The Role of Blogs in the Political Media

Matthew Stempeck GVPT Honors Program

May 2006 University of Maryland
 Table of Contents

Introduction
PART I.

The Traditional is Changing

Chapter 1. The Mainstream Media
Chapter 2. The Rise of Blogs

PART II.

Blogs & the Media

Chapter 3. Blogs as Complementary to Traditional Journalism
Chapter 4. The Mainstream Media’s Reaction to Changing Times
Chapter 5. Blogs as an Autonomous Media Entity

PART III.

Blogs & Politics

Chapter 6. Blogs & Politics

Conclusion
Appendices

2
I. The Traditional is Changing
Introduction

On April 11, 2006, Vice President Dick Cheney emerged from the Washington

Nationals’ dugout wearing a Nationals jacket to throw out the first pitch of the team’s

second season. But “from the moment he stepped on the field until he jogged off” the

Vice President “drew boisterous boos” in a “derisive greeting was surprisingly loud and

long” (Argetsinger et al. 2006). The crowd’s reaction was likely a reflection of the city’s

political leanings1 or Cheney’s months of consistently low approval ratings (“Poll: Bush

Low, Congress Lower” 2006).2 Yet in the Washington Post’s online coverage, columnist

David Nakamura attributed the boos to Cheney’s pitch:

The first pitch of the Washington Nationals’ second season at Robert F. Kennedy
Memorial Stadium was low and away, bouncing in the dirt before being scooped up by
catcher Brian Schneider. For that, Vice President Cheney received a round of boos
from the home crowd this afternoon. But the catcalls didn't last long before the fans
cheered for the Nationals…[emphasis added]
(Nakamura 2006, “Cheney’s Pitch…”)

Armed with multiple versions of digital video clips uploaded from televised

broadcasts clearly proving Cheney was booed well before he threw the pitch, liberal

bloggers sprung into scandal mode. Only hours after the story was uploaded to the Post’s

website, John Aravosis posted the headline “Washington Post whitewashes story critical

of Cheney” on his popular AMERICABlog. Aravosis cited his argument with a link to

what he thought was a reporter’s “pool report”, or the raw notes reporters share with

others who could not be in attendance. The report was in actuality a joke on the

1
Bush and Cheney received only 9% of Washington, D.C.’s vote in 2004.
2
According to Harris Interactive Polls published in the Wall Street Journal, Cheney had a 30% approval
rating from November 2005 through January 2006 (“Poll: Bush Low, Congress Lower” 2006). A CBS poll
conducted in November, 2005 found Cheney’s approval rating to be even lower, at 19% (“Bush's Job
Approval Hits New Low” 2005).

3
Wonkette blog (“Cheney Booed” 2006). Aravosis then accused the Post of attempting to

“continually rewrite history in the Bush administration's favor” (Aravosis, 2006).

The scandal was picked up by Jane Hamsher on her blog Firedoglake, who

provided links to the video clip as well as the Post’s ombudsman’s email address and the

Post’s blog, telling her readers, “You know the drill” (Hamsher 2006). Hamsher’s

readers jumped into the debate, as did other bloggers. Audience members shared links to

other media companies’ coverage of the incident, improved video and audio clips,

conducted a Lexis Nexis search on Nakamura’s other pieces (finding no incriminating

evidence), expressed their disappointment with the Post and the rest of the mainstream

media, expressed their optimism regarding their watchdog activities, and generally

mocked Cheney (Hamsher 2006). The Think Progress blog also argued that Fox News

had intentionally muted the crowd’s reaction in its broadcast (“VIDEO” 2006).

In the following day’s print edition of the Post, the incident had been moved from

the lede to the 17th paragraph. Nakamura had rewritten the controversial account to read:

Vice President Cheney threw out the ceremonial first pitch, a right-handed toss that
bounced in the dirt to the outside of the plate before being scooped up by catcher Brian
Schneider. Cheney, booed by some as he walked to the mound, got even more catcalls
after his throw -- a far cry from President Bush's fastball at last year's home opener.
(Nakamura 2006, “Fans’ Rally Cry”)

Nakamura explained to Howard Kurtz, the Post’s Media Notes columnist:

I did not mean to imply that's the only time he was booed. For my quick online story, I
mistakenly left out the broader context, assuming people knew Cheney was a
controversial figure. After hearing from online readers, I then added more context for my
story in [Tuesday's] actual newspaper.
(Dara 2006)

In comparison to the major news events that have introduced the word ‘blog’ to

millions of Americans – Trent Lott’s resignation as Senate Majority Leader, Howard

Dean’s meteoric rise from dark-horse to favored candidate in the Democratic primaries,

4
Dan Rather’s early retirement as anchor of CBS Evening News - this event is relatively

meaningless. But this incident resonates because it shows how political blogs have

fundamentally altered the accountability of the mainstream media, how journalists and

politicians operate and how society determines which version of an event is reported as

reality.

Whether Nakamura’s oversight was sloppy reporting or an example of bias, blogs

immediately noted the error and pressured the Post for its redress. The remainder of the

mainstream media, including the Associated Press, Washington Times, Agence France-

Presse, United Press International and Fox Sports, had reported the incident more

accurately and the bloggers and their audiences took concrete actions against the one

source misleading the audience. The mass availability of primary sources online – from

video clips of Cheney’s pitch to eyewitness accounts on blogs – ensured that those who

were not in attendance at the game were no longer limited to accepting the mainstream

media’s account of an event as truth.

In his acclaimed book, The Image, historian Daniel J. Boorstin notes that the

American news media have transitioned from gathering and reporting the news to

creating it (1961, 7). The mass media holds the enormous power of recording history

through their coverage, and deciding which stories are ignored, and thus never happened

as far as the vast majority of the populace is concerned. But for the first time, some in

the audience are using blogs to usurp the mainstream media’s gatekeeper status. Former

Washington Post Publisher Philip Graham once referred to journalism as “the first rough

draft of history” (Simpson 1988) and the audience now has the tools to help revise the

final edition.

5
 Incidents such as Cheney’s ballpark appearance also herald a decline in the

amount of control a politician can exert over his or her public image. Boorstin argues

that politicians quickly mastered the skills necessary to capitalize on the media’s constant

need for fresh information. For example, Senator Joseph McCarthy used the media to

stay in the headlines by holding and delaying several press conferences each day,

providing reporters with a constant stream of news. Politicians feed the news media’s

need for content with bait, such as confidential leaks, in return for coverage and increased

control over their public image.

Political blogs can foil the symbiotic relationship between the media and

politicians. If, hypothetically, Cheney’s office had used political pressure to coerce the

Post into slanting its coverage, blogs could serve as a public watchdog, because they are

not as dependent on Cheney’s office for access to news. Political blogs rely on a

multitude of independent sources to monitor the media and politicians to ensure that what

actually happens is reported. The rapid reaction from a small section of the liberal

blogosphere is evidence of an active citizen media that serves as both a check on the

mainstream media and an additional layer of oversight for those in power.

