Weblogging the world
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Reporter: Mick O'Donnell

The deluge of information, sound and pictures from the war has many people reeling, some turning away in horror. But for others around the world, there is never enough. Not content with switching between cable and free-to-air TV, radio broadcasts and newspaper websites, the webloggers are constantly updating themselves and each other on the very latest. Some claim the bloggers, as they are known, will one day supersede the mainstream media. Others see them as quirky parasites.

SALAM PAX: (On Internet diary) 4:30pm.

Half an hour ago the oil-filled trenches were put on fire.

MICK O'DONNELL: Somewhere in Baghdad, a young architect - he calls himself Salam Pax, as in peace - types his thoughts into the ether as the missiles rain down.

SALAM PAX: (On Internet diary) The only thing that I could think of was why does this have to happen to Baghdad.

MICK O'DONNELL: Somewhere in northern Kuwait, a tired US soldier shares his thoughts via a laptop.

US SOLDIER: (On Internet diary) For dinner we had baked chicken, mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables.

MICK O'DONNELL: Some of it banal, some more profound.

US SOLDIER: (On Internet diary) But they welcomed them as liberators, liberators with food.

MICK O'DONNELL: In northern Iraq, an American journalist working for CNN takes time out from his real job to record his personal impressions - in type, picture and voice -

KEVIN SYKES, JOURNALIST, CNN: (On Internet diary) This is Kevin Sykes in northern Iraq.

What I'm looking at right now is a long line of trucks packed with all kinds of belongings, personal belongings - Kurdish people moving north.

MICK O'DONNELL: ..until his boss tells him to stop blogging and get back to real work.

Far from the newsrooms and the studios of the mainstream media, far from the professional journalists, and scattered in lounge rooms and academics' offices around the world are the war bloggers.

They're individuals seated at their computers day and night, unpaid and devoted to keeping themselves and their fellows better informed.

Some even claim that they're superseding the big media, that they're faster and more comprehensive.

JAMES MORROW, COLUMNIST; The blogs are really kind of the front line.

They're like a new wire service of volunteer reporters and rewriters and commentators, who are all out there getting news out to other people and each other.

MICK O'DONNELL: The term 'blog' is a shortening of 'weblog' - an Internet diary connecting to other people's diaries.

From the simple, often personal weblog came the warblog, as individuals rushed to express their opinions and feelings after September 11.

JOHN QUIGGIN, ECONOMIST; It was after September 11 that the so-called 'warbloggers', mainly Americans and mainly taking a very strongly pro-war sort of line, came into prominence.

GIANNA, WRITER: The writing - the quality of writing - is just such top class.

I mean, I wouldn't even really bother reading the newspapers anymore.

MICK O'DONNELL: James Morrow is one of Australia's most prolific warbloggers.

A freelance journalist with a toddler and a busy wife vying for the computer, he spends hours scanning, commenting, updating from his Sydney terrace house.

In his weblog, the 'Daily James', Morrow delivers a neo-conservative critique of the latest - from the ABC, the American media - all of his pet hates, like the coverage of the deaths of US soldiers.

JAMES MORROW: The assumption of the mainstream media has been, "Oh, my God, they're shooting at us with real bullets.

"How could they do that?

"We dropped leaflets on them telling them not to."

And so what the bloggersphere has been existing to do in this case has been to serve as a check on that.

MICK O'DONNELL: They're the umpires of the net, blowing the whistle on media complacency.

When he's not umpiring the footy in Perth, media student Gareth Parker is having his two cents worth.

GARETH PARKER, MEDIA STUDENT: A lot of these people are wired into - locked into - cable TV and to up-to-the-minute breaking news on the Internet, and certainly, I think, we can get instant feedback from a lot of these bloggers.

MICK O'DONNELL: But the blogs are still dependent on the mainstream media they critique.

JOHN QUIGGIN: The bloggers are basically responding to those things.

They don't really have the advantage of that kind of instant immediacy that TV has.

The most critical piece of wishful thinking is the assumption that the armed forces of the US and UK, which have been bombing Iraq for the last decade, will be welcomed as liberators when they finally defeat Saddam.

MICK O'DONNELL: Another prominent Australian warblogger is John Quiggin, a left-wing economist from Queensland Uni.

JOHN QUIGGIN: You get some very good quality analysis of things on the right sort of topic.

I think what's been published in the Australian weblogs is as good, or better, as what's been published in the opinion papers of the major newspapers.

MICK O'DONNELL: Many of the neo-conservative American blogs crow when they see examples of what they think is political correctness, like US media self-censoring the religion of the black American serviceman who was arrested for allegedly throwing grenades at his fellow soldiers.

The world-favourite blog at the moment has to be that of Salam Pax, based in Baghdad.

JAMES MORROW: This is supposed to be war for the Iraqi people, so who better to tell the story of the war than an Iraqi person?

SALAM PAX: (On Internet diary) As one of the buildings I really love went up in a huge explosion, I was close to tears.

GIANNA: He is very descriptive about the situation he's in and it really - it just feels like you have a direct insight into what's actually happening on the ground.

MICK O'DONNELL: Strangely missing from the bloggersphere are many women.

One of the few is Sydney blogger Jana, a sometime-journalist who feels compelled to share her thoughts and feelings on poetry and the war.

But the most enterprising warblogger has to be Chris Allbritton, a New York freelancer, who has used his site - 'Back to Iraq' - to raise US$10,000.

He's using the money to return to northern Iraq, where he'll file independent reports to his blog.

CHRIS ALLBRITTON: (On Internet diary) And now the fear sets in.

Tomorrow will be a busy day - I'll likely not blog until Friday when I get to anchor and give an update, but I'll do what I can.

MICK O'DONNELL: Maybe Allbritton will start a trend - bloggers no longer dependent on the mainstream for their material.

Transcripts on this website are created by an independent transcription service. The ABC does not warrant the accuracy of the transcripts."