Yes, blogs can create nice communities. (Thanks, by the way, for your hospitality this week.) Yes, blogs can help provide an important check on powerful (and sometimes irresponsible) media. Yes, blogs can help you sell your book on soccer when links to amazon are embedded in superflous sentences. But let’s not get too excited about the blogosphere’s political and social importance just yet. As this study shows, the audience for blogs is comparatively small for now. Therefore, I’m not so ready to say that this medium will revivify American democracy. True, it allows many people to rant, blowing off steam that might otherwise turn into dangerous passions. But, if we’re speaking calmly, it seems the blogs greatest contribution is to slightly expand the elite political discussion. For a long time, the circulation of opinion journals like TNR and NR had stagnated. But the biggest political blogs have expanded the readership of opinion to an audience that goes beyond those magazines. What does this mean? For starters, people want political opinion, but aren’t willing to pay for it. (Andrew’s gnarled fingers bleed in the production of opinion and you won’t pay, ungrateful swine!) Or possibly people have shortened attention spans. They’ll sit for the length of this post (are you still with me?), but they’re too busy and too ADD to sit for a 7,000 word essay in the Atlantic. If blogs lead people further into a world of political ideas, well, color me a booster. If the evidence shows that they come at the expense of other forms of reading, then let’s get hysterical.
By the way, I’m disappointed by the New York Times editorial on blogging. It really says nothing. The Times should be vociferously attacking the blogosphere. Blogging deserves a loyal opposition.
posted by Frank.
The Dish 