"Establishment URLs" (4.00 / 1)

What would be the virtue of not having established URLs?  It strikes me that the alternative would be blogs coming and going, popping up temporarily and then dying.  I can't imagine that there's a capacity for unlimited growth, particularly because quite frankly, people can only process so much information in a day, read so much, visit so many blogs.

Further, I think there's value in establishing communities and/or blogs who consistently not only provide good content, but consistently moderates out the chaff.  Reliable information sources are in short supply and in fact is a lot to do with why blogs have been so relevant.  There's value in building brand.

John McCain opposes the GI Bill.

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by: Lucas O'Connor @ Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 11:51:47 AM CDT

Another brick in the wall? Where now? (0.00 / 0)

Contrary to Lucas, I don't see it as an act of brand building, but instead see places like Daily Kos, MyDD, and Open Left as conversational and community hubs.

Should minorities be helped or empowered to move to the center?  Yes.  They've probably lived different lives and so would help shatter or at least enlarge the echo chamber.  I guess the question is...what the best way to do it? 
Is providing help to send 17 folks to Daily Kos?
Is it providing a couple daily columns from people of color?
Is it having a section of Open Left or similar websites that deal with minority and -ism issues?  Or more property, all issues from a minority perspective?
Is it having teach-ins or conferences which adopt the BlogHer model?
Is it reaching out to be a mentor to minority bloggers?
What do we do when the bloggosphere has a glass ceiling of itself (for whatever reason).  Can we ignore it? 

Can we sit on our hands any longer while minorities--particuarly those of color are locked out of the system?  Or forced to sit at the back of the blogging community bus?

Open left is a big step in the right direction, but a vivid chasm exists.
Answering and actively taking dramatic steps in this direction is, in my humble opinion, the only way to avoid claims of being the "new boss" or passively exclusionary.  Can we claim to be be different otherwise?  Can we claim to be big-tent progressives otherwise?

Actually, I'm kinda curious what minority bloggers have to think about this...whats their take.....

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by: compassionatepolitics @ Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 12:16:28 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

It can be a brand of community (0.00 / 0)

that, for whatever reason (structural, FPers, whatever), forsters better discussions.  And further, a big part of using the internet to get good information is being critical in determining the credibility of sources.  Developing and maintaining a reputation for credibility is also a good part of branding that doesn't happen if there's consistent url turnover.

John McCain opposes the GI Bill.

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by: Lucas O'Connor @ Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 12:42:05 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Ding (0.00 / 0)

Is it having teach-ins or conferences which adopt the BlogHer model?
Is it reaching out to be a mentor to minority bloggers?

Ultimately this medium is very do-o-cratic. Building capacity within under-served populations is probably the only real way to address this issue. If the blogosphere is going to become more diverse, that means more producers. It also means more of an audience, which means access for more people, etc.

However, it may not happen, and that may not actually be a bad thing. I mean, blogs in particular are just one of many emerging media forms that can be used for democratic (and Democratic) civic and political engagement. It could be that this particular form has reached a saturation point, and the next big wave may come, for instance, from online video.

Me | My Work | Future Majority

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by: Josh Koenig @ Sat Aug 04, 2007 at 10:48:19 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Diversity in the blogosphere (4.00 / 2)

The first requisite for a wider sphere is to stop using and thinking in the language of "reach out." Folks will participate in and use arenas that they experience as relevant/useful. They'll move mountains to get in, if something matters to them.

If the progressive blogosphere is not diverse, it is because getting into it has not [possibly, YET] seemed worth the trouble to people who would make it more diverse.

You may be on to something in that the appropriate cultural forms have not yet been generated. I like the highly verbal mode, but not everyone does.

Can it happen here?

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by: janinsanfran @ Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 12:15:03 PM CDT

Then perhaps (4.00 / 1)

The question becomes why isn't blogging worthwhile yet for these people and what, if anything, can be done to make it a better platform for what they are doing or want to do?

John McCain opposes the GI Bill.

