One more way to communicate: blogging, a form of online journal. Blogcount, a Web site that tracks what it calls the "blogosphere," estimated there were nearly 3 million active Web logs in June 2003.

I'm not an expert on blogging, but I am a fan. As a regular visitor to a dozen or so news and opinion blogs, I'm riveted by the implications for my profession. Bloggers are making life interesting for reluctant mainstreamers like myself and for the public, whose access to information until now has been relatively controlled by traditional media.

I say "reluctant mainstreamer" because what I once loved about journalism went missing some time ago and seems to have resurfaced as the driving force of the blogosphere: a high-spirited, irreverent, swashbuckling, lances-to-the-ready assault on the status quo. While mainstream journalists are tucked inside their newsroom cubicles deciphering management's latest "tidy desk" memo, bloggers are building bonfires and handing out virtual leaflets along America's Information Highway.

The Council on American Islamic Relations had a poll on its website earlier this week. The query put to viewers was whether or not Ariel Sharon should be tried from war crimes. As you can imagine, the folks at CAIR regard this as an open and shut question.

On Monday night at 10:48 P.M., Glenn Reynolds noted the poll on his blog, Instapundit. He linked to the CAIR site and noted that 513 votes had been collected and that the numbers were running against the Israeli PM—94 percent of the respondents wanted him tried for war crimes.

And then the power of the blogosphere kicked in. By 6:50 A.M. on Tuesday, 11,951 votes had registered on CAIR's poll. And now 94 percent of the votes were against trying Sharon for war crimes.