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June 20, 2005
Is The Left/Lib Blogosphere Overtaking the Right?
Jonathan V. Last in the latest Weekly Standard Newsletter notes that the liberal/left blogosphere is apparently outstripping the conservative side in readership. Last refers to liberal blogger Chris Bowers at MyDD, who has done some interesting analysis of the readership patterns in the blogosphere over the last few months. Bowers:
[In comparing] the national liberal blogosphere to the national conservative blogosphere, I would like to discuss a new phenomenon I see emerging. The left-wing blogosphere is beginning to decidedly pull away from the right wing blogosphere in terms of traffic. This is largely a result of the open embrace of community blogging on the left and the stagnant, anti-meritorious nature of the right-wing blogosphere that pushes new, emerging voices to the margins.
There's been some interesting discussion on this topic previously, and it's still not clear what Bowers' numbers mean. Does the fact that a lot of lib/left blogs allow posting of diaries and articles explain the increase in readership? And if it does, what is the actual effectiveness of that increase. I still place a lot of faith in the explanation that the lib/left side already has a voice...has had multiple voices, as a matter of fact--in the MSM and academia for example.
I'm not sure if I agree with Bowers' assertion that the main conservative blogs' lack of comments is stifling new conservative blog voices. From my own low perch, I have observed bloggers such as Decision '08, The Anchoress, and The Strata-Sphere garner very significant traffic in a short time, traffic that I think is based solely on the quality and consistency of their analysis.
In short, I continue to believe that blogs have effectively done much more for conservatives than lib/leftists.
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» Right vs Left Blogging from The Strata-Sphere
The Strata-Sphere marks its one month anniversary on June 18th, and it is interesting that there is a huge discussion going on about which blogging community is more dynamic and more successful. Patrick Ruffini has been debating Chris Bowers on this ... [Read More]
Tracked on June 21, 2005 10:19 PM
Comments
How many of the comments posted to liberal blogs are posted by conservatives? The Bernoulli Effect is the only conservative blog I visit. Why bother reading a bunch of blogs that say stuff you agree with?
I would hazard a guess that a fair amount of the traffic that Bowers boasts of is actually conservatives commenting with counter-arguments on liberal blogs. That's what I spend (too much of) my time doing.
It's such an obvious point I'm a little surprised (or perhaps I'm not) that it wasn't at least mentioned in his "analysis". Sounds to me like someone came across some numbers that looked like they proved a point he wanted to make, and that was the end of the analysis.
Did you know that over 73% of statistics are made up on the spot?
Posted by: Jim Voigt at June 21, 2005 11:29 AM
Thanks for the mention! I am not sure I deserve the company you placed me with (or should I say they deserve me), but I honestly believe the right is more open, respectful and supportive of the individual - no matter how much we disagree with each other.
Posted by: AJStrata at June 21, 2005 04:12 PM
AJ: I agree. My totally unresearched opinion is, while there are nasty ad hominists on the right, the left wins hands down.
Jim Voight: Thanks for the kind words--the thought of actually having loyal readers still boggles my mind!
Posted by: Jeff at June 21, 2005 07:13 PM
I am so new to this I find it impossible to get through all the excellent posts across the right side of the blogospere. I run through the Coalition of The Chillin's blog roll daily and ask myself "who am I kidding". My only wish is the second and third tier blogs like us woudl get more link recognition from the big name conservative blogs.
Posted by: AJStrata at June 21, 2005 10:22 PM
I apparently am newer than you are. I'm just trying to find decent blogs. Where do you go to find the "big name" blogs? Is there a place to search for blogs?
Posted by: Jim Voigt at June 23, 2005 12:14 PM