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by: Lucas O'Connor @ Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 12:32:22 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

How do we know? (0.00 / 0)

How do we know what degree of diversity exists? I have no idea what ethnicity, location, economic condition, or (somewhat) gender people fit into on the blogs. I suspect the assumptions about diversity come from things like YKos, but those are a very particular subset of the most "successful", establishment promoters. I'm not denying the lack of diversity, just wondering on what basis this came to be the conventional wisdom.

That said, it seems like a moot point anyway. The Net is open to all who can afford server time. I fervently hope the progblogs avoid the old-liberal habit of "reaching out" (which really means "reaching down") to grandstand how much we care about the "disenfranchised". That kind of targetting may be necessary in the real world, in which case achieving a more egalitarian society is the answer to the blog-access sub-issue.

The Net offers a chance to kind of start over: forget "reaching out" and insist on the widest possible access for all. Support easy, free blogging software and good tutorials for using it. Promote cheap, universal broadband. The rest will take care of itself. My problem with "reaching out" is that it assumes that "we" have everything "they" want. In parallel with America itself, maybe we need to seriously consider that the truth might be exactly the reverse.

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by: DaveW @ Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 13:00:46 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Polling etc. (0.00 / 0)

There's good data to back up these statements, mostly from market surveys done to justify the cost of blog ads.  You can probably take that to the bank;  the advertisers do.

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by: mbayrob @ Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 16:43:54 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Outreach (0.00 / 0)

So maybe this is a call to outreach to the 8-12 organizations that have the closest one-to-one conversations with people of color, women, and other minorities... 

And tap the minorities that are already out there doing great work...I'm sure they know some folks who should be seriously considered. They probably can speak to the hole and gaps in the current system (for lack of a better term).

Whats Campus Progesses role in helping empower or even cultivating the next generation of passionate, political bloggers?  I'm sure they're doing stuff right now...that seems like where the action is.  I think this would be a great way for also minorities at the college level to get directly involved.  Outreach, a blog community website, a community developer, and some weekly tips could go along way.

Its certainly a community issue...and an ongoing one at that.... 

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by: compassionatepolitics @ Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 12:45:15 PM CDT

Your first point (4.00 / 1)

is really the key, I think, Chris, to the rest of the discussion.

Perhaps the larger question, or a different frame for this one, is whether the mega-blogs have become "corporatized," in the same sense that we see business in this country moving unabated toward monopoly.

Is DK the Wal-Mart of the progressive blogosphere?  In other words, by its size, its scope and its breadth, does it stifle not only competition, but fresh thought, writing, interchange and collegiality?  Does the morass of diaries raise or lower the likelihood of peoples' thoughts being considered by others, as opposed to such thoughts being posted on a stand-alone website?

Clearly there is an establishment now.  By virtue of the commercialization of the process, the mega-blogs charge such high advertiser rates that it has been argued that they choke out smaller blogs at the expense of diversity of opinion and sustainability.

The other issue with regard to growth stagnation has to do, I think, with the ubiquity of the format.  In other words, the "new" has worn off.  A blog really isn't much different from a message board in many ways, but when the word was new, the format brought in curiosity-seekers.

As time passes, we will see this phenomenon arise on a periodic basis.  Just as radio program directors feel the need to shake things up with format changes, so, too, will changes to the expressive modes of the internet cause users to run to the "next big thing."  It seems an almost organic evolutionary process.

Finally, the cliquishness that some have identified in the blogosphere has driven some folks away.  The general tendency for people to respond to a primary post as opposed to generating an overall dialogue becomes tiresome to more than a few folks I've spoken with about the phenomenon.  This phenomenon is driven by the natural inclination of people to be ego-centric, especially in that testosterone-charged, educated class you identified.

Moreover, I don't know if we can escape that demographic component, at least where the education aspect is concerned.  This is, after all, a format that demands some base-level of literacy.  Concern trolls, grammar trolls, spelling trolls and the like serve, intentionally or un-, as gatekeepers who keep the gramatically and linguistically challenged out of the progressive blogosphere.  By way of example, put on your  HazMat suit and take a walk through the fetid swamp that is Free Republic.  They don't seem to have any problem at all attracting the illiterate and uneducated. 

