Is Blogging a Fad?

Arnold Kling proposes a very simple and interesting model of how blogging disseminates information. Distinguishing between fads and trends he concludes that blogging is a trend. That is, it offers improvements over currently existing technologies for sharing information and therefore we can expect it to be around for a long time.

He makes a prediction that Corporations may one day require employees to keep blogs as a means for internal communication. I think that makes a lot of sense.

One of the things he emphasizes (and I have seen emphasized by others) is blogging's eventual application towards local politics:

My prediction is that in niches where the ratio of information value to
entertainment value is high, blogs will prove to be superior mechanism for
disseminating news. For example, local politics tends to have lower
entertainment value than national politics. To me, that implies that at some
point we will start to see elections for school board or city council influenced
more by coverage in blogs than by coverage in newspapers.

But ask yourself: when is the last time I read a blog focusing on
local politics? Personally the blogs I enjoy have no geographic
focus. Blogs that do focus on local politics, in my experience, seem to be
of inferior quality.

I would like to amend Kling's model. Suppose the goal of each blogger is to maximize the number of readers who visit her site. To do this the author needs to update the site frequenty, write well, add value in the form on new information or ideas, and have that information be of interest to a broad group of people. Focusing on local politics is clearly not the optimal strategy for the audience seeking blogger.

Gas War

Russia Halts Natural Gas Sales to Ukraine

On Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Ukraine could continue
paying the old price of $50 per 1,000 cubic meters for the first quarter of
2006, but only if Ukraine agreed by the end of the day to start paying the new
price of $230 in the second quarter.

Gazprom has said the price increase is necessary to conform to world gas
price levels.

Ukraine has not objected to a market price but wants the increase to be
phased in. Yushchenko said late Friday that the most his country could pay now
is $80 per 1,000 cubic meters.

My question is how did the current price regime come about?