The Evolution of the Political Blogosphere

Political blogging has changed a lot since I first started blogging six years ago. I first wrote about the changes in the blogosphere last July and received a lot of attention from that post. I rewrote that post into an essay, but I'm not sure what to do with it. So, here it is:  Download McKennaBlogEvo

My conclusion is that it has become very difficult for amateur bloggers to find a sizable audience anymore for several reasons:

1. Blogging is very time consuming. It's difficult for someone with a day job to compete with people who are hired by newspapers or journals, who have all day to find blog fodder and write thoughtful posts. Faced with that enormous competition and burnout, many amateur bloggers have dropped out.

2. The best amateur bloggers were absorbed by newspapers and journals. Once these bloggers became pros, they stopped linking to the amateur bloggers. I even have a little data on that subject.

3. People are trading links with Facebook and Twitter now. Amateur bloggers have quit and begun using those mediums instead.

4. Readers have migrated to the professional blogs. The professional bloggers have a built-in audience, because the newspapers can promote their blogs on their websites. Some professional blogs, such as the Huffington Post, have done even more serious damage.

Huffington Post has done much to change the old system of blogging. In December 2009, Huffington Post received 9.8 million readers. It is by far the most read political blog with readership surpassing the websites of traditional newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post. Huffington Post is not like the old-style blogs of 2004. The many authors primarily link to articles in the mainstream press or reproduce large portions of AP articles. Any original material comes from media and Hollywood celebrities, such as Paul Reiser, Alex Baldwin, or Martha Stewart. They rarely link to other bloggers and do not get the  ways and norms that greased the system in the old days. HuffPo has gained prominence not through reciprocity and community, but through old-fashioned media celebrity power, capital investment in a high powered website, and a staff of nameless drones that can provide links to the latest information quickly.

Why is this important?

Back in the early days of blogging, it was very popular to believe that the Internet acted as a leveling device. The Internet doesn’t care who your daddy is. It doesn’t care if you’re carrying around twenty extra pounds. It doesn’t know which graduate school you went to. Through the system of linkage of quality blog posts and a connected A-list, the Internet theoretically rewarded merit, hard work, humor, and originality.

However, the Internet has never lived up to its promise. The democratizing tendencies of the Internet have always been overstated. To write blog posts about politics, one needs a very high education level and a very high interest in politics. In his book, The Myth of Digital Democracy, Matthew Hindman points out that bloggers are an elite group. Hindman is correct to a degree. In our 2005 survey of bloggers, we found that 39 percent of bloggers had a BA, 33 percent had an MA, and 11 percent had a PhD, JD, or MD. Bloggers were always highly educated. However, these original independent bloggers were not a traditional elite; they were a lower echelon of elites, the Junior League of elites, and the blogs enabled these young, untenured professors and kids just out of Harvard to get attention for their ideas and research. With the changes in the blogosphere, the Internet no longer enables this Junior League to jump to the head of the pack. 

Anyhow, I just thought I would put this rough essay up on the blog. I see that Matt Ygelsias and Chris Bower were talking about this subject over the weekend.

One of the things that I love about blogging is that I can insert myself into a debate. As an unemployed academic stuck in the deepest depths of suburbia, I'm very much of an outsider. I'm a suburban mom who gets pizza for her kids on a Friday night. Nobody takes me seriously. But with my blog, I can get my two cents in now and then.There's no guarantee that my posts will be linked to and read beyond my circle of regular readers, but I feel better after I hit that "publish" button.

UPDATE: Henry Farrell responds to the data that I found that showed that pro bloggers link less to amateur bloggers.

Comments

[MH]

You have, subjectively, more interesting posts than Yglesias and, objectively, better copy editing.

[Russell Arben Fox]

Laura, thanks very much for making your paper available! It's great to see that old post of yours reworked into a lengthier format. I'll quote from it and link to it, as soon as Blogger starts working again...

Regarding feeling like an outsider, though I've found a place for myself in academia, it's still at the sort of institution that doesn't carry any kind of scholarly authority. So writing on my blog is for me, as it is for you, still an important way for me to feel, however minimally, part of the sort of conversations that I once trained myself to be a part of.

Oh, and MH is absolutely correct.

[Matt]

Any original material comes from media and Hollywood celebrities, such as Paul Reiser, Alex Baldwin, or Martha Stewart.

I think I've only read something from the Huffington Post a handful of times, and it's beyond me as to why I'd care about what Reiser or Baldwin thought about anything (I can imagine being at least mildly interested about what Steward thought about a few things), but my real question is whether people think this "original content" is really by "stars" like these. I know that many blog posts by politicians and even academic stars are ghost written. (I know one of the ghost writers.) I can imagine that happening here, but then, perhaps if you're a semi-star that no one otherwise would care about, this sort of thing helps one feel loved. Do you think Paul Reiser writes his own blog posts? (I'm skeptical that Martha Stewart does- she has more profitable things to do- but maybe Alec Baldwin doesn't.)

