History
It was on November 23, 2002, that the Mormon blogging community became a distinct entity with the founding of the blog Metaphysical Elders. Some component blogs from the Mormon blogosphere's first two years were short lived, however one of its first bloggers, Dave Banack, began his longstanding Mormon Inquiry blog on August 19, 2003. On January 1, 2003, a mutli-author blog Mormon Momma launched — a spin off from the original Circle of Sisters column from Meridian Magazine. By the next two years, the multi-author blogs Times and Seasons, Approaching Zion, By Common Consent, Feminist Mormon Housewives, Millennial Star, Ministering Angels, Mormon Mommy Wars, Latter Day Liberation Front, LDS Science Review, and Mormon Metaphysics had been launched. (Several of these blogs currently do not exist and a great number more have joined the community's ranks.) On March 23, 2004, due to an article in The Revealer, the writer Kaimi Wenger at the LDS blog Times and Seasons noticed that the Jewish and Catholic blogging communities had adopted names for themselves. In a blog post titled "The Nameless Mormon Blogosphere", Wenger sought to remedy this situation and asked for suggestions for a name. Christopher Bradford posting under the name "Grasshopper" suggested "Bloggernacle Choir", the shortened version of which gained wide approval. "Bloggernacle" is a term that has been used commonly by LDS bloggers.
The Foundation for Apologetic Information & Research features an LDS-apologetics website and blog; Jeff Lindsay writes a Mormon apologetic blog entitled Mormanity, as well. A Mormon "litblog" named A Motley Vision was founded in 2004 by William Morris. During 2005, several LDS-themed podcasts entered the Bloggernacle to augment LDS blogging with audio programming; these included podcasts produced by church affiliated sources and an independent series produced by John Dehlin (who has also founded the blog Stay LDS and the group blog Mormon Matters).
Stay-at-home mothers who are LDS and who blog are known to comment occasionally upon their religion; two such writers whose blogs have become popular with non-Mormon audiences are Stephanie Nielson, of the blog the NieNie Dialogues, C. Jane Kendrick of CJane Enjoy I], and Jana Mathews who blogs at Momlogic as "The Meanest Mom." (A spoof on this genre of blog is the blog "Seriously, so Blessed!," written by an anonymous Utah woman.) In 2009, the religious news site Religion Dispatches ran a story about the phenomenon of Mormon mommy blogging, which its author believed arose in part in response to Elder Ballard's 2007 commencement address at Brigham Young University–Hawaii, which had lauded efforts by Mormon faithful to share their beliefs through such means as blogging, citing an online post by "Bookslinger" (pseudonymous author of the blog Flooding the Earth with the Book of Mormon).
Mormon videographer Seth Adam Smith began blogging in 2004. Some of the Bloggernacle's more prominent blogs are named after defunct Latter Day Saint publications. For example, Messenger and Advocate, a blog written by Guy Murray, was named after the LDS publication of the same name published 1834–1837 in Kirtland, Ohio. Keepapitchinin, a Mormon history blog written by Salt Lake Tribune columnist and independent historian Ardis Parshall that she founded in 2008, was named after a sporadically published humorous newspaper published 1867–1871 and pseudonymously written by three sons of LDS apostles, George J. Taylor, Joseph C. Rich, and Heber John Richards. The blog Millennial Star was named after The Latter-day Saints’ Millennial Star, published in England 1840–1970; and the LDS history blog The Juvenile Instructor' is the namesake of a publication intended as a catechism of Mormonism printed in Salt Lake City, Utah 1866–1930.
Salt Lake City, Utah's The Deseret News began producing a separate, LDS-themed newspaper insert on January 10, 2008 named Mormon Times. The website version of this insert features readers' feedback. The Mormon Times reporter covering the Bloggernacle is Emily W. Jensen. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' own Internet presence is substantial; and Church spokesman Michael Otterson's blogging contributions feature prominently in the LDS blogosphere as well. Linescratchers, an LDS contemporary music scene blog, also debuted in 2008.
Neylan McBaine founded The Mormon Women Project in 2010.
Read more about this topic: Mormon Blogosphere
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