A spectre is haunting the world of newspapers — the spectre of the blogosphere. There are currently more than 100 million weblogs or ‘blogs’ worldwide, about 15 percent of which are believed to be active. Most are produced by zealous amateurs who analyse traditional reportage by linking to online news items and supplying short, usually provocative comments. Publication costs are essentially zero, providing you have a computer with an Internet connection, after that only political sensitivities – particularly those in China, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Syria – need to be considered. Luckily, if you annoy the government enough for them to imprison you, there are also blogs that will tirelessly petition for your release, as has happened with Fouad Al-Farhan, the “father of Saudi blogging”, who was arrested last year.