[Ragtime]

I agree with all of your points, but think that the main factor in the evolution -- that you only touch on marginally -- is that it went from "new" to "not new." Part of the great leveling/ democratization was that a newcomer didn't have to knock off an old established pro to become a top dog. There were also lots of niches that had not yet been filled.

Nowadays, it isn't enough to be a great mommy-blogger, because there are already a bunch of famous ones that the target audience is already reading. So it's not enough to be good at filling a niche, because there's not an empty niche anymore. You need to be a lot better than what's already there.

[laura (for bj)]

bj writes:

disagree that there aren't more voices now.

Are you arguing that there waa past when a larger group of bloggers had a larger audience (i.e. 1000 bloggers, each with 100 readers, while now, there are 10 blogs with a 99,000 readers, and 990 blogs with about 10 readers a piece, or something like that)?

Or, alternatively, are you arguing that there was a past when the 10 blogs with the 99,000 changed from time to time?

Or, more alternatively that it was possible for the 990 to move into the 10, but that doesn't happen anymore? If the last, I accept Ragtime's "new" argument. There is, for many things, a short period of time where the newcomer can move to the big time, just by being first. Eventually, you have to be better, and it's always hard to be better.

Oh, and why do I still think there are more voices? Because there still are bloggers with audiences of 10 who are willing to blog, and I find and read those. I can see that without the hope of reaching the big time, those voices might disappear. But as long as soft incentives (being heard, working through your own ideas, . . . ) motivate people to write, there will still many be voices out there.

(I rarely read TPM, Yglesias, or HufPost. I read your blog regularly).

[laura]

Thanks all for the pats on the back.

In the past, if you had some talent, you could start a blog and build up an audience of a few hundred in a week or two. Being linked to by a big name meant thousands of new people showing up. If Crooked Timber linked to something I wrote five years ago, that meant that 1,000 people would arrive. Now, 100 people show up with a Crooked Timber link. If an even bigger fish linked to me, 10,000 people would arrive. Every week, I would get at least one big surge of attention from links.

[somebody wants a snack. have to come back in a bit.[

[laura]

There are some excellent bloggers out there who aren't being read, because of the change in the linking patterns and because of the competition with professional bloggers.

Mommybloggers are somewhat different from the political bloggers. I can't think of any mommybloggers that were absorbed by major newspapers or journals. There are several who have become their own brand and are making an excellent living from ads and books. I get the sense that the mommybloggers are better about mutual linking than the political bloggers.

One commonalities between the political and the mommy blogs is that you can still do well if you have an expertise in a particular area. Pioneer Woman knows a lot about photography (a little gooey for my taste) and cooking (if you like meatloaf). That expertise + a photogenic husband + some airbrushing of realities of farm life + an expensive website = a rich blogger.

I have fairly reasonable traffic numbers and I treat this blog as a hobby, so I have no interest in changing things all that much. BUT if I did want to improve my numbers, I know what would help. I would include a photograph of myself on a straight hair day and improve the "about me" page. Switching back and forth between politics and everything else really doesn't work for most people. You guys aren't normal. Most people want their potatoes on one side of their plate and their meat on the other. I don't really know if I'm a stay at home mom or an egghead and that uncertainty shows on the blog. If I were a better blogger, I would have a more consistent persona and more consistent content.

I was fooling around a few weeks ago and just blogged 100-300 word posts and included a photograph. I blogged five times a day. My readership numbers slowly started to climb. I try to keep at that formula, but you all know that I can't blog all day. I've got other stuff in the hopper and the kids need attention.

[laura]

Oh wait, I lost my point on that last comment. My point was that it's a lot harder for good people to get found on the Internet than it used to be. I know I rarely read a new blog these days. I just don't have time. I read the same ones that I've read for five or six years. I read the NYT blogs, if they are highlighted on their website. If someone links to me, I will read his/her blog and I try to reciprocate when I can, but most bloggers don't do that. It's very time consuming.

I really love the idea that smart, interesting people can write stuff without having to jump through hurdles or to get hazed by old people. I hate hurdles and old people. I like meritocracies. I hate old boys clubs. Theoretically, the Internet can be the means for smart, hard working, clever, original people to avoid all that nonsense. In reality, the elite dominate the Internet as well.

[Ragtime]

Mommybloggers are somewhat different from the political bloggers. I can't think of any mommy bloggers that were absorbed by major newspapers or journals.

That was kind of my point, although I don't think I made it very well. Mommy bloggers weren't absorbed, but they followed (almost) the exact same trajectory as political bloggers that were. In terms of "mutual linking," I see it mostly to offensive NYT Style articles, or else to other big mommy bloggers (which is the same as Yglesias and Ezra Klein linking to each other, but would fall into the "mutual linking" category, because neither of the mommy bloggers work for the Washington Post.)

So, therefore, my conclusion is that absorption and additional resources and paid salaries aren't the major factors in the change in blogging -- it's a natural effect of blogging being older. "Has been blogging for seven years" is now a credential that can be used as short-hand for "worth checking out."