Editor's Note: The following article from USA Today newspaper captures the spirit of the remarkably successful "mini-newspapers" called blogs. Blogs Are Weblogs, or online electronic journals.

QBTPL.com provides you the capability to create your own blogs for free. As soon as you log in with your username and password you will see an option called "Your Diary". This is our equivalent of a blog, and anything that you put here will be visible to other users under the "Free Member Diaries " hyperlink at the top of the screen. If you don't see the Diary option just create a user account and provide an email address so that we can send the password to.

The email address does not have to be traceable to you, but just some place from where you can access the password that we send you. With the username you chose, and the password we sent, you can log into your account to access the Diaries or blogs.

Bloggers and traditional journalists feed off each other ? it can be a terrific synergy. Newspapers and TV or radio reporters often provide the blogosphere with the initial information. Bloggers then either simply link to stories of interest, or comment on them at length, or use them as the basis for their own reporting ? digging up records, memos, other stories, etc. Then it's back to the traditional media. Thanks to the blogs, a smart editor or producer can see what people are interested in.

The blogs are where you find the answer to "What are people on the Net saying?" Bloggers write short pieces and long pieces. Sometimes an entry is just a link and a quip. Other times it's a lengthy and well-researched essay (with lots of links). But bloggers read one another and link to one another, creating that blogosphere ? a giant spider web of connected sites. If a news item tickles any part of the web it's not long before it's felt far away. Sounds a lot like newspapers in the early days, don't it?

Not that anyone should get all their news from blogs. But they'd be just as foolish, these days, to simply rely on traditional media. Blogs have succeeded because we the people need them. We didn't know it, but we sense it. Bloggers are filling in where journalists miss. Blogs are filling a role that used to be filled by that mass media: Digging deeper into the news and offering fact-checking, perspective, and doing more than simply reporting.