The liberal bloggers’ reaction to this incident also highlights some causes for

concern regarding the influence of political blogs. The speed with which the bloggers

and their audiences posted their ideological rhetoric suggests they were only waiting for

such an occasion. Aravosis’s mistake in considering Wonkette’s joke as a legitimate

primary source was also most likely the result of a rush to post and illustrates the

potential for danger in the blogosphere’s unedited discourse. In the meantime, the uncivil

extremity of some of the comments contradicts praise of the blogosphere as an ideal

6
public sphere of democratic deliberation. Those bloggers and commenters who

immediately accused the Post of broad conspiracies did so before they could see that the

print edition featured another column (ironically called “Reliable Source”) which

reported the story correctly.3

Columbia School of Journalism professor James Carey wrote in 1988 that the

introduction of new technologies “prompts both utopian and dystopian projections”

(Carey 1988; qtd. in Park 2003). The introduction of blogs has been no exception to this

pattern. In the past few years there has been a great deal of hype as well as a backlash

over the potential of blogs to change society:

Some assert that blogging will create nothing less than a new public sphere and a
radical, democratic reordering of the flow of information. Others look at the new
politically-oriented blogging and fear that blogs represent the end of journalistic traditions
(objectivity, social responsibility) that they believe have protected U.S. democracy in the
past.
(Park 2003)

But moving beyond all of the hype, and acting in spite of a backlash, blogs are altering

the public’s relationship with the media and political leaders.

The ease with which an individual can create a blog has led to an explosion of the

medium into a plethora of different formats. In less than a decade, the number of blogs

has risen astronomically, skyrocketing from under fifty in 1998 (Blood 2000) to an

estimated 36.4 million sites in April, 2006 (“About Technorati,” 2006). More than

75,000 new blogs are created each day and the entire blogosphere has doubled every six

months since 2003 (Burns 2006).4 One caveat is that not all of these are active sites; one

study has found that as many as 2/3 of blogs at popular hosting sites have been

abandoned by their authors (Lampa 2004).

3
(see Argetsinger, et al., quoted in second sentence)
4
For charts illustrating the growth of the blogosphere, see Appendices A and B.

7
 The personal diary format of early blogs has evolved into a personal tone in

covering other topics, including business, technology, travel, war and a wide variety of

other subjects. Exactly what constitutes a weblog, or blog, has been discussed

extensively. Ultimately, however, blogs are a new type of expressive mode that may

resist simple, one-size-fits-all definitions. Similar to list-servs, message boards, and other

previous forms of online communication, blogs take many shapes and sizes.” Daniel

Drezner, political science professor at the University of Chicago, provides one

sufficiently broad description, however: “A weblog is defined…as a web page with

minimal to no external editing, providing on-line commentary, periodically updated and

presented in reverse chronological order, with hyperlinks to other online sources” (Drezner et

al. 2004, 5).

Millions of citizens have started blogs and found communities of other people

with similar interests to participate in their discussions. The conversational features

blogs provide include links to other websites or sources, as well as a number of ways for

readers to comment. This communal architecture is crucial to the concept of the

blogosphere, “a “media ecosystem”, an emergent “biosphere” of bloggers, journalists,

and citizens co-creating a “living, breathing” environment where each blogger exists in a

symbiotic relationship with other bloggers” (Vieta 2003). The term ‘blogosphere’ refers

to the entire interconnected network of blogs or subsets of this network, with the political

blogosphere referring to only political blogs, for example.

Debate over the essential definition of blogs in their many mutations has

overshadowed a more significant development: political blogs have become an integrated

part of the national discourse and are positioned at a critical juncture in the future of

political communications. They represent the intersection between cutting edge

8
technology and America’s oldest institutions. Many newspaper companies and

politicians have been slow to adapt to rapid changes brought on by the Internet, but the

political blogosphere has become an evolutionary agent forcing traditional political and

media elites to adapt to an era where the audience has gained considerably more control.

This thesis will analyze the degree of influence political blogs have exerted over

traditional political elites and mainstream media coverage of political issues. Chapter 2

explains the origin of current frustrations with the mainstream media. Specifically, it

describes three trends in the mainstream media’s evolution – gatekeeper mentality,

corporate culture, and ownership concentration – that have hindered the media’s

successful adaptation to a new communications environment and indirectly led to the rise

of blogs.

Chapter 3 provides the context for the rise of political blogs by framing it as part

of a broader communications revolution, a revolution fueled by digital tools that

empower amateurs to create professional quality media content and the Internet that

allows them to freely distribute this information. The chapter also gives a short history of

the rise of blogging. Chapter 4 examines that interaction between blogs and the

mainstream media from a variety of angles, such as how blogs complement existing

media operations, and also how blogs occasionally become autonomous media entities.

The section also considers the inherent limits of blogs’ media influence, including the

mainstream media’s reaction to blogs.

Finally, Chapter 5 considers the role of political blogs and the Internet in

changing the state of U.S. politics, including the implications of blogs’ media influence

as well as their influence on political campaigns. The chapter also describes a number of

9
limitations on blogs’ political influence, such as attempts to politically co-opt them and

the lingering possibility of regulation by the Federal Election Commission.

10
1. The Traditional News Media

Introduction

In the 1960’s, television news was in fine form. America’s rapid adoption of

television throughout the 1950’s reached a tipping point when the medium became a

power-granting force in the 1960 televised Presidential debates between Richard Nixon

and John F. Kennedy. The major news networks lead anchors’ were among the most

trusted sources in America, and the investigative reporting of newspapers such as the

Washington Post took down a corrupt President.

Forty-six years later there is widespread distrust and frustration with the

mainstream media (“Media Credibility Declines” 2004). Newspaper circulation is down,

newsroom staffs have been ravaged, and massive consolidation has occurred, rendering

the mainstream media ripe for attack by all sorts of online outfits. This chapter will

explain the origin of frustrations with traditional media companies, most notably three

trends in the evolution of the traditional news media – gatekeeper mentality, corporate

culture, and ownership concentration – that have hindered successful adaptation in an era

of fundamental change and rapid technological development.

One does not have to search long online to find criticism of the mainstream

media, be it attacks on individual columnists or the entire cultural institution. Such

criticism may be the one topic that surpasses the glorification of blogging. The

politically-based critiques of the media are predictable. The political right attacks what

they see as liberal bias in purportedly objective news outlets and the political left argues

that the corporate culture leads to internal censorship. Cultural theorist Stuart Hall

11
describes these pressures as “powerful countervailing decoding patterns – left and right –

that battle with the encoding provided by the media system” (Hall et al. 1978). But these

complaints have been supplemented by frustrations that transcend party lines.

Republicans, Democrats, and Independents find themselves in agreement that blogs and

other publication tools born of new communication technologies are excellent

supplements to shortcomings in traditional media sources. The old mantra is that the

mass media both reflects and affects politics, society, and culture (Biagi 2005, 11). New

media advocates argue that today the mass media does too much affecting and not

enough reflecting.

The word ‘media’ is the plural of ‘medium’, the channel a sender uses to send a

message to a receiver. The phrase ‘mass media’ implies that the message is being sent to

a large audience. The term can include books, films, recordings, magazines, the Internet,

newspapers, radio, and television. This chapter will focus primarily on those traditional

mass media essential to political news: newspapers, radio, and television. The

mainstream news media is made up of the major media companies that produce and

deliver the news. It consists of the major national television networks (ABC, CBS, FOX,

NBC), their local affiliate stations, cable news stations (CNN, MSNBC, Fox News), and

major newspapers (the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA

Today), and to a lesser extent, major news periodicals (Time, Newsweek). The term

‘mainstream media’ refers to the most popular news outlets as well as an objective,

neutral approach to reporting the news.

The Evolution of the Mainstream News Media

12
 The modern history of the traditional news media can be told through three major

trends: historical control of production, concentration of ownership across markets and

industries, and a corporate culture. These developments represent the majority of the

complaints about the mainstream media’s current state and are blamed for obstructing its

continued evolution in the Internet age.

