It’s full title, Dispatches from Blogistan: A travel guide for the modern blogger, gives away it’s subject without even needing to read the faint words all over the cover; folksonomy, tagging, ajax, RSS, etc.

This 248 page paperback book by Technology journalist, Suzanne Stefanac, published by New Riders is an interesting read. The back cover kicks off the questions answered inside “What is it about blogging that inspired individuals all over the world to upload more than a million blog posts a day? Why do some pundits claim blogging will kill professional journalism, while others swear it signals a salutary democratization of media? Why should anyone bother reading or publishing a blog?”.

Dispatches from Blogistan starts off with a chapter on the blog explosion, and then delves into the history of journalism, and throughout the book there are interviews with well known folks, such as Bruce Sterling, Cory Doctorow (Boing Boing), craigslist.com founder Craig Newmark and others.

We’re even given summaries of popular blogs, as well as short reviews regarding blogging tools, such as Wordpress, Movable Type and others. Interesting chapters for me were around ethics in blogging, responsible journalism, the long tail, anatomy of blogs (down to page elements) and snippets of interesting facts scattered throughout the book.

In summary, if you’re a dedicated blogger who spends most of your waking hours dreaming of posts to write, then this book is probably not for you. If you’re someone who has only just started blogging, or even someone who blogs but isn’t in the web game, it’s a very interesting book.

Even with a fair amount of experience under my belt, it was still an enjoyable book. I must admit I did tune out in some parts – a glossary of buzzwords and paragraphs of history from hundreds of years ago just didn’t appeal.

Image: Book cover, Dispatches from Blogistan.

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