Last week, I made a presentation to a writer's group about blogs: their immediacy, their impact, and the pleasures of a space on the web where writers like me can post brief essays about any topics of interest at any time.
I doubt there were any skeptics in the audience after my presentation, based on all the positive feedback I've received. If there were, today's Chicago Tribune rather proves my point about the efficacy of blogs.
On Page One in the Sunday Tribune there's an article by Evan Osnos, a Tribune foreign correspondent :
"Chinese blogger's crusade has Starbucks feeling heat"
The blogger, Rui Chenggang, a television anchorman, believes Starbucks should withdraw it's shop from the 600-year-old majestic palace complex in the Forbidden City as a sign of cultural respect.
As a result of the blogger's campaign, palace authorities are weighing the issue, and thousands of Internet users are visitings Rui's blog. China has 20 million bloggers and 137 million web users, according to the article, which states: "With few other ways to protest within China, consumers see the web as a raucous town square."
News of this blogger's efforts have spread to CNN, MSNBC, Yahoo.com News, Technorati - the blog search engine, and probably Starbucks headquarters too.
I'm unable to link to Chenggang''s blog for you, because it's written in Chinese. Our insular American web browsers generally can't display Chinese characters, but you can find out more by looking up his name at technorati.com or google.com.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Hi. I've been visiting blogs of members of the Chicago Writers Association. Saw your post on Chinese characters which reminded me of the first time I saw someone typing Hebrew into their computer. As expected the cursor moved right to left!
Post a Comment