Historical Control of Production

Many of the grievances with today’s mainstream news media stem from the elitist

attitude and condescending tone of many news broadcasts and articles. Michael

Cornfield at the Pew Internet & American Life Project report writes, “For decades the

dominance of mass media have inculcated a sense of spectatorship among the citizenry”

(Cornfield “Presidential Campaign” 2004, 10). The ‘sense of spectatorship’ can be

partially explained by the limits of existing mass mediums. Radio, television and

newspapers are primarily one-way communication channels in that the receiver cannot

send feedback on the same medium. Messages are simply broadcasted into homes.

Today the Internet allows instantaneous messages to be sent as well as simultaneous

feedback return, making it an interactive medium.

Hundreds of years of control of production have created an ingrained gatekeeper

mentality where those in control of the mass media construct reality by determining what

is important enough to be shared and how it is framed for the audience. The mainstream

media sets the agenda, telling the audience not necessarily what to think, but what and

who to think about (Biagi 2005, 257). Dorris Graber writes that “On an average evening

somewhat more than half of the stories on each major television network represent

unique choices. The figures are slightly lower for print media” (Graber, 100). Hall found

13
that the mainstream media reproduces dominant ideologies. As Bryan Murley interprets,

“Even as various news outlets produce somewhat different outlooks on the news, all of

these outlooks exist within ‘certain distinct ideological limits’” (Murley 2005).

This power of production has existed for centuries. For most of history, literacy

itself was a privilege of the upper classes who could afford private tutors. Even after

literacy spread, one had to literally own a press or have access to one to publish anything

on a large scale. The idea of the press as a powerful “fourth estate” elevated above the

public dates to Thomas Carlyle’s history of the French Revolution, published in 1837

(Carlyle 1837).

In the U.S., President Lincoln originated the practice of accreditation, where the

government certifies members of the press to cover government news events, such as

military news (Biagi 2005, 245). This enhanced the professionalism of journalism.

Accredited reporters were required to carry press passes distinguishing them from

ordinary citizens.

The lofty tone and role of the press was inherited by radio broadcasting in the early 20th

Century. Consumers bought a radio and gathered around it to listen to what the

broadcasters had to say. The concept of a call-in show was not created until years later

and even then offered a select few the chance to speak.

Television broadcasting further enhanced the mainstream media’s control of

production. The three original radio stations – ABC, CBS, and NBC – became the first

three national television networks. Thomas Lifson, in a commentary posted on the

influential Real Clear Politics blog, suggests that television significantly contributed to

the concept of a “mainstream media”, because the original limitations of a three-channel

14
medium forced each network to align itself where the most viewers were – the

ideological center (Lifson 2006). More extreme political viewpoints on either side were

not given much attention. An alternative press emerged in the 1960’s in an attempt to

voice these views, but its circulation came nowhere close to the mass audience television

had quickly accrued.

The Presidential election of 1960 is widely considered the Television Election, in

that it was the first election where television played a pivotal role in deciding the election,

as viewers nationwide saw a fresh-looking, made-up John F. Kennedy square off in

televised debate against a grisly Richard Nixon, 5 o’clock shadow and all. The golden

age of televised news broadcasts in the 1960s and 1970s saw television’s political power

grow even stronger. Investigative reporting questioned a war sustained by lies and

broadcast video of its human costs to Americans watching at home. Millions of viewers

lost faith in their government and placed it instead in their nightly news anchor Walter

Cronkite ("Poll: Trust in corporations waning" 2002).5

The power of the mass media was at a zenith. But today new tools have allowed

citizens to become more selective about their news and how they consume it. In such a

climate entrenched attitudes become obstacles to the industries’ survival. A 2004 Pew

Research Center report found a decline in credibility ratings for a wide variety of news

sources in recent years. Mainstream media outlets such as CNN, major network

broadcasts, the Wall Street Journal, and local newspapers have all dropped significantly

in credibility ratings (“News Audiences…” 2004).

5
An Oliver Quayle and Co. survey 1972 gave Cronkite a "trust index" of 73%, higher than the average
member of Congress and President Nixon. In the second Phillip-Sindlinger survey in 1974, he was found
to be the most-trusted television newsman.

15
 It is increasingly not a question of the capacity of mainstream journalism to adapt

to the new media environment, but rather the willingness. A report by the Nieman

Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University warns: “Traditional news media are not

yet willing to adapt to the principals of the environment in which they find

themselves…Bureaucratic inertia, hierarchical organizational structure and a legacy

mentality have paralyzed many news organizations from developing a meaningful

strategy in this dynamic information age” (Bowman et al. 2005). Thomas Edsall, a

political reporter for the Washington Post, admits “there is an orthodoxy to our thinking”

(Rosen, “There is an Orthodoxy…”, 2004). Journalism Professor and Media

Commentator Jay Rosen describes this established mode of thought among journalists as

PressThink, “a strange energy…holding smart people to dumb practices” (Rosen,

“PressThink…”, 2003).

The gatekeeper mentality of traditional journalism manifests itself in a variety of

ways. The mainstream media flock to the same stories its competitors publish in what is

known as ‘herd mentality’ or ‘pack journalism’ (Crouse 1973). An example of this is

what some journalists considered the over-emphasis on the two candidates’ military

records in 2004 Presidential campaign coverage (“Journalists Not Satisfied…”, 2004).

This phenomenon can work in reverse as well: A Harvard case study demonstrated how a

lack of attention paid to Trent Lott’s racist comments led other journalists to similarly

view it as a non-story (Scott 2004). The result is a spotlight on a limited few stories

while others are left untouched.

Those who were once the whistleblowers have increasingly become part of the

establishment. Embedded journalists receive unprecedented access to the war in Iraq

16
only by accepting very strict limits on what they can report ("CFLCC Ground Rules"

2006). Reporters become insiders to gain access to sources and scoops, and end up

withholding important information from not only their readers, but even their editors

(VandeHei et al. 2005).

All of this professional arrogance comes at the expense of the participation and

interaction of the audience. The news industry became comfortable in control of content

creation and knowledge dissemination and did not seriously respond to feedback from its

customers – a taboo in any business. Corrections are printed deep in the next day’s

newspaper, far from the original culprit. Criticism of a publication’s work is selectively

chosen before it is printed, and even then in limited doses. Television and radio

programs rarely offer any feedback opportunity other than writing a letter. The power of

the press and complete control of the radio and television airwaves has led to a media that

dictates the news to the nation.

Corporate Culture in the Newsroom

Every newspaper company is comprised of two halves. One half is the editorial

side, which writes all of the news stories and publishes the paper. The other half is the

business side, which consists of accounting, advertising, and sales. Many feel that the

business side of operations has gained too much control over the direction of mainstream

media companies at the expense of their futures.

The goal of news media companies has always been financial success.

Newspapers, radio, and television are supported primarily by advertising revenues.

Newspaper and broadcasting companies report profits of about 10% a year, double that of

the average manufacturing company (Biagi 2005, 13).

17
 The corporate side of the mainstream news industry is blamed for a number of

problems, but the financial-minded approach to news companies does have advantages.

Profits in other areas can support money-losing but vital investigative research. The

division of labor between departments in large companies allows specialization of

writing, ad sales, legal protection, and other areas. Investments can bring new features

and readers.