Can we expand the gender demographic?  Unequivocally, I would say "Yes."  In fact (and I'm now donning my flame retardant underwear for the inevitable blowback) the election of Senator Clinton to the presidency would likely bring more women to the progressive blogosphere.  I say this without regard to the substantive good or ill she would do as a POTUS.

You're right, Chris.  This is fascinating stuff.  It has the whiff of Marshall McLuhan about it; the enticing aroma of a future that's baking in the oven, but not quite yet ready to be tasted.

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by: BobKincaid @ Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 13:15:33 PM CDT

As to whether DK stifles (0.00 / 0)

There's a flipside to that wherein, for both good and bad reasons, people would rather go straight to the audience rather than build their own webside and url.  Sometimes I'm sure that's 'laziness' but often it's screwd.  Because as I mentioned earlier, most people are going to click on how many blogs?  There are probably 25-30 in my personal world of awareness day-to-day, but I'm not going to read them all and am going to rely on a core of four or five to link to particularly relevant stuff.  It isn't for lack of interest, it's because I spend 9+hours a day working or commuting and I have chores and I have what some might call a social life and I have org meetings and sometimes I want to indulge and get more than six hours of sleep.

This is all a long-winded way of saying that people have limits to how much information they can sift through.  What a place like DailyKos has managed to do is establish a pretty good system for communities doing the parsing on its own (rec list, diary rescue, blogrolls, etc.). It's not perfect, but I don't know that anyone's actually put together a better system to enable the meritocratic disposition of the netroots.

John McCain opposes the GI Bill.

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by: Lucas O'Connor @ Sat Aug 04, 2007 at 09:47:40 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

honestly? (0.00 / 0)

To me it looks like you have a boy's club of the blogs and are not supporting incorporating others who are probably progressive/populist but might differ in a few areas.

Sorry, that's what I see, as someone who knows the startup business models, the dot con era and the social networking business models.

One of the biggest problems is that network of the advertising and the liberal network ring...not letting smaller sites in or using SEO and web 2.0 technologies to increase their traffic and thus increase the demographics and participation rate is a real problem in my opinion. 

I mean to me it's fine to take a dot con disaster and turn it into methods to generate revenues, hell, this week, I decided to give it a whirl, but it's another thing when business models supersede the real political agenda.

Has that happened?

(don't shoot the messenger please)

NoSlaves.com  


The Economic Populist

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by: Robert Oak @ Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 14:26:47 PM CDT

Really not (4.00 / 2)

I don't think these folks are all that clubby.  A number of high profile blogs look for talent that isn't the typical white middle-class male variety.  It's getting better. Look at how much more female faces you see at blogging events.  A driver for this, I think, was getting some very successful blogs run by women, most notably Firedog Lake.

I do think there are some sociological drivers, though.  Blogging does not pay the rent for very many people, and building the kind of readership that supports paying salaries takes a lot time, a lot of work, and a lot of luck.

So people who blog a lot need sources of financial support.  White males (especially ones from high tech) are more likely than a lot of people to have the needed savings to quit working and put in the kind of hours needed to put up 5 or more posts a day.  White women are less likely to, and the kind of middle class people of color who are starting out now tend to have less than that.

I think this is the real barrier, and not any exclusion, conscious or otherwise, by the people running the major blogs.

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by: mbayrob @ Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 16:54:42 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

plus (0.00 / 0)

I see a couple of things, I just saw "diversity" being equated with illegal immigration, front paged.  Oops, I'm fairly certain that blacks and the poor are not into this one at all as well as alienating a large number of plain Democrats across the country.

But, on a technical level, I agree, one of the biggest barriers with doing a blog is technical skills.  To even write comments one needs to really know a little HTML and to put up your own blog, even on the hosted sites, odds are you're going to need a lot more HTML, to needing to know how to change the code, depending.

