The Wall Street Journal has a new survey on blog readership and if you assume it’s awesome let’s quickly tell you: not really…The paper reports:
Two-fifths of Americans who are online have read a political blog, and more than a quarter read them once a month or more, according to a recent Harris Interactive poll.
Still, 56% of the public has never read a political blog and only 7% of online adults have posted a comment, according to the poll.
Of online adults who have posted comments on a political blog, 21% have posted 10 times or more in the past year. Half have posted between two and five times and 20% have posted only once.People who identify themselves as Liberals are mostly likely to post comments to political blogs (28%); Moderates (17%) and Republicans (17%) were least likely.
The bottom line is what we’ve politely hinted at before: blogging is a new frontier.
It has great potential. But the majority of Americans are not sitting at their computers reading political blogs. Many of us would certainly wish this was the case: in case you haven’t figured it out, the people who write these blogs on the left, in the center and on the right basically don’t make money on them, although the bigger ones do make some Big Bux on blog ads.
Speaking of which: If you notice we have a TIP JAR on the left. Our bandwith costs are enormous and we may have to shut down this site unless readers help, so if you want a voice of Truth, Perspective, Reason — then you probably have to do an internet search…I MEAN…leave a tip in our jar. SERIOUSLY, we don’t know what to do about this bandwith problem. We haven’t slept in 20 days.
PS: The above is crap — but if it worked for Andrew Sullivan, why can’t it work for me?
We digressed:
Blogs are a new form of citizen journalism so bloggers shouldn’t be discouraged because of what this poll shows. Nor should they fall into the old pattern of now saying this poll is flawed, etc. People tend to embrace polls they agree with and try to discredit those they don’t. The bottom line is that blogging is indeed “hot stuff” in journalism schools, to the media — and it’s growing in readership and influence.
This poll adds a little bit of humility to us all. (Of course, TMV is always humble as angry readers on the right and left vow never to return every time he takes a side they don’t like). Blogs are today highly influential with a good, solid-starting base of readership but what you read here (and elsewhere) is unlikely to change the world. Yet.
PS: Remember my bandwith problem, OK?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.