Worrisome trends in blogging

Today you get the companion post I promised last night.

I had planned on just doing the first part, which shows a trend among blogs that I found fascinating. But then the tail end of this piece came about thanks to an article linked from Bill Duvall and Duvafiles, written by Jennifer Harper in Tuesday’s Washington Times.

First things first, though. As most of you have likely noticed (those of you not reading through an RSS feed), at the left hand side of monoblogue I have a box that shows my influence ranking in the state of Maryland, according to BlogNetNews. I point this out not necessarily to show my ranking (currently #5) but to use the peer group I’m in as an example for my theories. For the record, here is the top 20 list:

1. Pocomoke Tattler
2. Salisbury News
3. PolitickerMD
4. Charles County Cafe
5. monoblogue
6. Worcester Right
7. Maryland Politics (better known as Red Maryland)
8. Maryland Moment
9. The Sun – The Session
10. The Main Adversary
11. Maryland Politics Today
12. Baltimore Reporter
13. The Dagger
14. Free State Politics
15. Inside Charm City
16. The No BS Zone
17. Lost On The Shore
18. Brian Griffiths
19. Maryland Politics Watch
20. On The Record

In this case, I’ll skip the links; they’re easily enough checked out through BlogNetNews. There were three key items I looked at among this group of websites.

One recent trend that you may not be able to notice just by the names is that the mainstream publishing media has gotten into the blogging business in a big way. Newspaper-related blogs, which rarely had a ranking when the process started last spring, make up 20% of the list this time around. PolitickerMD is a localized web publication of the New York Observer, Maryland Moment comes from the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun is behind their blog on the General Assembly session at #9, and On The Record is part of the Daily Record newspaper. A segment that used to be alternative media is now beginning to be co-opted by those entities who bloggers originally fought against, and they have a whole army of people who are paid to contribute new content.

A second item is the number and complexity of crossposts among several of those listed. It’s argued that the crossposting process games the ratings, and that might be true to an extent. I counted ten of the twenty who feature crossposts to at least another member in the rankings, at least that I’m aware of. Of any top twenty blog, Red Maryland probably has the most benefit since they receive input from 7 other bloggers and/or their contributors who reside in the ranking: Salisbury News, monoblogue, The Main Adversary, Maryland Politics Today, Baltimore Reporter, The No BS Zone, and Brian Griffiths. That tangled web can work through several other sites as well – P.K. Burns of Maryland Politics Today also contributes to Salisbury News along with Red Maryland, so his posts could be on four different sites simultaneously, counting BlogNetNews. It’s a lot of exposure, but perhaps it cannibalizes his own site to some degree.

However, to me the largest trend is that of consolidation. Of the sixteen Top 20 sites which aren’t newspaper-affiliated, at least seven of them have multiple contributors. I already mentioned Red Maryland, made up by 18 writers, but other examples are Baltimore Reporter, which weighs in with 11 co-authors, Salisbury News with seven contributors, and Charles County Cafe with seven as well. Other multi-writer sites are The Dagger, Free State Politics, and Maryland Politics Watch. I believe Pocomoke Tattler is a husband-and-wife team but couldn’t verify that.

In other words, I’m now in a minority position as some sites have recently picked up additional writers. Locally, Salisbury News has followed this example over the last six months in going from a solo outfit to seven writers. Obviously it allows for more frequent posting of content, and that drives readership to see a site more often. Meanwhile, the solo practicioners on the list have put up anywhere from 4 to 55 posts this month. That 55 figure is from Worcester Right, which generally is a news digest site. Without that, the average for March so far among this group is about 11 posts, or roughly one per day.

It does tend to prove what John Hawkins noted last night on the 1500 word theory, but in this case the more successful blogs tend to be collaborative and manage to succeed because they can put up a lot more stuff in the course of a day. Meanwhile, a contributor doesn’t need to have the fuss of posting something daily, which is hard to do for many people unless you really want to devote a chunk of time to it.

While I’m going to keep trying to be the exception which proves the rule, it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t take the right offer that came along to be part of a larger group, perhaps as a guest blogger. Right Wing News is an example, as John uses guest bloggers on weekends. They get increased readership and he gets weekends off. Most likely I’d keep this site running regardless, but there’s times a setup such as that sounds appealing.

All this may not matter a hill of beans though if the Washington Times story is correct. According to a Harris poll just 4 percent of people read political blogs daily, and the number is fewest among the younger set. (That shocked me.) Meanwhile, there’s 100,000 new competitors a day for my readership if you believe Technorati. Could it be that political blogging isn’t the hot new trend anymore? I’m not sure where people would move on to, but I think some of this stems from the fact that most political bloggers simply regurgitate talking points and stretch the truth for their own purposes instead of making the attempt to analyze policies and educate readers. Whether it’s fair to say it or not, our craft comes across as the wild, wild west, and the entry of newspapers and television networks as internet sources probably has hurt our readership as well. They do their own blogs, as I noted above, but those come with the legitimacy of the news organization behind it.

A shakeout might not be such a bad thing though. Once we get rid of the bad apples who simply exist to trash a person or their philosophy, the political side of the blogging world may get its respect back. I may not have the greatest readership numbers, but I think I do have the greatest readers because they usually can comment in a reasonable manner whether they agree or disagree. Eventually this could change when monoblogue is discovered by a much larger number of people, but for now the forum seems to run pretty well.

Unfortunately, the bad reputation that some bloggers give to all of us is going to haunt the genre for awhile longer. All of us have to work harder at being factual and accurate while still maintaining an edge – only then can we bring a larger share than 4% to those websites we work hard to maintain.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer. View all posts by Michael