In terms of time, yes, people who are work with computers (not necessarily professional bloggers) are the ones who can quickly write something up, where their job isn't going to severely watch them or censor such activity.

All of this is a major problem really and I see clearly true United States diversity isn't showing up here.

We also have a situation where in STEM, US diversity has been disproportionately wiped out by offshore outsourcing, insourcing...I don't know where they are, a few are with us speaking up but even among the techies I see few bothering to ramp up on the skills required to work with these blogs.

NoSlaves.com  


The Economic Populist

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by: Robert Oak @ Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 18:56:47 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Blogging is getting easier (4.00 / 1)

Certainly, there are people who are more "computer phobic" than others.  But the skill level required isn't too high, and generally speaking, if you can handle MS Word, you can handle one or the other techniques needed to get your posts up.

And while on average, people of color have less access than middle class whites, I don't think that lack access explains much of the difference.  There are more Hispanics and African Americans with good broadband access than you'd expect based solely on the representation of their voices in the popular blogs.

So I do suspect that the "opportunity cost" of blogging several times a day is what's at work, since all things being equal, middle class white men have better economic resources than white women or people of color of either gender.

In addition, a lot of people are aware of bloggers who have financial problems (particularly related to health care).  Susie Madrick and the late Steve Gilliard both come to mind. While most male bloggers are not doing very well financially, at least anecdotally, you hear more about women and people of color having trouble.

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by: mbayrob @ Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 22:42:42 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

look for talent (0.00 / 0)

instead of making room for talent or support a diverse set of voices, topics, opinions.  Take economics for example, there are some incredible sites talking about economics but I'd say as a blogging topic it's barely covered on the major blogs.

I mean our group is over 50% people of color, and multi on top of it, but no one is focused in on that, that's really not relevant to us, what someone's color or sex is....what is important is economic policies in the national interest and for working America.

I saw your words "looking for talent" well, in talent that speaks the beliefs, underlying policy positions of the people "looking" so it matches their own exactly?  Or looking for talent that speaks for the majority of Democrats who want policy change?

so, if those voices are being pushed out of the major blogs..is that diversity or even in alignment with the Progressive/Populist economic agenda?

See what I'm saying, that bubbling up from the bottom approach to enabling diversity versus a "top down" selection approach.

NoSlaves.com  


The Economic Populist

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by: Robert Oak @ Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 19:34:44 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Group blogs differ (0.00 / 0)

Group blogs differ, and I suspect in some cases, bloggers tend to invite people to blog with them who they know, and the people you know tend to be people like yourself.  In these cases, I agree that for these kinds of blogs, it takes some real effort to make the front pagers more diverse.

But for a number of the important group blogs, and especially for Daily Kos, there's a good mechanism for letting good writers get an audience, and they use a variety of techniques to figure out which posters succeed at this.

This works pretty well, and for Daily Kos, people have developed followings for things as diverse as the bond market or cute pictures of cats.  It's a noisy place, but it's a fairly meritocratic system that rewards people who post regularly, write well, and write about things people care about.

Certainly, there's bias from the audience, which is probably less interested in working class issues like unions, and more interested in problems that working people would be very happy to have.  So there's a need even on Kos to correct this kind of "audience bias" when selecting front pagers.  But since there's a wealth of talented people to choose from, it works pretty well.

It's an issue that needs attention, but it's also an issue that gets some attention.

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by: mbayrob @ Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 22:57:28 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

adsf (0.00 / 0)

While the software, scoop, and the ratings system and so forth is a bottom up design, I don't feel that dailykos is quite so diverse as you are implying.  That front page sets the tone for opinions and a very small number actually can "gang up" on issues where they do not want a position they want expressed...minority subgroups or the "troll hunters" subgroups.  I think there have been various "wars" last big one was "Israel/Palestine" (I stay away from these if possible).

The idea of designing social structure into software has become really interesting to me as of late...
we actually have core group of policy positions, which is the entire reason I post on the major blogs,  but this "meta" topic as I "blog along" is interesting.

raisingkaine I think does a good job of having diverse people, variety of backgrounds, US diversity and so on.  I have no idea how they did that except the core group themselves maybe.

