Here is an interesting article by blogger Chris Mooney on the genre. It covers the usual bases, the usual suspects, but takes an interesting few turns.
How blogging changed journalism - almost.

In the past year and a half or so, I myself have gone from occasionally distrusting blogging, to being enraptured by it, to participating in it but trying to make sure it doesn’t take over my life (a serious risk).

He then goes into a pretty decent history.

So perhaps it’s no surprise that the period produced a kind of evangelism, as bloggers celebrated the power and importance of their new medium to effect political change and shape media coverage. Even then, however, it was clear that bloggers were at their most effective in a relatively minimal capacity.

My favorite line….”bloggers are like Socrates on speed.” Blog on!

Been There Still There takes a serious look at the role blogging plays in her life.

Fake News Site
You can’t believe everything you read on line, and most of us are aware of that basic principle. A site that published fake news “from” CNN lasted a week.

Fake stories were generated the site’s visitors, who filled out a form with the story’s headline and text. After hitting a button, the site created a convincing facsimile that included CNN’s logos as well as live links and banner ads.

The stories’ URLs also appeared to originate from the CNN website, though they contained a telltale ‘@’ symbol, a common spoofing trick.

Smith said that although the fake stories looked identical to stories from CNN’s website, the content was so absurd that they resembled parodies. Most were littered with spelling mistakes and bad grammar.

“People are just very gullible,” he said.

It was started by a 16 year old and got 2 million hits in one day. This is the second time there has been a CNN ’spoof’ site.

Country Keepers nearly falls for an email eBay identity theft scam and posts a warning on his site.

Open Mouth Insert Foot
The Olympic 5,000-meter gold medalist and world 1,500 champion from Romania, Gabriela Szabo has been ordered to pay $5,000.00 after making a comment in a Playboy interview about a rival. Tacky. Someone needs to remind this athlete that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Another one bites the dust
Legendary music producer Phil Specter is out on 1 million dollars bail after being charged with the murder of 40 year old Lana Clarkson.
And Courtney Love got herself arrested at Heathrow.
And since we have ventured into moral la-la land here is the latest from Micheal Jackson, the peter pan of pop stars.

The Worlds Wackiest Police Log
Time for another edition of Arcata Eye Police Log.

6:41 a.m. Why someone lit a candle in the middle of a sidewalk in the 900 block of H Street is known only to them, maybe.

5:12 p.m. The sound of brain cells dying (which, amplified millions of times, sounds kind of like this: kweeee! kweeee!) was eclipsed by the insensate howling of an aerosol paint huffer in the 700 block of G Street.

Martin Roth has a review of Grace Awakening’s (Fred Peatross) book, A Mobile Church for E.P.I.C. times.