Government to monitor blogs

Evidence that blogging is becoming more and important in the media comes with the news that the government's media monitoring unit is to include blogs in its summray of government coverage in the media.

According to the FT

The blog project was in part prompted by departments’ concerns at being caught unawares by debates spread on the web.
It reflects the growing media profile of the format and the fact some individual bloggers are moving from niche self-publishers to establishment opinion-formers.

Let's hope this isn't the start of any intervention and anyway the paper is fairly dismissive of blogging

The vast majority of blogs in the UK and the US are abandoned after a relatively short period of time or read by only a handful of friends or contacts.