How long ago did you start blogging and why did you start blogging?

I started in 1999 as an experiment, stopped, and started again in 2001 just to see how it would go.

What make a person’s blog a good read in your mind?

Same as anything else: Some mysterious combination of topic and voice.

What is on your current blog reading list?

GlobalVoices is an important one for me because it lets me hear voices I otherwise wouldn’t hear: cyber.law.harvard.edu/globalvoices/

I do a lot of flitting and then bursts of catching up on the blogs I’ve earmarked for reading.

Why do you think Blogging is so disruptive?

Compared to the broadcast media, not only do we get to speak, but we get to speak with one another. Voice and connectedness: What could be more disruptive?

Much of the authority of institutions has come from their ability to filter information for us. Now we’re figuring out how to do that for one another. We’re getting more value from having too much information. That subverts the power base of some important institutions.

How long did it take you to build your base? And how did you build your base?

AFAIK, I don’t have a base. I just write.

Where do you see blogging in say 5 or 10 years?

It’ll be more common. It’ll be used in ways that won’t even strike people as blogging. It’ll be even more conversational – more back and forth, more spread out over webs impossible to comprehend completely.

How do you think Blog Networks will affect blogging in general?

You mean like Jason Calacanis’, et al.? There’s an indefinite amount of room in the Blogosphere. What blog networks do doesn’t affect what the rest of us do.

How do you think will blogging affect what people consider ‘Mainstream Media’ in the next 5 year?

The current professional voice of mainstream media will sound slick and phony.

There will continue to be bastions of balanced, fair, accurate reporting, but much of the MSM will be as blatantly partisan as Fox…for better or worse.

Bloggers will continue to provide the editorial function that the MSM used to claim as their own, recommending the content that we will find interesting.

I don’t know that the nightly news is going to survive the Internet.

What has changed since you started blogging?

Almost everything. We’re till typing into rectangular boxes, but otherwise it’s become a different phenomenon. And the podcasters and videobloggers aren’t even doing that rectangular typing!

Is there anything else you would like to share that I didn’t cover in this interview?

Nope.