Weblogs: Revolutionary Media?

“A warm place in winter and an airy one in summer, with an address and a mailbox, windows to look inside if you are in that neighbourhood and an open door if you want to enter” (Niola 2008). With these words the journalist Marino Niola refers to weblogs, which he considers “more than just a communication system”, as they represent a space for symbolic sharing characterized by its own customs, conventions, deposited – but first created – codes and by a common language. A virtual space that transcends physical boundaries, and “a metaphor of our rapidly changing present, as well as a forerunner of our future”. This very enthusiastic description is widely shared by both users and creators of blogs, as well as by a number of scholars and experts of media studies: weblogs are often presented as revolutionary tools able not only to make changes in the technological universe, but also to cause radical transformations in other spheres, first of all those of information and journalism. This chapter questions such a revolutionary character generally attributed to blogs by making reference to one of the most brilliant achievements of the Italian press of the late eighteenth century: "L’Osservatore Veneto" by Gasparo Gozzi (1713-1786).