Eleanor Roosevelt and My Day

The addition to this site (Women's History at About.com) of spotlights and news items in "blog" format probably has a few readers wondering, "What's a blog?" (If you're wondering whether the whole site is now a blog, never fear -- the same articles, biographies, etexts, quote collections, and all the rest are still being produced. The blog is just another way of highlighting what's new, plus adding some quick items of current interest to the home page.)

So, what IS a blog? Blogs, or weblogs, mean different things to different people, and themselves have a history - one of the most readable histories of weblogs is at the rebecca's pocket blog. Some blogs are, frankly, self-centered blathering about personal events. But some blogs have evolved to another kind of journalism -- even the Guardian (UK) has its own weblog, with links to "must-read" weblogs around the world.

But are blogs all that new? The mixture of personal voice and news that is common at many blogs reminds me of something from -- of course -- women's history: Eleanor Roosevelt's daily columns published as "My Day." Here are two from different times in ER's life:

• Commission on the Status of Women
• Hollywood and HUAC

You can find more of ER's "My Day" columns on the Net. Read a few, and see if you agree that these come pretty close to a lot of the longer weblog posts today:

• Eleanor Roosevelt "My Day" columns

More on "My Day":

• Question: What is "My Day" and why is it important? - from the Eleanor Roosevelt and Human Rights Project

More about blogs:

• How to syndicate news on this site -- using a newsfeed reader to peruse this and other newsfeeds, or adding the latest headlines from this site to your own Web site
• Blogging vs. journalist, an essay