NoSlaves.com  


The Economic Populist

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by: Robert Oak @ Sat Aug 04, 2007 at 01:07:46 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

There's a lot caught up in this (4.00 / 1)

In particular, is the mentality of many that there should be no compromise for popularity.  That has to do with political ideals, but it also has to do with a sentiment that I've encountered many times that if "they" want to be bloggers, they can come to us and use it, but we don't owe any outreach to people who haven't naturally migrated to blogs like "the rest of us."  It's a couple layers of refusing to compromise that you can see in targeted districts, ending the war, impeachment, DLC and other issues as well.  Just a gut-level resistance to anything smelling like top-down organizing or even the idea of changing anything in order to cater to a wider audience.

Somewhat ironically, I think that such sentiments draw out some of the different motivations of existing members of the netroots.  Blogs are for many people a community in itself.  Or it's a place to vent anger and frustration.  And these are incredibly valuable roles for blogs and blog communities to play.  But often those motivations don't lead to a particular concern for the meta stuff.  If I just need to rant, I don't particularly care about a diversity of experiences in the comments.  But when the discussion of blogs moves to "now these people and this passion is here, what do we do now? How do we make this stuff better proactively?," you're going to have a more narrow group interested in having the discussion.  It'll be relevant to them all, but it's not the discussion they came for.

John McCain opposes the GI Bill.

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by: Lucas O'Connor @ Sat Aug 04, 2007 at 09:58:48 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

adsf (0.00 / 0)

Yeah, getting anyone to examine legislation sure isn't going to help anyone's web ad revenue!  ;) 

To me, we're into a pro-active citizenship, an informed, highly educated body of participation...which in this day and age, few have time for frankly if they are not actually working professionally in policy.

I'm saying blogs are still top down really.  I think I'm also saying that the software, architecture, design, doesn't really exist yet to make it anything but.  Scoop (dailykos) I think really took off because it has in it's architecture a "bottom up" design to it in addition to the "top down" structure in terms of giving "web time" to articles.

NoSlaves.com  


The Economic Populist

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by: Robert Oak @ Sat Aug 04, 2007 at 12:31:50 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Some off-center comments (4.00 / 1)

1. Barriers to entry now exist.  The server(s), bandwidth costs & cross-referrals are extensive.  The big blogs got started when small was all & they grew traffic & capability at the same time.  It's costly & time-intensive to step into the "market" now (not sure it's a market, by the way).  A newbie starting small, at present, would probably stay small. 

2. A rose by any other name . . . it's just become a generic term for idiosyncratic stuff on a not-so corporate website.  The big blogs are different, but the term will not very likely change.

3. There are dozens of concepts here--the main groups of information junkies who have access to the tubes have probably maxed out; as the internet builds out a few more folks will step into the blogs; again, bandwidth matters because some netizens can't deal with the slow video buffering (I personally don't like the spread of faux TV into the sites on my list); blogging is no longer the leading wave of internet usage; for progressives to "reach out" is probably in the very structural nature of such groups--it is typical for the "left" to seek forms of inclusion, to grow, to make the big tent bigger.

A major issue will be access.  Dial-up in Elephant's Breath, Utah, doesn't work for logging onto a huge, multi-media site that takes 3 or 4 minutes just loading the front page @ 24k or 36k or 56k.  Political & information junkies have already made their cost/value decisions & obtained the gear they "need" to sate their "need," so there may not be much blogospheric growth remaining in the un-wired world.

Also, we've not seen a truly "corporate" thrust onto/into the internet.  The "big idea" is yet to come.

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by: whl @ Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 14:37:17 PM CDT

site meter (0.00 / 0)

This is a side comment but I also noticed site meter is putting some highly unusual cookies that appear to be 3rd party advertising and potentially tracking cookies on users, plus making public some fairly detailed stats, which to me is a serious privacy violation going on here.
Of course you, openleft can change that somewhat by your settings but still, I found I could see and figure out a hell of a lot by one look see on your site stats.

