There’s a lot of good stuff in this article about American culture and how it’s evolved, but I’m just quoting the insightful remark about blogging. I highly recommend the whole article. It’s long but easy to read because it’s so well written.

Link: Commentary – Culture in the Age of Blogging by Terry Teachout

As has often been remarked, blogging is an amateur culture in the exact sense of the word. Even those bloggers who are artistic or intellectual professionals of one kind or another are motivated chiefly by love of the things they write about. And whereas journalism in America has come to be regarded as a “profession” open only to trained, credentialed specialists, life in the blogosphere more closely resembles the European notion of journalism as a skill that can be practiced by anyone who knows how to write and has something to say.