The good folk at online consultancy Commoncraft have created the following neat explanation of blogging as part of their plain English video series:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN2I1pWXjXI]

Aside from being a useful explanatory tool for bloggers, the video distils some interesting ideas about how blogging content works as news, as hyper-local, niche publishing platforms.

While the video goes on to emphasise the importance of reader interaction and relationships with other blogs, it continues to compare the platform to news: blog posts are ‘individual news stories like articles in the paper’ and make the news ‘a two-way street’.

Encapsulating the ideal that blogs can democraticise the news, the video says:“As blogs became popular they created millions of news sources that gave everyone an audience for their own version of news. Of course, we’re using the word news loosely, but really isn’t everything news to someone?”