The critiques of corporate culture in the newsroom are based on both financial

and ideological issues. Financially, news companies face unrealistic expectations form

investors. Media outlets usually yield high profits, making them good investments, but

the need to constantly maintain and expand profit margins in capitalism has outpaced the

market. An article by American Journalism Review finds that even financially successful

newspapers are facing uncertain futures:

“The perverse irony of [the Beacon Journal’s] current troubles is that it remains financially
healthy. By some measures, in fact, it’s booming. In an analysis…Morgan Stanley & Co.
estimated that the Beacon Journal would make $21.6 million in 2005 on revenue of $103
million…a spectacular margin by the standards of other industries, but apparently not
enough for investors who’ve come to expect even higher profit returns from newspapers.”

(Farhi 2006, 29)

This intense financial pressure has led to what Rosen calls the strain of Absolute

Commercialization, “a dark force in journalism, a hollower out” (Rosen, “PressThink…”,

2003). Newsroom employment has trended down in three of the last 4 years, the second

worst period in the 28 years such statistics have been tracked. The worst period was

during a period of general economic recession in 1991-1993, but today the recession is

only in the news industry (Farhi 2006, 28).

18
 Financial support, the biggest advantage of commercialization, has dried up.

Parent companies have reacted to poor performance in the newspaper industry by taking

a more conservative financial approach. They have cut workforces and capital funding of

their newspapers in response to slumping profits. Newsroom cuts are further decreasing

the quality of print journalism. The Philadelphia Inquirer’s once prestigious foreign news

coverage has been whittled down to one foreign correspondent and a reduced library

staff. Cost-cutting has also brought the resignations of several major editors, the end of

Tribune, Co.’s famous City News wire service, and what Bill Keller, Executive Editor of

the New York Times calls “a sapping of our collective wisdom and experience” (Farhi

2006, 28).

Responding to lost revenues with layoffs and cuts in resources can become self-

perpetuating as more readers are driven away. The Hartford Courant’s reader

representative columnist Karen Hunter pointed out that rather than increasing efficiency,

“job cuts are getting close to the bone” (Farhi 2006, 29). Conrad Fink, a former

Associated Press executive adds “We’re close to the point, if not beyond it, of

diminishing returns. Readers are saying the paper is not worth the time to devote to it”

(Farhi 2006, 28).

A strategy of financial cutbacks rather than reinvestment is seen by many as

shortsighted and potentially devastating in the long term. The Project for Excellence in

Journalism’s State of the News Media 2005 warned that older media sectors focused on

profits and stock prices do so “at the expense of building the new technologies that are

vital to the future” (“The State of the News Media 2005”, 2005). Gillmor credits the

unique ownership structures of the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street

19
Journal for withstanding pressure from investors in considering the long-term

ramifications of their decisions (Gillmor “We The Media” 2004, 6).

The output of the newspaper industry is important because much of televised and

online news content is based on the original reporting done by print journalists. A study

by the Project for Excellence in Journalism has found that despite an ever-increasing

number of news sources, the number of actual reporters in the field has sharply declined

(Kurtz 2006, “The Big News…”). Even television news is increasingly relayed by

anchors rather than correspondents at the scene (Kurtz 2006, “The Big News…”).

Television has always been a pervasively commercial medium. It was quickly

determined that the medium would be used to deliver an audience to advertisers, thus the

dominant role of ratings in programming decisions. Television took over radio as

America’s top medium as early as 1949 (Biagi 2005, 155). In 1961 Newton Minow,

chairman of the Federal Communication Commission, declared television “a vast

wasteland” of meaningless programs and warned the industry that because they operated

on public airwaves, “the public is your beneficiary”, and as a result they must deliver a

valuable return not only to their stockholders, but to the public as well (Thonssen 1962).

Minow understood the power of television, and implored the industry “to make that voice

ring with intelligence and leadership”, to enrich rather than debase. This call to

responsibility stirred public debate but went largely unheeded by the television industry.6

The debasing nature of television programming soon spread to the news. The

short-lived golden age of television news in the 1960s was followed by a noticeable shift

from serious news coverage to ‘infotainment’. The continued impact of high profit

6
Gilligan’s Island producer Sherwood Schwartz reportedly named the “S.S. Minnow” after Minow as a
reaction to his criticism of the industry.

20
expectations are blamed for infotainment, the scourge of serious journalism, where

detailed, contextual content is replaced with ratings-focused content, typically rife with

violence and entertainment news. An abundance of studies exist on the proliferation of

infotainment, or ‘soft journalism’, such as Thomas Patterson’s 2001 study that found:

News stories lacking public policy content jumped from less than 35% of all stories in
1980 to roughly 50% of stories appearing today. Stories with a moderate to high level of
sensationalism rose from about 25% of news stories in the early 1980s to a current tally
of 40%. Stories that include a human interest element also figure heavily in contemporary
reporting, accounting for less than 11% of news stories in the early 1980s, but more than
26% of reports today. The same holds true for stories with crime or disaster as a main
subject, rising from 8% of stories in 1980 to close to 15% of stories today.

(Patterson 2001; qtd. by Nisbet 2001)

Local news stations, never known for high journalism standards, led the charge

with sensationalist stories that produced high ratings and high profits (Gillmor “We the

Media” 2004, 5). A 2006 Project for Excellence in Journalism study found that once

traffic, weather and sports were excluded, 60 percent of local TV newscasts consisted of

crime and accident stories (Kurtz 2006, “The Big News…”). National network news,

once unprofitable but prestigious crown jewels, have followed suit (Gillmor “We the

Media” 2004, 5). When the media neglects its duty to inform the public in favor of high

profits on unimportant filler, Minow’s argues, Americans lose. The public interest is not

merely what momentarily interests the public (Thonssen 1962).

Gillmor also blames Wall Street’s demands for “dumbing down the product

itself” (Gillmor “We the Media” 2004, xiii). The written press as well as television has

been pressured to dilute its content. As evening news programs decimated evening

newspaper editions, newspapers adapted to survive with advancements in graphics and

color (Biagi 2005, 60). A prime example of this trend is USA Today, introduced in

1982. It offered colorful graphics and short stories in an attempt to adapt newspaper to

21
the age of television. Its rapid success led to a trend of shorter average story lengths

across the industry (Biagi 2005, 62).

Ownership Concentration

Consolidation is a natural occurrence in maturing markets. The newspaper

industry consolidated at the beginning of the 20th Century as the strongest newspapers

bought or beat their many competitors. The introduction of radio and television further

concentrated the newspaper market, diverting consumers’ attention so that most cities

could eventually support only one major daily newspaper. Enterprising individuals,

improved production technologies, and stiff family business inheritance taxes allowed the

formation of major newspaper chains in the decades following World War II (Neiva

1996).

The impact of televised news and wide scale industry deregulation fueled further

consolidation. This consolidation was a blessing to some local papers because the

increased capital and resources of the chain improved local operations. Concentration

can allow a large chain to offer its staff training and better wages (Biagi 2005, 14).

Gannett executive John C. Quinn argues that a paper’s merit is not related to the size of

the company that owns it, although obviously the influence of a good or bad paper can be

much greater in a large chain (Biagi 2005, 14).

A downside of ownership concentration is that it has exacerbated the gate-keeping

effect by reducing ‘message pluralism’ (Biagi 2005, 14). News companies are pressured

to cover the same basic stories being reported elsewhere. Increasingly limited resources

mean that such coverage comes at the expense of exclusive and original stories (Kurtz

22
2006, “The Big News…”). Not only is it the same old voices reporting the news, but

now there are fewer of them reporting a narrower range of stories.

