I was struck today by two examples of the extremes of blogging – from what could be termed completely frivolous, to the extemely serious.

First is the story of the woman in South Korea who didn’t clean up after her dog. Whilst this is offensive in some places (in Melbourne it’s law), her biggest crime appears to be that a fellow citizen took photos with a camera phone and posted them on a web site.

Try a Google on Dog Poop Girl and you’ll get my drift – it’s gone around the world.

Second is the terrible bombings in London last week. You’ve probably seen some of the camera phone photos, for example those taken in the Underground in the aftermath of the explosions. Eye witnesses have been blogging about what they saw, their experiences of being in the middle of the attacks.

Robert MacMillan in the Washington Post remarks:

“This is the essence of reporting — vivid, factual accounts of history as it explodes around us. People like me spend years in J-school learning how to do it just right. We spend the subsequent years subjecting you to the mixed results. Stacey, Zoulia and hundreds of other amateur journalists, packing camera phones and an urge to blog, reminded us how simple it should be.”

There’s even a term been coined ‘Citizen Journalism’. There are now hundreds of bombing photos available on sites like Flickr.com, along with others from the Asian Tsunami earlier this year.