By Jeff Jarvis

Since their beginning, I have read weblogs and followed their fortunes (having arranged my company’s investment in Pyra, the creator of the weblog tool Blogger). But it was only after I survived and reported on the attacks on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, that I had reason to start my own weblog. For it was only then that I had something to say.

And it was only after I started that personal weblog – at BuzzMachine.com – that I came to understand how to make weblogs work alongside a Web news operation and came to appreciate their potential to unlock a treasure of audience content.

We believe strongly in audience content. At Advance.net, the online arm of Advance Publications, where I oversee online content, our newspaper-affiliated sites have built themselves into market leaders on the strength of audience content (née interactivity, née community). Our local forums are rich with news and fresh voices from the audience.

Weblogs are a higher form of audience content. That’s because their proprietors put their names, voices, and pride behind them. And the links among them assure that the cream – the best, the most popular, the most provocative – rise above the rest. And those links also make them interactive. Weblogs are a conversation.

Those are all reasons behind the explosive popularity of weblogs. But there’s another reason: Weblogs are easy. They are the product of history’s simplest and cheapest publishing tool tied to history’s best distribution network, the Internet. Thanks to weblogs, anyone can now publish to everyone.

Yes, weblogs – like home pages before them – can be about the trivial, about your neighbor’s cat (though no one has to see that, for in this world, it’s not content until it’s linked).

But weblogs can also change the world. Witness the extraordinary story of weblogs in Iran, where one expatriate Iranian blogger, Hossein Derakhshan at Hoder.com, explained how to blog in Persian and started an online revolution that has allowed an estimated 20,000 Iranians inside and outside of Iran to tell their stories (many in English). This has so unnerved Iran’s mullahs that they’ve often blocked Blogger and they arrested one popular weblogger, Sina Motallebi, to set an example. But they forgot that his fellow bloggers now have the power to tell his story to the world.

Weblogs report news in Iran and they give us a perspective that no reporter could. During this summer’s unrest there, I was captivated by weblogs written by students who witnessed the violence, by expatriate political observers, and by an eloquent 15-year-old Iranian-American girl (at BlueBirdEscape.com) who gave us a diary of her return to her homeland (“I come from a country without freedom. That's why I know what freedom actually is”). Not only did I read these weblogs – learning more about Iran today from them than from news media – I also linked to them and that led to online conversations that built personal bridges to this previously alien nation. Weblogs are revolutionary.

Now I don’t intend to engage in a debate about whether webloggers will replace reporters; that’s at least as tedious as a J-school seminar on objectivity. Simply put, most webloggers do not and cannot afford to report; they depend on the news gathered by professional reporters who have the time, training, and resources and who – most recently in Afghanistan and Iraq – have risked their lives to bring stories home.

But there’s no doubting that weblogs will – and should – have a profound impact on the news business.

First, reporters and editors should be reading weblogs. It’s a tremendous way to find stories. It’s an even better way to find out what our audience is talking about and what they really care about – and that’s often not what is on our front pages. The proof: Compare your lead stories with the stories getting bloggers’ links, as compiled at Technorati.com or Blogdex.net.

I see smart reporters reading weblogs. The New York Post’s Page Six often quotes popular New York gossip blog Gawker.com because they’re smart enough to see Gawker as a source and not just as new competition. Webloggers are also being given credit for at least keeping up the pressure that helped bring down Majority Leader Trent Lott (thanks mainly to Josh Micah Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo.com). Bloggers are influencers.

Should reporters, columnists, and editors write weblogs? Some should – if they have something to say.

At Advance.net, we created our own weblogs with staff and outside contributors (a comedian, a college student, a radio host) – and my experience blogging helped me coach our bloggers. In no time, weblogging stimulated creativity throughout the organization. We have well-written weblogs by our editors (see MassLive.com/weblogs). At Cleveland.com, we’re host to a weblog by an Indians player. At NJ.com, we’re blogging the beach. At Nola.com, we’re using the tool to update police reports easily and quickly.

The tools are only going to get better and easier and grow more widespread. AOL will offer blogging to its gigantic audience; About.com just remade itself into a blogging consortium; blogging tools are adding all kinds of new functionality:

On AOL blogs, you’ll be able to blog directly from Instant Messenger (publishing has never been faster).

Via Audblog.com, you can blog audio from your phone (so anyone can now broadcast immediate news or sports reports).

There are a number of superb photo blogs online today. And it’s now possible to feed a photo blog from the new combination camera/mobile phones. (Mark my words: Any day now, a newspaper will publish a Page One photo taken by a witness to news that came from such a camera and such a weblog.)

And it’s even possible to inexpensively and easily create video reports and commentaries (weblogs being primarily commentaries and video just being a multimedia extension of them). I bought an $80 camera and $99 software called Visual Communicator, which puts a TelePrompTer on my laptop screen (meaning I can now have something to say, rather than just staring dumbly at the camera) and allows me to drag and drop graphics and video inserts to cues on my script (meaning I don’t need post-production tools or skills). For the good of the art, I humiliated myself and talked about 9/11 and the planned memorial, fast food, and news in a series of video weblogs (or, as is our want in this Blogosphere, we coined an aurally displeasing name for them: “vlogs”). At OregonLive.com, these tools permitted a college student to create a video report from the state cheerleading championships.

So now a print columnist can create video commentary; she can be the Web’s Andy Rooney (or, I hope, aim higher). But far more important, a member of the audience can create video commentary and broadcast it to the world.

And so now this amazing medium that finally gives the audience a voice also gives it a face.

Jeff Jarvis – an avid personal weblogger at BuzzMachine.com – is president & creative director of Advance.net. He was creator and founding editor of Entertainment Weekly; TV critic for TV Guide and People; Sunday editor and associate publisher of the New York Daily News; a columnist on the San Francisco Examiner; and a reporter and editor on the Chicago Tribune.