For many one-paper towns, the newspaper represents the outside world, and some

feel there should be significant concern when so much power is consolidated in a

company like Gannett papers that operates 91 daily papers and almost 1,000 non-daily

publications (“Company Profile” 2006). There are also significant political ramifications

of ownership concentration. Studies have found that chain newspapers endorse the same

presidential candidate 85% of the time, and are more likely than average to endorse the

same candidate for other races (Biagi 2005, 15).

With the relatively minor exceptions of PBS and NPR, media companies are

privately owned. But deregulation of the media industries over the past twenty-six years

has caused a rapid concentration in ownership across companies and industries. The

Federal Communications Commission began deregulating the broadcast media in 1980

with elimination of minimum ownership periods and an increase in the number of

broadcast holdings allowed per owner. The Fairness Doctrine, a set of FCC rules

regulating political advocacy on radio stations, was struck down in 1987. Further

deregulation followed, culminating with the Telecommunications Act of 1996

(“Telecommunications Act of 1996” 2005). The Act and subsequent legislation in 1999

and 2003 increased the number of stations one company could own and the percent of the

market these stations could represent. The net effect of broadcast deregulation has been

rapid selling and buying of media companies, which has put news companies under

intense financial pressure to compete (Biagi 2005, 14).

23
 Public trading of media companies’ stock allowed anyone with enough money to

compete while deregulation removed many ownership restrictions. As a result, today

fewer companies own more types of media businesses and control more aspects of the

media industries. Vertical integration occurs when one conglomerate attempts to control

related aspects of the media business (Biagi 2005, 12). For example, Time Warner can

produce a movie in Warner Studios, promote it on CNN and AOL, and later exclusively

broadcast it on its cable stations. All three original television networks are now smaller

parts of larger media corporations (Biagi 2005, 13). Conglomerates like General Electric

own media companies as well as other unrelated companies, so a publication or

production is just another business investment.

Conclusion

Decades of control of production, corporate culture, and consolidation of

ownership has led to the most recent incarnation of the mainstream news industry, the

‘traditional media’ that new media advocates vehemently attack and old school types

stubbornly defend. Today’s television programs feature shallow, sensationalist filler and

today’s newspapers are based on outdated technology and obsolete business plans. The

majority of the media continue to proclaim objectivity as their highest virtue, despite

growing cries of bias and the success of the clearly partisan Fox News.

In a politically polarized country, infotainment is a disservice to citizens who seek

to learn more and become more involved than traditional news sources can offer. The

newspaper industry is reeling from major losses in advertising revenues, subscribers, and

corporate investment. Given this media environment it is clear why the traditional news

24
industry is under siege by passionate users of interactive content technologies. The

mainstream media is very powerful, but stuck in its ways.7 It has reached the point where

pressure to reform can (and must) be driven by outside sources.

The traditional mainstream media is in need of reform but the very things that

need to be changed – gatekeeper mentality, corporate culture, and consolidation of

ownership – have prevented its evolution with rapidly changing technology. In the past,

when mainstream outlets had complete de facto control of production, there was no dire

need to do so, as long as they kept pace with their mainstream competitors. But today

there are many more competitors fulfilling the oft-neglected duty to inform the public and

siphoning away advertising revenue.

Even with a concerted effort to adapt, there is the simple fact that television,

radio, and newspapers, though still useful and popular, are in many ways outdated

mediums. Lifson goes so far as to call them antique. Once cutting-edge mediums, the

lag times in their respective news cycles and the expense of publication and distribution

may be irreconcilable weaknesses. The rapid adoption of simple self-publishing tools

and other technologies that vastly improve upon the existing system’s limits have burst

the floodgates open. Pent-up frustration has quickly become action. The Internet was

just the place.

7
Most mainstream media outlets have made at least some attempt to adapt to the new world of online
journalism, with widely varying degrees of success. See Chapter 5 for further discussion.

25
2. The Rise of Blogs

Blogs’ Broader Societal Context

Radio, television and newspapers are all examples of mass media that have

transformed society. There have also been numerous short-lived modes of

communication that soon became obsolete, from homing pigeons to eight-track tape

players. With increasingly rapid advances in technology, it is easy for some to dismiss

blogs as only the latest over-hyped fad with no long-term ramifications. But there is

significant reason to believe that blogs represent a disruptive new form of technology that

is forcing a sea change in the way citizens interact with their media and leaders. An

explanation of the broader cultural changes ushered in by computers and the Internet

provides the perspective necessary to understand the significant impact blogs are having

on traditional journalism and politics.

Journalism professor Shirley Biagi identifies three major communication

revolutions that mark the evolution of the mass media as we know it today. The first

such revolution was the shift from pictographs to phonetic characters, circa 1000 B.C.,

and the subsequent development of parchment and paper. These developments allowed

oral knowledge to be written and stored as information and read by those with no

immediate connection to the author. The second communications revolution occurred

when Johannes Gutenberg invented his printing press, which had moveable type blocks

and allowed for cheap copies of books. This allowed written information to spread

beyond the libraries of wealthy elites. Finally, the third communications revolution is the

age of computers and the Internet, which has brought rapid changes to every existing

26
media industry by allowing vast amounts of information to be created and transmitted

worldwide at lightning-fast speeds (Biagi 2005, 17-19).8

On their own, blogs certainly do not represent as profound a shift as the invention

of the printing press, or the widespread adoption of the Internet. But blogs are a

derivative of a key development in the digital communications revolution, or what

blogger Tom Coates defines as the ‘mass amateurisation’ of content production.9 Digital

technology has dramatically reduced the cost and level of skill required to create media.

Today, professional-quality content can be created with powerful yet simple, inexpensive

hardware and software. This transformation has taken place at a relatively rapid speed:

In just under forty years since the introduction of the personal computer, users have been

given the tools to create, produce and distribute media content they could previously only

receive.

The “deprofessionalization” of media creation tools has turned many hobbyists

into ‘prosumers.’ The word, a hybrid of ‘producer’ and ‘consumer’, was coined by

futurist and author Alvin Toffler in his 1979 prediction that consumers of the future

would take part in customizing their purchases (Kirsner 2005). The term has since come

to encompass the individuals taking advantage of the unprecedented capabilities digital

tools grant them in order to create, edit and share music, video, photography, graphics,

and writing.

Prosumers typically create for personal reasons rather than money (although it is

common for personal creations to lead to professional opportunities). They usually

8
The rise of broadcasting ushered in by radio and broadcasting could be considered a fourth
communications revolution.
9
‘Generation C’ has also been discussed by The Media Center at The American Press Institute at
http://www.mediacenter.org/pages/mc/research/meet_generation_c/.

27
purchase their own tools and use them in their free time. They are amateurs by nature,

but as they master their tools and learn their craft they can acquire professional-level

skills and create professional or near-professional quality content.

Trend-spotting company Trendspotting.com has dubbed the prosumer movement

“Generation C,” with the ‘C’ standing for ‘Content’ (“Generation C” 2006). A Pew

Internet Project poll conducted in 2003 verified the accuracy of this concept. The study

found that 53 million Americans, or 44% of online users, create content online in one

way or another (Lenhart et al. 2004 “Content Creation Online”). A more recent Pew

Internet Project poll conducted in 2004 found that the rate is even higher for teenagers,

57% of whom reported creating content for the internet:

Thanks to the internet, American teenagers can engage media material and create their
own content in ways their parents could not. Today’s online teens live in a world filled
with self-authored, customized, and on-demand content, much of which is easily
replicated, manipulated, and redistributable. The internet and digital publishing
technologies have given them the tools to create, remix, and share content on a scale
that had previously only been accessible to the professional gatekeepers of broadcast,
print, and recorded media outlets.
(Lenhart et al. 2005 “Teen Content Creators…”)

The great promise of the Internet – that anyone can create and publish their own

media – is finally being fulfilled. The result is what The Economist calls a “‘Cambrian

explosion’ of creativity: a flowering of expressive diversity on the scale of the

eponymous proliferation of biological species 530m years ago” (“Among the audience,”

2006). Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine, argues that “Peer production is the

most powerful industrial force of our time” (“Among the audience,” 2006). The high

rates at which online teenagers are creating suggests that as technology continues to

democratize the tools of content production, society draws nearer to the day when

consumers are not only literate in consuming media, but also in creating it.

