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At 100 mph, the car smashed through the guardrail and crashed into a blog.

Instead, blogs are one of the fastest-growing areas of the Internet, capable of spreading information and opinion at the stroke of a key.

A derivative of the phrase "Web logs," they are accessible to anyone with a computer and access to the Internet. Politics, sports, celebrity and lifestyle issues are all fodder for blogs, which www.blogger.com defines as "personal diaries, daily pulpits, collaborative spaces, political soapboxes, breaking-news outlets, a collection of links, private thoughts or memos to the world."

"The Web log is just a container: It could contain journalism or it could contain haiku," says San Francisco-based writer Rebecca Blood, the author of "The Weblog Handbook." "They are not necessarily journalism or anything else. The middle ground that so many Web logs inhabit -- linking and commenting on news stories written by others -- is, I think, different from journalism and potentially very important."

Blogs started to bloom on the Internet in 1998, according to Blood, when there were at most 50 blogs. A year later, blog traffic in cyberspace was busier than rush hour in Los Angeles.

"By the end of 1999, you couldn't even know the names of all the Web logs that existed," Blood says via e-mail. "At the beginning of the year, you could have read them all."

Now there are millions of blogs that dispel, disseminate, promote and promulgate information and opinion, and the form has produced well-known sites that attract as many as 100,000 readers per day. Among the most popular sites, according to The Truth Laid Bear (www.thetruthlaidbear.com), which tracks blog visits, are www.andrewsullivan.com and www.instapundit.com (politics), www.gizmodo.com and www.slashdot.com (high tech), and www.wonkette.com, which combines political and media news and gossip with satire.

While blogs have proliferated like Tribbles on "Star Trek," most are relatively anonymous.

"The vast majority of Web logs have very small audiences, a dozen or 100 readers," Blood says. "Many of these blogs don't aspire to much more than that; they are designed to communicate with a small group of friends or hobbyists. If a Web log is interesting to those few people, it is achieving its purpose."

Hello, it's me

Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Mannnig has a blog, as does Miami Dolphin running back Ricky Williams. Alyssa Milano and Gillian Anderson also blog, but publicists appear to do most of the work on their sites, forwarding questions from fans to the actors.

Wil Wheaton, who's acted in the movies "Stand by Me" and "Flubber," as well as the television series "Star Trek: The Next Generation," does all the work on his site Wil Wheaton Dot Net (www.wilwheaton.net), from coding to writing to providing links.

"When I started blogging, it was very therapeutic," he says, responding to questions via e-mail. "I was able to visit things in my life that I was struggling with, or didn't like, and examine where I was and how I got there. I also felt like I had a lot to prove, and my Web log gave me a chance to separate myself from the characters with whom I was so heavily identified."

In addition to his blog, Wheaton writes magazine articles and sketch comedy for the Acme Comedy Theater in Los Angeles; he's also working on a book, "Just a Geek," about his career. His recent posts to Wil Wheaton Dot Net include entries about running a marathon with his wife, searching for a lost baseball glove, doing voice work for video games and playing on the World Poker Tour.

"When I write, it's mostly to celebrate the good things in my life," he says. "If something happens that makes me want to pick up the phone and tell my mom, or send an e-mail to my brother, I'll usually write about it in my Web log. If there's something interesting or cool, like doing a character for a computer game that I think people would like to hear about, I write about that, too.

"There's absolutely an element of 'pulling back the curtain' on Hollywood, and I'm always looking for opportunities to share some insights into that crazy world."

Humorist and journalist Dave Barry also has his own blog, at www.davebarry.com. A mixture of humor, links to his syndicated columns and strange, humorous and odd items readers send in to the site, Barry says he spends perhaps a half-hour per day on the site.

"It's fun, because it's a lot more immediate than print," Barry says via e-mail. "It's also an outlet for all the stuff I can't write about, because it's too time-sensitive, or too tasteless, or just too weird for newspapers."

Recent postings include items about Internet poetry contests, Amber Brkich of "Survivor" fame donating her bikinis to a museum in Beaver and news about a flying moose that landed on a car in Norway. Barry says the main difference between his cyber writing and journalism is that he provides mostly one-liners and links in the blog, while his columns "are actual work. (Really! They are!)"

But as sources of news, Barry advises readers to look elsewhere. When asked whether blogs should be held accountable to the same ethics and restrictions of journalism, he says, "Only if they're representing themselves as unbiased news sources, which very few do."

Indeed, the idea of blogs as journalism is one of the most debated issues about the form.

Truth and consequences

If a visitor to cyberspace is searching for alternative sources of news about the war in Iraq, there are www.dailykos.com or www.tacitus.org. The sites www.argmax.com and www.institutional-economics.com debate the economy, and there are numerous blogs, conservative and liberal, that parse, dissect and interpret.

But can, or should, these sites be held to the same standards as media outlets, where facts are double-checked and sources verified?

"I don't think they can be," says Jonathan Sterne, assistant professor of communication at the University of Pittsburgh. "As to should they, I think it all depends on the blog. It's true that professional journalists are held to those standards, and there are lots of cases like the New York Times (the scandal involving reporter Jayson Blair) where the standard isn't upheld.

"So I don't know how you can hold (bloggers) to that. Part of the beauty of the blog is they can post rumors and things that can get published. That's part of their contribution to public discourse: It's precisely the realm of gossip and rumor."

"My first reaction to them was it's a very interesting way for people to express their opinions," says Peter Madsen, executive director of the Center for Applied Ethics at Carnegie Mellon University.