Why is this blog ring all using site meter and not another which has a better privacy policy?

NoSlaves.com  


The Economic Populist

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by: Robert Oak @ Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 16:15:58 PM CDT

It pays the rent (0.00 / 0)

Those cookies, whatever else you say about them, are the foundation of doing web advertising.

I agree with you about the privacy implications, but the revenue the advertising creates is what's supporting the medium right now.  Alternate models like fund-raising drives just don't work as well, and add to the work the owners of a blog need to do in order to keep up on the net.

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by: mbayrob @ Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 16:58:55 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

paying the rent (0.00 / 0)

You don't need tracking cookies or exposing webstats to do online marketing, targeting marketing, advertising.

I found stat counter, which has a strong privacy policy, not doing that and there are a series of other aggregators that have better policies.  Even google analytics isn't doing that one, although the fear of google eventually buying out the blogs is frightening in terms of online media consolidation (remember their China policy, along with Yahoo).

There is a way to democratize the Internets and generate revenue plus encourage more diverse participation without resorting to some of these techniques being used by this particular online stat company.

The idea of citizen journalists getting paid for their reporting via web ads and subscriptions models is a fantastic idea and no more immoral than say The Nation running a full page ad in their print magazine. 

The entire business model turns it all into a direct payment, bulk going to the writers themselves, kind of blows up the top down corporate payment, revenue structure, or could if positioned right.

But, this particular technique ain't good, especially in the age of the patriot act.

NoSlaves.com  


The Economic Populist

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by: Robert Oak @ Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 19:04:17 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Blogs as a farm system (4.00 / 1)

I for one think the existence of the large blogs has helped both bloggers and readers tremendously.  When we talk about the big group blogs, the biggest trend has been how commentors become front pagers, front pagers develop followings, and decide for a variety of reasons to split off an create their own blogs.

Having that following makes all the difference, since it means that you have a core of readers from the get-go. It's a system that gave us Kos (from MyDD), Steve Gilliard, RIP (from Kos), and OpenLeft (Chris and Matt, from MyDD).  There are many more examples of this.

It's still possible, although harder than it used to be, to start a blog from scratch with no built-in audience.  But having a way for people to develop their skills and a following is a great virtue of the big group blogs, and we owe a lot to them for that reason.

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by: mbayrob @ Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 17:06:10 PM CDT

Great panel, but a bit too blog-centric (4.00 / 1)

Chris--I really enjoyed your panel and did my best to liveblog the discussion (see http://www.techpresi...). I wonder, thought, if you framed the discourse too narrowly. My first question is about the stability of the structure of the top end of the political blogosphere is "compared to what? Is this new media system more or less open, or more or less stable and impenetrable, than earlier systems? If someone obscure can post something important and within hours or days have hundreds of thousands of readers and attendant impact, how can the word "establishment" really apply?

And what about all the non-blog tools that the read/write web supports, like social network sites and video? The read/write web of civic participation is much bigger than blogging alone. In the last year, we've seen how social network sites like MySpace or Facebook can be major drivers of attention and collaboration (for the ups and downs of both, see the Obama campaign). And we've also seen how one person can become a new kind of channel for video-based community (see the Hillary 1984 video or James Kotecki's emergence as a leading commentator on campaign web video). Traffic on the top political blogs may be stabilizing in part because of the stagnancy of the political moment, as Matt Stoller pointed out in his comments, but also because they aren't innovating with the new tools for communications as much as other newer and more nimble actors. I suspect a year from now someone reading about this discussion may marvel at how leading analysts of political blogging could have assumed that this dynamic medium had become so settled. Myself, I expect otherwise.

Micah Sifry

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by: Micah Sifry @ Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 17:07:28 PM CDT

What I think needs to be done on Blog titans like Kos (4.00 / 1)

I think there should be channels dividing the blogs up... Organizing.  Like how forums have different forum pages. 