28
 This explosion in creativity has been overshadowed at times by the less positive

side of accessible communications. The low cost of email has led to an explosion of

spam and scams while some have used websites to distribute pornography and other

unsavory content. This unseemly side of the Internet at times threatens to choke its more

productive uses. Email is less convenient when inboxes are flooded with unsolicited

advertising and some blogs have had to institute various measures to keep ‘comment

spam’ at bay.

A History of Blogs

The revolution of amateur content creation has been most significantly realized in

one of the oldest forms of expression: the written word. Coates and author Dan Gillmor

view blogging in the context of a wider shift in the way we react to our culture and our

technology. Bloggers are a subspecies of prosumer. They use simple, cost-free content

management systems to publish their thoughts to the world and interact with others in a

way that was simply impossible until very recently.

Blogs are not the first computer-based tools promised to start a publishing

revolution. The desktop publishing revolution hyped in the 1980’s was never truly

fulfilled because personal computers provided users with the tools to create but no

content distribution system. The missing ingredient, connectivity, was soon provided by

the rise of the World Wide Web in the 1990s. Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation

for Journalism explains, “The Internet is a unique phenomenon that has delivered not just

technological innovations but become a conduit for change, accelerating the rate,

diversity and circulation of ideas… [It] enables limitless distribution of content for little

or no cost” (Bowman et al. 2005).

29
 Thousands, and soon millions of webpages, were created and shared, but

authoring and maintaining a frequently-updated webpage required advanced technical

knowledge of HTML code and FTP programs. But mass amateurisation soon came to

publishing, and by extension, journalism. Blogger Tom Coates writes, “Ten years from

the earliest homepages, and we now find ourselves with weblogs…Almost all of them

powered by simple content management systems with names like LiveJournal, Blogger,

and Movable Type. Weblogging software constitutes a radical simplification of

previously complex tools.”

Bryan Murley compares the Internet to Biagi’s second communications

revolution: “Like Gutenberg’s movable type printing press, the Internet is speeding the

reproduction and dissemination of knowledge...Nowhere is this phenomenon more

evident than weblogs” (Murley 2005, 5).10 Blogs are only one subset of an almost

limitless array of possibilities available online, but they have come to embody the spirit

of the Internet, representative of its strengths and weaknesses. The blogosphere is,

relative to other mediums, democratic, collective and interactive. But it also contains

offensive content, and inaccurate information.

Joe Trippi, Howard Dean’s campaign manager, writes that democratic forces are

always shaped by the antithesis that preceded them; the fight for civil liberties in the

1960’s was a reaction to abuses in the 1950’s (Trippi 2004, 218). Trippi argues that the

Internet is the democratic antithesis of television (Trippi 2004, 226). A comparison

between the Internet and its predecessor supports Trippi’s point and underscores the

essential values of the blogosphere.

10
This is widely agreed upon. With increases in the average user’s bandwidth and computing power,
however, video and other advanced media become easier and cheaper to distribute and could eventually
surpass text-only blogs.

30
 Television is a fundamentally reactive medium, where the viewer receives

broadcasted content but has no adequate means to respond. The Internet is a

fundamentally interactive medium where users can respond to information they receive

and transmit their own information in response. Television isolates viewers in their

homes as they watch and listen to people on screen with no awareness of their presence.

The internet allows users to escape the confines of geography with an arsenal of powerful

yet simple communication tools including email, instant messaging, chatrooms and

forums. While the power to create and distribute televised content is held by major

companies with the financial capital to produce and distribute it, creation and distribution

of online content can be very inexpensive.

It has been these three core values – interactivity, community, and accessibility –

that fueled the rise of blogging. All three values can be found in Rebecca Blood’s history

of the early weblog community, or what later came to be known as the blogosphere.

Blood dates the origin of the term ‘weblog’ to 1997. It was later shortened to ‘blog’ in

1999. The original blogs served as personal journals and filters to the already massive

World Wide Web. Bloggers acted as editors and provided commentary on links to

current news events as well as other obscure and compelling items. Just as editors at the

New York Times compressed an entire day’s worth of world events into a daily issue for

its readers, bloggers highlighted what they considered the most compelling sites from the

overwhelming amount of information online. “The web has been, in effect, pre-surfed

for them” (Blood 2000).

Only a handful of these sites existed in 1998. The community was small enough

that short lists of weblogs could be maintained and read daily. Steady growth continued

31
until July 1999 with the launch of the first free and simple blog creation tool, Pitas. Two

other blog creation tools debuted the following month and shortly thereafter the number

of weblogs skyrocketed exponentially (Blood 2000).11 By the end of 2000, the estimated

number of blogs was in the thousands, up from under 50 in 1998 (Mead 2000).

Blood argues that in 1999 the introduction of the popular Blogger software led to

a shift from blogs that filtered content to blogs composed in a short-form journal format,

because the Blogger software did not specifically ask for a link URL with each post, as

previous software did. This shift was instrumental in the evolution of the blogosphere’s

increasingly conversational approach:

Links took the reader to the site of another blogger with whom the first was having a
public conversation or had met the previous evening, or to the site of a band he had seen
the night before. Full-blown conversations were carried on between three or five blogs,
each referencing the other in their agreement or rebuttal of the other's positions.
(Blood 2000)

New bloggers mimicked the original blogs, including the lists of links commonly

found on the sidebars of the sites. This permanent (though updateable) list became

known as a ‘blogroll’, an important part of a blog’s identity: “New bloggers position

themselves in this community, referencing and reacting to those blogs they read most,

their sidebar an affirmation of the tribe to which they wish to belong” (Blood 2000).

Interaction between blogs has been supplemented with comment boxes that

brought the conversation to the level of the individual site. Readers could post their

reactions to a post and link to related sites, significantly increasing the interaction

between bloggers and their readers. Bloggers also responded to emails and instant

11
Blood suggests that the “tsunami of new weblogs” may have “crushed the movement before it could
reach critical mass”, as “the sudden exponential growth of the community rendered it unnavigable;
Weblogs, once filters of the web, suddenly became so numerous they were as confusing as the web itself.”

32
messages from readers, updating their original post with corrections and further

developments.

As blogging matures, new tools are constantly being developed that capitalize on

the interactive nature of the medium. The widespread adoption of Really Simple

Syndication (RSS) allows blogs to automatically notify (or ‘ping’) new content to a

server, which is then automatically syndicated to a variety of sources. Another popular

development is “track-back” software that allowed bloggers to show what others were

saying when they linked to a post, facilitating interlinking between related sites (Baoill).

Blogs Get More Political, Popular

Political discussions online long predate the blog format: Bill Clinton was first

mentioned on the Usenet forums as early as 1984 ("20 Year Usenet Timeline," 2003).