Madsen agrees that bloggers should not be held to the same standards as journalists, but also thinks there have to be some rules or ethics that can be applied to the form.

"I don't think you want to have blogs without standards whatsoever," he says. "So that when an unsuspecting person reads something they think might be fact and it's not, what's the difference between that and a lie, whether it's misquoting or whatever you want to call that.

"You might have the standards of everyday life for the blog and blog writer. If they're trying to talk to someone face-to-face, we assume that everyone is engaging in the act of truth telling. Intentional lying, for example, would not be acceptable. And I think that's the standard we should apply in the writing of a blog, that it's wrong to intentionally deceive others."

Blood argues that it is important for blogs to retain a separate identity apart from traditional news sources.

"Web logs are not a new form of journalism, and shouldn't even aspire to be so," she says. "I think we're stronger and more important and more interesting as something different, as something new. Trying to fit us into a pre-existing mold, to my mind, misses the point."

If you build it ...

There are blogs that rant, blogs that rave and blogs that just are. But what all blogs have in common is they provide an opportunity for contact that is immediate.

"For most people, blogging is one of the least solitary forms of writing there is," says Blood, "because it happens online, and for most people being online means e-mail and instant messaging -- constant contact with others. Additionally, Web logs allow for reader comments, and this transforms writing from a solitary to a conversational activity -- very different from writing a book or an article."

Jill MacDowell of Bloomfield, a restaurateur who is a partner in the Quiet Storm Coffeehouse in Friendship, started her blog at www.jilly.org a couple of years ago. Recent postings include thoughts on British tennis star Tim Henman, the Republican marriage initiative and a lost CD case. MacDowell also provides listings of upcoming concerts and links to various cultural, media and entertainment Web sites in Pittsburgh.

"I think particularly music and art, given my background, are really essential to a life of quality," says MacDowell, who also has worked as a graphic designer, editor and writer. "I guess I am to some extent, by virtue of including this stuff on the Web log, advocating it. But I wouldn't call myself an advocate. I think there's an astonishing amount of stuff going on, and I'm just trying to make it a one-stop shop for cool stuff that happens here."

MacDowell started her blog after she lost a job as an editor and journalist. She continues to post her thoughts, random and otherwise, just to have a voice, to be able to participate in cyber discourse.

"In the first year, I paid close attention to my stats (the number of visitors to the site) because you do want to get a sense of what forest this tree happens to be falling in," MacDowell says. "And then you ultimately really don't care. It doesn't sort of gradually go away; you just realize, wow, it really doesn't matter. You know who your regular people are, because they comment or e-mail, or you see them in your stats if you happen to look at them, but you really don't care. I know that Jilly, the Web log, is well read by Pittsburgh."

Wheaton's site does attract a wide range of visitors. But those looking for insights on "Next Generation" episodes or Hollywood will come away disappointed.

"I really don't think of myself as a celebrity," he says. "I mean, I don't identify with celebrities any more than the readers of my Web site do. I don't go to Hollywood parties, I don't live in a huge house above the Sunset Strip, I don't jet off to Cannes twice a year, or anything like that."

Instead, Wheaton attempts to use his blog as a vehicle for good works. In 2002, he and wife Anne raised more than $17,000 for breast cancer via Web site donations when both participated in a road race. Last month, they ran and walked in the Suzuki Rock 'n' Roll Marathon in San Diego, raising $28,000 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Currently, he's waging a campaign to raise awareness about donating Google's e-mail service, Gmail, to U.S. troops abroad via www.gmailforthetroops.com.

"Being a public figure does give me an opportunity to occasionally have my voice rise above the din, as long as I use it responsibly," Wheaton says. "I remember when I was first building the site, I said to a friend of mine, 'If I ever get a lot of visitors to my site, I'm going to do my best to do some good, and make a positive difference in the world with it.'

"I'm not out there curing cancer or ending world hunger or anything like that. But I consistently hear from people that they are inspired by challenges and successes, and each time I've put out a call to arms, the readers have responded."

Booming blogs

Web log traffic varies from day to day, but certain blogs seem to attract visitors more consistently than others. Here's a list of the most popular blogs (as of June 30), and the average number of visits per day from The Truth Laid Bear (www.thetruthlaidbear.com), which provides statistics via SiteMeter (www.sitemeter.com).

1. Instapundit (www.instanpundit.com). Posted by Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee whose political-flavored site examines the "intersection between advanced technologies and individual liberties." Visitors on date: 108,535.

2. Daily Kos (www.dailykos.com). According to the site, "Political analysis and other daily rants on the state of the nation." Visitors: 108,446.

3. Eschaton (http://atrios.blogspot.com). Another political blog. Visitors: 91,529.

4. Gizmodo (www.gizmodo.com). Reviews of high-tech "gadgets, gizmos and cutting-edge electronics." Visitors: 78,794.

5. Andrew Sullivan -- The Daily Dish (www.andrewsullivan.com). One of the longest-running, and most respected, political blogs on the Internet. Visitors: 51,239.

6. Wonkette (www.wonkette.com). Washington, D.C., rumors and gossip, delivered with a dash of irreverence. Visitors: 47,920.

7. The Smirking Chimp (www.smirkingchimp.com). A political site with the motto "Ask not at whom the chimp smirks -- it smirks at you." Visitors: 39,123.

8. The Washington Monthly (www.washingtonmonthly.com). Another political site. Visitors: 39,123.

9. Blog for America (www.blogforamerica.com). And yet another political site. Visitors: 33,746.

10. Backwater Conservative (www.jquinton.com). And one more. Visitors: 23,944.

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