As I scroll through the news today, I've come across no less, I think, than five stories on how blogs affect the news, whether they affect the news, the popularity of blogs and the news, and other blog-related bloggery.

It's really hard for me to read these stories because whenever I see these pieces, I have no idea what they're actually talking about. I think that the word 'blog' needs to be broken down into different classes of blog. Are you talking about a magazine or newspaper columnist's blog? A dedicated internet nerd? Or a 14 year old with a Livejournal account talking about why George Bush totally, like, sucks? Until we can more accurately categorize the different phyla of blogs, I'm going to continue rolling my eyes every time I see a how-blogs-affect-the-media story.