Observations on blogging

I thought this would be a pretty good time to weigh in on recent events. Apparently a local blogger was invited to speak to a small conference on bloggers and political influence, with accounts of attendance ranging from 18 to 30. In other words, it was smaller than a normal meeting of the Wicomico County Republican Club to which I belong.

But that’s all well and good, since generally a City Council meeting won’t draw a large number of outsiders nor do County Council meetings; that is unless there’s a significant issue on the table. For the most part there’s not although the downzoning debate in County Council was a recent exception to the rule.

So let’s look at what coverage generally occurs at these meetings. By law, regular meetings of these bodies have to be open to the public, with some exceptions granted for discussing personnel issues. Thus, in theory, anyone can go to and blog about these meetings. Then the question becomes whether the post will be strictly reporting, strictly opinion, or a combination of both. In my case, when I cover a meeting or forum I try for about an 80-20 mix of reporting to opinion; however, everyone’s style is different.

That covers reporting after the fact. Certainly there’s public input or outcry to actions taken at a meeting regardless of the source they heard the news of the proceedings from; however, in many cases it’s too late to do anything about the issue. Nor is it a given that bloggers have anything to do with changing policy – after all, the last major change in county government was adopting the revenue cap and County Executive form of government and both of these came well before anyone’s blog had large enough readership to even claim to make a difference.

I was kind of curious about the extent of influence bloggers have, but the closest I could find in a short time of research was this study by the Pew Institute last year regarding the 2008 election. In it, they determined 6 percent of Americans “go online to engage politically on a daily basis.” That, by the way, is the internet in general – not blogs specifically.

So if you figure Salisbury is typical America – even if this blogger has enough pull to double the average amount – he’s influencing about 1,000 adults in our community. Admirable, but in all but strictly local races not enough to make a difference. Nor is the influence all in his favored direction – after all, his personality and writing style could repel as well as attract. It’s true with any blogger; certainly I may harden some on the opposite end of the political spectrum when I present the facts as I interpret them.

I’m under no illusion that I’m going to sway opinion in anywhere near the fashion that the mainstream media does. It’s a combination effort of hundreds or thousands of bloggers who repeat the information they receive (or report on their own in some cases) and add their spin to it which begins to turn the wheels of politics. I’m pleased that most of the time I have more well-known bloggers like Michelle Malkin or Joe Farah (of WorldNetDaily) generally on my side; conversely the contributors to Daily Kos or Huffington Post pull in the opposite direction.

But aside from those national examples with hundreds of thousands of readers a week, most bloggers will toil in relative obscurity and exaggerate their self-importance and influence in extreme cases. It doesn’t mean we’re going to stop trying, but sometimes a reality check is required.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.

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