Blogs included current events amongst other content from the start. Two of the first

political blogs, The Drudge Report (although some consider it a proto-blog because it has

no original content) and The Daily Howler began in 1998 (Bloom et al. 2003, 13). The

community of exclusively political blogs grew slowly until September 11th, 2001, the

tipping point for political blogs’ entry into mainstream awareness (Gillmor “We the

Media” 2004, x).

Dan Gillmor, in his book We the Media, writes that September 11th joined other

tragic moments frozen in time; moments all Americans remember for the rest of their

lives (Gillmor “We the Media” 2004, ix). America’s elders can recall gathering around

the radio to hear the news that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had died. America’s baby

33
boomers vividly remember watching the television as Walter Cronkite fought back tears

to announce that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated (Gillmor “We the Media” 2004,

ix). And on September 11th, 2001, America’s younger generations again watched the

television coverage of a national tragedy. But this time, Gillmor writes, something

occurred that went beyond the extensive mainstream news coverage of the event:

Regular people, the former audience, began producing their own news (Gillmor “We the

Media” 2004, x). The uncertainty of the following days “fuelled the public's appetite for

information, analysis and news, if only to make sense of the tragedy” (Raynford). They

found deeper context in emails, blogs, and other nonstandard news sources, written and

published online by ordinary citizens with something worthwhile to report (Gillmor “We

the Media” 2004, x). Though may not have been recognized at the time, journalism had

evolved (Gillmor “We the Media” 2004, x).

A Pew Internet Project study shows that major news events created spikes in

online news traffic: “In the week following 9/11, 27% of internet users got news online

(5 percentage points higher than late summer 2001 readings) and 37% of internet users

were getting news online in the days following the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, 11

percentage points higher than figures from the prior month” (Horrigan 2006).

A similar pattern exists with blogs. In a paper for Australian think tank, legal

academic and blogger Ken Parish writes that the hit counts on Australian blogs soared in

the aftermath of the 2002 Bali bombing (Parish 2003). In a paper prepared for the annual

meeting of the American Political Science Association, Joel David Bloom found that

“Visitors at the blogs involved in the Lott situation saw a huge increase in readership as a

direct result of the publicity generated by that story.” A few months later the war in Iraq

34
caused an even steeper spike in traffic at two major blogs covering the buildup (Bloom

2003).

A combination of online buzz and frequent references in the offline mainstream

media has sent hordes of readers to political blogs over the past few years (see

Appendices A and B). Only eleven articles in the Lexis Nexis database mention the term

“weblog” between 1995 and 1999, compared to 56 in 2000, 128 in 2001, 272 in 2002,

and 647 in 2003 (Drezner et al. 2004, 5). A string of high-profile news events catapulted

political blogs into mainstream awareness by demonstrating the influential role they

could play in the mainstream media and politics. Bloggers were a crucial factor in

forcing Mississippi Senator Trent Lott’s resignation as the Republican’s Senate Majority

Leader in 2002, bringing the “previously obscure and eccentric world of blogging” to the

attention of the nation’s political and media elites for the first time and marking the

blogosphere’s passage “as a real player in American political media” (Bloom 2003, 11).

The fundraising prowess and central role of the blogs behind Howard Dean’s insurgent

2003 Democratic primary campaign brought extensive traditional media coverage to the

blogosphere. Conservative bloggers and their readers raised significant doubts over the

authenticity of documents used on CBS’ 60 Minutes II on the eve of the 2004 presidential

election, leading to scandal and Dan Rather’s partial retirement.

The role of blogs in of each of these major political media events will be

discussed in greater detail in the remaining chapters, but collectively they thrust a

virtually unknown technological innovation into the mainstream worlds of politics and

journalism. Media and political elites, masters of the traditional system, were forced to

recognize and react to the presence of political bloggers. The Internet gave new

35
individuals and groups the tools needed to take on more meaningful roles in both politics

and journalism. There was no going back.

36
II. Blogs & the Media

3. Blogs Complement Traditional Journalism

There is a tension between some journalists and bloggers, partially because of the

incessant flow of media criticism springing forth from blogs and the ongoing debate over

the changing definition of the title ‘journalist’. But for all the vitriol, the two are locked

in a symbiotic relationship and the future of journalism could very well be a hybrid of the

two opposing sides. More forward-thinking bloggers and journalists predict that blogs

“will follow the pattern of prior communication technologies and initially disrupt

entrenched journalistic practices yet, over time, become integrated components of the

mainstream media landscape” (Gallo 2004).

In the past few years blogs have had a significant impact on traditional journalism

by supplementing and occasionally surpassing it. The result is two prevalent

constructions of the role blogs serve in the production of news. The first, held by most

traditional journalists, is that blogs serve as an evolutionary complement to the existing

mainstream media for limited purposes such as feedback and extended commentary. The

alternative purpose of blogs, to be discussed in Chapter 5, is that they are an essential part

of a growing citizen media movement that could revolutionize if not outright replace the

current corporate news media. This stance considers the blogosphere an increasingly

autonomous media entity that will further usurp the role of gatekeeper -- and the audience

and advertising that come with it -- from the corporate news media. The true position of

37
political blogs in the media lies between these two extremes. Elements of each approach

can be found in the blogosphere. The blogosphere’s influence is restricted by the

traditional media’s increasingly cogent reaction to the presence of blogs, as well as limits

native to the blogosphere.

Blogs’ Impact on Traditional Journalism

Blogs have already had a significant impact on traditional journalism. They

directly serve journalists in a supplementary role by providing feedback (both before and

after publication), sources, and ideas. Blogs have also contributed to the evolution of

mainstream journalism. As a competing source of information outside of the corporate

news media structure, they have forced the mainstream media to accelerate its adaptation

to new forms of technology and provided new tools with which to interact with the

audience.

For all of the critiques that depict the mainstream news media as an industry that

is behind the times, many journalists are well aware of the existence of blogs. Political

Science professors Daniel Drezner and Henry Farrell completed an informal survey of

140 including editors, publishers, reporters, and columnists at media companies ranging

from the New York Times to rural publications with less than 10,000 readers (Drezner et al.

2004, 18). The journalists were asked if they read blogs, blog themselves, and how much

influence blogs have in their company. All of the 33 journalists at elite media companies

surveyed read blogs (see Appendix F for complete data). All but one of the 140 total

journalists surveyed could list at least one favorite blog. A number of journalists have

also stated in their work and interviews that blogs have become one component in their

38
information-gathering processes (Drezner et al. 2004, 14). Most journalists read the top

political blogs; the top ten blogs in Drezner’s survey accounted for 54% of the

journalists’ citations (Drezner et al. 2004, 18, see also Appendix E). Because of the

skewed distribution of the blogosphere, they can read a few of the top political blogs and

get a summary of what is going on in the political blogosphere (Drezner et al. 2004, 14).

Journalists were able to overcome some of their initial credibility concerns

regarding blogs because of “pre-existing social and professional ties between early bloggers

and journalists…The first wave of political commentators to enter the blogosphere were

journalists with close ties to mainstream media outlets” (Drezner et al. 2004, 15). These

connections were crucial because they established a level of trust in a new medium many

were wary of (Drezner et al. 2004, 15). Drezner cites research on trust in markets: “Markets

with imperfect information about producer quality often fail to emerge, due to consumer

wariness. Social ties of kin or friendship can function to overcome fears of opportunism

(Drezner et al. 2004, 15).

