WEB SITE WRITER'S BLOGS BREAK OUT AND INTO PRINT

Web site writer's blogsbreak out and into print
SAN DIEGO -- Online journals are routinely disparaged or ignored as unworthy of any medium beyond electrons.
Not Brian Dear's. The San Diego Reader, a free newsweekly, is publishing 8,000 words from his blog this week -- as its cover story.
"As far as I know, this is a first," Dear boasted on his site this week.
Well, not quite.
The Reader profiled another San Diego blogger for its April 29 cover story, lifting long excerpts from her site.
Editor Jim Holman says he is fascinated by the rise of online journals, calling the writing "less guarded and less prepared than regular journalism."
Holman concedes that blogs can veer toward the self-absorbed and esoteric but he found Dear to be an engaging writer.
Dear, who has worked for several Internet companies and is looking to start one of his own, launched his site in February 2002, dishing up observations on everything from politics to advertising.
Report: U.S. has increasein high-speed Net lines
NEW YORK -- The number of high-speed Internet lines in the United States increased 42 percent last year, and service is available in all but 7 percent of the nation's ZIP codes.
In a semiannual report, the Federal Communications Commission said 28.2 million homes and businesses had high-speed lines. Cable modems made up 58 percent and DSL 34 percent.
Most of the country had choice. Seven-eight percent of the nation's ZIP codes had at least two companies providing service; 11 percent had 10 or more (serving a ZIP code does not necessarily mean it is available to everyone in that region).
For DSL service, which uses souped-up phone lines, 84 percent came through the traditional Bell phone companies.
Associated Press
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