BMH Books is off and running again!
Last night Dr. Homer Kent, Jr. delivered to us the finished manuscript of a project he’s been working on–the updated and expanded commentary on the book of Mark. He did a shorter,”lightweight” version some years ago, but this new version is meatier, has a chapter for each of the chapters in Mark, and will take its place beside his other fine commentaries.
Production will take about four months, if all goes well. Look for an announcement about BMH Books’ new publishing arrangement with a large international publisher who will do our distribution and marketing for the manuscripts we acquire and develop. Soon you’ll be hearing about additional books and products from BMH Books, and soon the BMH Books website will be updated with credit-card shopping cart, new graphics, and more.
WHAT’S ALL THIS ABOUT ‘BLOGGING?’
As word of this blog spreads, I’m getting more questions about blogging, or the writing of weblogs.
Many Christians regularly check some of the more popular ones, such as Christianity Today, World Magazine, and Crosswalk.com. And of course, Washingtonienne (I’m not giving you THAT link!!!) has made unfortunate hot news this week through her blogging of her trysts in the Capitol.
Here are some statistics and figures to help get a handle on this communication tool. They come from a joint presentation by Steve Knight of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Kevin Hendricks.
I think the blog COULD–if enough folks think it’s useful and access it regularly–replace Charlie Turner’s popular 800 call-in newsline of many years back. The advantage to the blog, of course, is that it can be enriched so much with quick links to sites, materials, etc., which a phone newsline could never do. Let us know what you think–click “comments” at the bottom of any posts. Here is some of Steve and Kevin’s material:
Significance of Blogs
(Kevin Hendricks)
1.) Numbers:
Between 2.5 and 8.8 million people write blogs (iMedia)
11% of Internet users report reading blogs—almost 14 million people (http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/reports.asp?Report=113&Section=ReportLevel2&Field=Level2ID&ID=956)
Younger Generation:
90 percent of those blogging are between 13 and 29.
51 percent are between 13 and 19
(New York Times, “My So Called Life” Jan. 11, 2004)
Traffic:
AndrewSullivan.com boasted 800,000 visits from 220,000 different people in 2002. That’s well beyond the circulation of many magazines, also about the same unique visits the BGEA gets every month.
Instapundit.com grabs 2 million unique visits a month (and makes their stats available to the public)
2.) Blogs as Journalism
Andrew Sullivan: “Blogger is the Napster of Journalism” – it (and others Xanga, Live Journal , etc.) allows the average person to bypass the gatekeepers. Blogging is bringing a true sense of democracy to the Internet where everyone can have a voice.
Blogging driving mainstream media – Trent Lott and his comments supporting Strom Thurmond’s segregationist campaign for president, the story was picked up by bloggers long before the mainstream media picked it up, they eventually followed suit.
Interconnectedness of bloggers can enable them to scoop mainstream media outlets (Andrew Sullivan in the 2000 election, The Command Post during the invasion of Iraq, Salam Pax in Iraq)
“Blogs are the best thing to happen to journalism in a long, long time,” -Tom Regan, associate editor of csmonitor.com – they allow for cheap reader interaction and blogs depend on “real” journalists for their initial sources (journalists.org)
If anything, blogs are a threat to journalism’s dominance, not its existence. Blogs challenge, correct, and shed light on journalists’ stories. Bloggers are more like editors than journalists.
3.) Blogs for Business (Fast Company)
Macromedia used bloggers to supplement software support
Hundreds of Microsoft Employees blog
IBM, Verizon, Hartford Finanical Services
Many pitfalls, legal issues, but it’s also a way to increase internal communication and customer interaction. (Seth Godin: “It’s risky to be safe / safe to be risky”)
4.) Blogs as Tools
Mitch Ratcliffe , pro blogger, claims that the tool of blogging will have a similar impact to the desktop publishing revolution in the 1980s and early 1990s that made it significantly easier to publish and resulted in an explosion of new magazines.
Author Trudy Schuett in an essay preparing for BloggerCon II said “The content delivery system known as the blog represents the future of the Internet.” She called them “the next generation of web sites”
Blogs are essentially a poor man’s database-driven web site (which can be pretty expensive to build and maintain), allowing anyone to have consistent, frequent, easy updates.
PRAYER UPDATES
Nancy Eshleman, for whom prayer was requested earlier, has had her surgery and was released from the hospital on Tuesday. Biopsy did show that the tumor was cancer, and so the chemo she was scheduled to start in a few weeks should attack the cancer both in her lungs and her brain. She says, “I feel well and am experiencing not only that ‘peace that passes all understanding’ but I feel so content.”
Arnold Kriegbaum has been released from the hospital in Florida and is scheduled to move this weekend with his wife, Laura, to live with their daughter Karen near Indianapolis, Indiana.