Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters

Scott Rosenberg

Crown Publishing Group, Jun 16, 2009 - Social Science

Blogs are everywhere. They have exposed truths and spread rumors. Made and lost fortunes. Brought couples together and torn them apart. Toppled cabinet members and sparked grassroots movements. Immediate, intimate, and influential, they have put the power of personal publishing into everyone’s hands. Regularly dismissed as trivial and ephemeral, they have proved that they are here to stay.

In Say Everything, Scott Rosenberg chronicles blogging’s unplanned rise and improbable triumph, tracing its impact on politics, business, the media, and our personal lives. He offers close-ups of innovators such as Blogger founder Evan Williams, investigative journalist Josh Marshall, exhibitionist diarist Justin Hall, software visionary Dave Winer, "mommyblogger" Heather Armstrong, and many others.

These blogging pioneers were the first to face new dilemmas that have become common in the era of Google and Facebook, and their stories offer vital insights and warnings as we navigate the future. How much of our lives should we reveal on the Web? Is anonymity a boon or a curse? Which voices can we trust? What does authenticity look like on a stage where millions are fighting for attention, yet most only write for a handful? And what happens to our culture now that everyone can say everything?

Before blogs, it was easy to believe that the Web would grow up to be a clickable TV–slick, passive, mass-market. Instead, blogging brought the Web’s native character into focus–convivial, expressive, democratic. Far from being pajama-clad loners, bloggers have become the curators of our collective experience, testing out their ideas in front of a crowd and linking people in ways that broadcasts can’t match. Blogs have created a new kind of public sphere–one in which we can think out loud together. And now that we have begun, Rosenberg writes, it is impossible to imagine us stopping.

In his first book, Dreaming in Code, Scott Rosenberg brilliantly explored the art of creating software ("the first true successor to The Soul of a New Machine," wrote James Fallows in The Atlantic). In Say Everything, Rosenberg brings the same perceptive eye to the blogosphere, capturing as no one else has the birth of a new medium.

What people are saying

Review: Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters

User Review  - Mike Everleth - Goodreads

Felt somewhat narrowly focused, but a decent overview of some of the blogging players. How does WordPress barely get a mention, though?

Review: Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters

User Review  - Martyn Lovell - Goodreads

This book is a history of blogging, and in part a defense of blogging as something valuable - an argument against its critics in the journalistic sphere. It's an easy enjoyable read. Rosenberg's ...

About the author

SCOTT ROSENBERG is an award-winning journalist who left the San Francisco Examiner in 1995 with a group of like-minded colleagues to found Salon.com, where he served first as technology editor, later as managing editor, and finally as vice president for new projects, leaving in 2007 to write Say Everything. For much of that time he wrote a blog covering the world of computers and the web, explaining complex issues in a lively voice for a non-technical readership. His coverage of the Microsoft trial, the Napster controversy, and the Internet bubble earned him a regular following. Rosenberg's writing has appeared in the New York Times, Wired, the San Francisco Examiner, and other publications. His previous books include Dreaming In Code. Visit his website at www.wordyard.com.


From the Hardcover edition.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters
• Author: Scott Rosenberg
• Publisher: Crown Publishing Group, 2009
• ISBN: 0307451380, 9780307451385
• Subjects: Computers / Internet / General; Computers / Web / Blogs; Social Science / Popular Culture