ABC News has named bloggers "People of the Year." We're all honored, I'm sure, but less so than we would have been if Time Magazine had given us the nod.
Nonetheless, such honors tend to remind me of the inaccuracies that are epidemic in coverage of the blogsphere. Blogging is hardly a new phenomenon. It dates back to the earliest days of the Web, and its first successful manifestation was at About.com.
I was a producer, and later an executive, at About back in the boom years. We had hundreds of "guides" -- an early version of the citizen journalists that populate the blog world -- running hundreds of sites that featured brief articles and links to other sites.
I oversaw two collections of sites in my time there -- the Money team, which covered personal finance, real estate, careers, etc.; and the Industry team, which ran trade-magazine style sites covering purchasing, composite materials, insurance and a few dozen other areas of B2B journalism.
But Jonathan Dube is one of the few in the blogging world to give About its due.
