FORT WORTH, TEXAS - To understand how established military blogs have become in the halls of the Defense Department, just check Army Secretary Pete Geren's computer.

Geren, who assumed the top civilian post in the Army last year, browses several each morning, just as he reads coverage of the Army in the nation's major daily newspapers.

"It's part of my effort to understand what is going on in the communications domain, particularly for the age group that is the heart and soul of our Army," Geren said during a phone interview as he returned from a recent trip to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Just a few short years ago, the military seemed unnerved by the ruminations of its creatively inspired young service members, citing concerns about operational security and the rough and uncensored reality of combat stories.

But the military has altered course and now offers bloggers regular access for interviews with top leaders, reflecting the changing role of both bloggers and public affairs.

Geren, a believer in the power of new media and one of its leading proponents within the Pentagon, held a question-and-answer session at a recent gathering of military bloggers in Las Vegas, a stamp of approval if there ever was one.

The turnabout is both a result of some bloggers' desire to expand from merely rants and opinion pieces to something closer to original reporting, and the military's recognition that the milblogs, whatever the occasional disagreements, were overwhelmingly on their side.

"This idea of working with the bloggers is smart," said Toby Nunn, author of Toby Nunn's Briefing Room. "We're a voice of the soldier. They would be crazy if they didn't recognize the ability of a blogger to reach a broader audience and the impact it can have."

A soldier named Colby Buzzell, a Californian in his mid-20s who was serving in Iraq in 2004, is sometimes considered the father of milblogging.

He launched cbftw.blogspot.com anonymously while in Iraq and posted gripping, violence- and profanity-laden stories that became enormously popular and eventually landed him in hot water with his commanders.

His trouble hardly stopped bloggers, though. There are now an estimated 2,000 milbloggers, feeding information and opinions to people hungry for war coverage but suspicious of traditional journalists.

Nunn, a Canadian-born soldier who served two tours in Iraq, including one in which he got to know Buzzell, said Buzzell's "concept was genius" because it came as fewer print and broadcast reporters were covering the war.

"Bloggers started to be a better form of media outreach," said Nunn, whom readers recently named the best Army milblogger.

"People are giving a frontline perspective without having to go to journalism school."

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