The Niche Bloggers v. The Generalists

I was just watching Ann Althouse and Dan Drezner talk about Steven Bainbridge's decision to stop blogging about general interest punditry and set up a blog that focuses on his academic specialty of business law. Ann and Dan thought that this was a bad move. They felt that most bloggers don't want to read about the same old thing every day and instead prefer to read about a variety of topics and to get to know the quirks and personality of the blogger.

I disagree. Niche bloggers are operating very successfully within the blogosphere along side the generalists, though in completely different circles. The specialists have gathered good sized audiences. A few of them have readership that rivals Dan and Ann. Because reporters are always looking for expert sources to comment on stories, these niche bloggers have also been widely quoted in the mainstream press. Specialization with real knowledge and skills to back up their posts have given them a great deal of credibility. With the enormous competition among the generalist bloggers who know something about Project Runway (Laura should have won), these specialists have a real edge.

In fact, I wrote a whole paper on Policy Bloggers for the recent American Political Science Association Conference.

Excellent examples of niche bloggers include the bloggers who so graciously helped me with my paper:

Elizabeth at A Half Changed World
PZ Myers at Pharyngula
Prof. Goose at The Oil Drum
Brad Wilcox at Family Scholars Blog
Jeff McIntire-Strasburg at Sustainablog
Andrew Rotherham at Eduwonk
Matthew Holt at The Health Care Blog
David Hardy at Arms and the Law
Doug Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy

UPDATE: Links fixed.

Comments

[luolin]

I'm all for niche bloggers, but I have to admit that I am often intellectually lazy and read the science blogs, including PZ, more for their generalist posts.

[Elizabeth]

And I don't really think of myself as a specialist. Some recurring themes, certainly, but there's a lot of the "rest of life" that's in my subheading.