. Like the Net, like email, like mobiles, it's a part of 2005 and it's time to get jiggy with it.