As a "used-to-be-a-newspaperwoman", it really saddens me to see what has become of the "Fourth Estate" these days.   A euphemism for it that I've heard used a bit is "citizen-journalism" . . . . Yeah, well, maybe . . . . . insofar as our U.S. citizen's individual right, Constitutionally provided for, is to express our views on any person, place, or thing, constrained only by the laws of libel and slander.    What is said is not slander, or what is  written is not libel, if what it is said or written is true..  But the truth has to be established, as such, before the Law.  And boy, howdy, has this nation ever become litiginous!

One of my grandchildren considered majoring in journalism in college, and I counseled him NOT to do so........it's that bad, friends.   I remember classes in the J-school (Journalism school) in which "objectivity" was spoken of (with respect) as a goal for news reporters and news writers to strive for.   Now, the Editorial Page and the Op-Ed (opinion editorial) page were a whole different ball game.  But at least the pundits had to sign their names to their "think-pieces" on the Op=Ed page.

And now we come to the Cyber-world, the "World-Wide Web", etc.  Now, we can get blather in any of the world's languages that can be reproduced on a screen somewhere, and at lightning speed. . . .a veritable babble blitz.  The Ed-Op pages of the Web are those little personal ink-hemorrhages called "blogs".  So . . .I am suggesting that American English could use a new word to describe this new form of opinion-spouting (kind of a cybernetic form of Hyde Park (London) soap box oratory. (But personally, I don't think it will earn the respect given the kooks who speechify in Hyde Park,  because, with the long history of such 'free speech' among the Brits, the Hyde Park haranguing  has become a "time-honored tradition".  When my granddaughter spent a couple of years there, she said it was even sort of a "tourist sight" to see who was bloviating on what subject that day.)

I nominate "blahgg" as the name of this new form of "citizen-journalism".

“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.” — George Orwell

I nominate "Opinion Diarrhea" or "O-Runs"

Great coinage, Tome Trader!   BTW, it reminded me of the story about the little girl who wrote home from her sleep-a-way summer camp, that everything was going pretty well, except that some of the campers had experienced "dire rear" . . .

And speaking of 'rears' reminded me of the diluted version of "pain in the ass" that we came up with in my family, some years ago.  We were trying to think of a way of saying the same thing in a more decorous, 'ladylike' way.  We finally settled on "discomfiture in the derrière."

Ain't English a wunnerful language?  We can make up new words when we feel the need of them, or carpenter some 'regular' words to serve in new fashions.

blogs- personal ink hemmorhages

babble blitz  

dire rear 

derriere discomfiture

I like these. I love playing with words.

At our college they had a real soap box kinda thing -a wooden crate, anyway- and on Tuesdays it was plopped down in the public square and anybody could stand on it and talk. To this day I just use 'on the soap box' to mean 'opinion, possibly with some fact mixed in, you figure out which is which'.

I didn't invent the phrase, just passed it along. But Blahg, that kinda fits. How should we pronounce it so we can tell it from 'blog' in regular speech? Like Eva Gabor would?

Lora:  Yes, "blahg" would have the "AH" sound.  To my Midwestern ear, blog has the "AW" sound, the same sound one hears in "dog" or "fog" or "frog" or "log" in Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, etc.