-(Pres. Candidate) Channel
-(State) Channel
-US House Races Channel
-US Senate Races Channel
-General Information
-Blogosphere Infrastructure

That way I don't have to lay my eyes on a blog called "Hillary makes joke about her hair".  I swear, I wanted to kill somebody. 

Also, then I can check through subjects that are important to me and skip a lot of Bull _____. 

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by: JeremiahTheMessiah @ Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 18:34:43 PM CDT

Woops (0.00 / 0)

You said something about "Blog Theory and Evolution" and I stopped reading and wrote how I hope blogs will evolve.  It would be like having preset list of tags, to categorize the blogs, then be able to choose what tags show up on the front when you log on. 

It has nothing to do with your three questions I suppose. 

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by: JeremiahTheMessiah @ Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 18:38:06 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

A couple of obvious comments, and maybe not so obvious (0.00 / 0)

Hi all,

I think the questions Chris asks are good, but my responses are more general, though perhaps helpful.

1.  I'm slightly surprised at the plateau in progressive blog readership, but given the relationship between elections and attention to the blogoshpere, it will only be distressing if progressive blog readership does not again go up with the 2008 election cycle.  If in fact the blogs have held their readership since 2005 without a presidential election to pull people into the mix, that's actually something of a success in and of itself.  Once people actually get interested in the next election cycle, I would predict progressive blog readership to spike again.

2.  On the name "blogs":  I suspect that while most blog readers have some idea where the term comes from, most probably never or only rarely read an actual "blog" of the sort from which the term grew.  I might agree that the term is unfortunate as a label for those things that we now associate with it, but for the following:  there is such a mixed bag of form and content that is now part of the "blogosphere" that it would be hopeless to find a single, catchy term that meaningfully describes what all such entities have in common.  In a way, I suspect "blog" strikes the English-based mind as one of those etymology-free names that marketing gurus and brand managers tend to come up with to describe new products.  I can't say "blog" is an attractive sounding word, so I don't think it would have focus-grouped very well, but on the other hand, it is amorphous enough that it doesn't exclude or confuse when applied to new things, such as the Huffington Post, the TPM empire, or other hybrid format sites.  So I would not suggest spending much time trying to replace it.

3.  There is no doubt a lag being experienced at present between the quality of blogs and the audience for them.  Though I don't know how one could objectively measure this, anyone paying attention would notice that the content being provided by the blogosphere continues to get better (and more indispensable) every year.  So even if readership is stagnant, all signs point to the possibility of huge growth once the next wave of people become acquainted with them.

I would suspect that the thing that will make that next surge in readership a reality will be some campaign or event-driven movement where it becomes useful and important for more ordinary people to turn to the internet to read about what's going on.  In the sort of way that Dean's campaign made meet-up important to people who otherwise would not have found it, we'll find something that will be noticed by the MSM but which will make blogs critical to another audience.  Healthcare might be the thing, or else impeachment, or else ... .  But if blog quality keeps growing, and innovators such as yourselves and TPM and FDL keep pushing the envelope, something will catch fire, and the readership will follow.  So, unless the economic, technological, or legal underpinnings of the interwebs and blogs fall apart, I remain optimistic that your good work will be rewarded in political terms soon enough.

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by: Umpteenth @ Sat Aug 04, 2007 at 11:01:17 AM CDT

National and international blogs (0.00 / 0)

This was in a quasi sort of way addressed by the last question in the panel about spanish language outreach, but I do think it's a little curious how the blogosphere is so focused on states and nation-states. Which is to say that the blogosphere right now appears to mean the American blogosphere. Not to say that other countries don't get any attention, but that discussion always seems to take place within the terms of national foreign policy. And obviously, there are significant linguistic and political (politico-linguistic?) obstacles here. Still, does that have to be the case? I could certainly imagine a more robust exchange, say, with the blogosphere in Britain, or with the Atlantic world generally, or perhaps with other Anglophone communities abroad. Could a more global public sphere ever develop? It's a bit of a puzzle.

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by: inkybrain @ Sat Aug 04, 2007 at 23:28:02 PM CDT