Feedback

Blogs provide valuable feedback to an industry that has been reluctant to accept it

in the past. Media critic Bob Somerby of The Daily Howler, an early political site, notes,

“The Internet is especially well-suited to press criticism, because the press tends to keep

press criticism out of the mainstream press” (Bloom 2003). But the mainstream media no

longer holds a monopoly on the tools of production and everyone can be an ombudsman.

The rapid growth of the blogosphere and the high rates of participation within it, indicate

that a significant portion of the news audience was waiting for such an opportunity to

participate. Although incessant criticism from readers can be draining, and partisan

39
pressure must be withstood, there are valid reasons for the mainstream media to heed the

gigabytes of feedback blogs produce.

Compared to mainstream audiences, political bloggers and their readers are a

disproportionately influential demographic. The Institute For Politics Democracy & The

Internet (“Political Influentials…” 2004) studied Online Political Citizens and found that

70% qualified as “influentials,” those active individuals who “wield a huge amount of

influence within their communities as leaders and opinion makers” (“Political

Influentials…” 2004, 13). In contrast, only 10% of the general public is considered to be

in this group (“Political Influentials…” 2004, 13-15). IPDI’s Online Political Citizens

are much more likely to view or post comments on political blogs (27%) than the general

public (less than 4%) (“Political Influentials…” 2004, 6).

Influentials are at the cutting edge of popular opinion; They tend to be “two to

five years ahead of the rest of society” and “predictive of changing political winds”

(“Political Influentials…” 2004, 14). Influentials are also well-connected. They have

ties to more groups and organizations than the average American and they usually

broadcast their recommendations to a large network of friends, relatives and

acquaintances (“Political Influentials…” 2004, 13). Blogs were created to facilitate the

specific functions of sharing personal news, political recommendations and whatever else

one wants to share. And influentials give good advice. “Because they know many people

and soak up a large amount of information, influentials stand out as smart, informed

sources of advice and insight” (“Political Influentials…” 2004, 13).

It is wise for any industry to interact with some of its biggest customers. Blogger

Tim Blair suggests that the mainstream media “should regard bloggers as the audience –

40
and not as some freakish sub-group. We’re reading their papers, watching their news,

listening to their radio shows” (qtd. by Glaser, “To Their Surprise…”). Bloggers are also

Internet veterans -- 82% have been online for six years or more (Rainie 2005, 2) -- so

their advice to the mainstream media on how to adapt to the Internet is also grounded in

experience. Bloggers may be the mainstream media’s biggest critics, but they are also

some of its most passionate customers.

Finally, the Society of Professional Journalism’s Code of Ethics requires

journalists to welcome criticism from amateurs. It specifically includes the phrases

“invite dialogue with the public over journalistic conduct” and “encourage the public to

voice grievances against the news media” (qtd. by Glaser, “Watchblogs”). Lofty

professional ideals are easy to codify, but journalists are increasingly being called upon to

live by this code in their day-to-day work. After centuries of elite control of the news,

the day has come where anyone can voice their opinion. The mainstream media can

benefit tremendously from their advice. Enterprising journalists have found blogs to be

useful for feedback before and after they meet deadline.

Post-print feedback

The newspaper industry’s controlled printing of letters to the editor has exploded

into an unpreventable online discussion on thousands of media-focused blogs. Blog

readers have become used to expressing their opinions after consuming media. A Pew

Internet Project survey in the spring of 2003 found that of the 11 percent of Americans

that read blogs,12 33 percent posted or commented on entries they read (Lenhart et al.

12
The most recent Pew report found that by the end of December 2004, this figure had grown to 27% of
internet users

41
2004 “Content Creation Online”). Whether this is because the readers are influentials

used to sharing their opinions or the convenience of making comments, this rate far

surpasses the traditional letter to the editor. Journalist Jonathan Dube remarks, “no other

media form in history has created so much feedback and interactivity with its audience”

(Dube 2004).

Wisdom of the Crowd

New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki wrote a book titled The Wisdom of

Crowds in which he argues that “under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably

intelligent, and are often smarter that the smartest people in them” (Surowiecki; qtd. by

Lifson 2004 “The blogosphere…”). If a group has diversity of opinion, independence of

members from one another, decentralization and a good method for aggregating opinions,

the crowd can be wiser than a select few experts (Surowiecki; qtd. by Lifson 2004 “The

blogosphere…”). Blog audiences can fulfill each of these requirements.

Online discussion of the news can bring the collective intelligence and knowledge

of the audience to bear on the day’s lead stories (Gillmor We the Media 2004, 17). New

media advocate and journalist Dan Gillmor has come to understand and accept that

without fail, the audience will know more about the subject he is writing about than he

does (We the Media 2004, 18). He views this not as a limitation or a threat to his

livelihood, but as an opportunity to engage with his readers and improve his work. Don

Wycliff, public editor at the Chicago Tribune, agrees: “I generally feel that the more sets

of eyes that see and read our work critically, the better off we are” (Glaser, “To Their

Surprise…”).

42
 Journalists can benefit from this development if they adjust to the conversational

nature of the blogosphere. The mainstream media still has the resources and authority to

deliver the news, but the dialogue no longer ends when the commercial break has begun

or the ink has dried on the morning edition. A journalist’s final version of a story is now

just the beginning, and not necessarily the most valuable component of the conversation

that follows (Gillmor “How Technology is Changing” 2004).

Not all mainstream journalists are as open-minded as Gillmor is regarding

criticism and corrections. Many still operate in a world where the media has the final

word. An example of this is the New York Times’ former corrections policy, a legacy of

the media’s historic control of production. Robert Cox, a political blogger, found and

reported an error in a column by Maureen Dowd only to see no correction issued. Cox

felt this unresponsiveness was part of a broader problem: The Times’ corrections policy

allowed op-ed columnists to decide whether or not they had made an error and if a

correction would be printed (Glaser, “To Their Surprise…”).

Until recently this would have been the end of debate. But Cox detailed the

conflict online on his blog and attracted widespread attention to the issue from other

blogs and even other newspapers. When he posted a parody of the New York Times

online, he and his Internet Service Provider received cease and desist letters from the

Times’ legal department (Glaser, “To Their Surprise…”).

At the time, Daniel Okrent was the Times’ public editor, a position created after

the Jayson Blair scandal to help make the paper more responsive to readers’ concerns.

He met with Cox, heard his complaints and acted on them, resulting in a new corrections

policy. Under the new policy, the Times’ editors would decide if a correction is

43
warranted, and if so, it would run at the bottom of the offending column to ensure it is

seen by the column’s syndicated readers. Cox admitted, “As a fierce critic of the New

York Times, I find myself in the unusual position of having to compliment the paper in

how they have changed over the past year” (Glaser, “To Their Surprise…”).

The significance of this example is not that a blogger caused a minor policy

change at a major newspaper, but rather that a fundamental shift is occurring in

journalists’ interaction with their readers. Blogs have caused a shift in readers’

expectations. In this case they expect to see corrections duly and prominently noted. It is

a transition some journalists are reluctant to make, but one they must to survive. Cox

sees the event as a potentially “significant turning point in the balance between old media

and new” (Glaser, “To Their Surprise”).

Rathergate and Mob Rule

In the final fall phase of the 2004 presidential election, Dan Rather and CBS

News learned that not all criticism is constructive. The power of the audience’s

collective knowledge extends to fact-checking news content, but often with a political

agenda. Nowhere has this power been more dramatically demonstrated than in the

conservative blogosphere’s reaction to CBS’ September 8th 60 Minutes II report

discrediting President Bush’s National Guard service. Dubbed “Rathergate,”

conservative blogs and their audiences tore apart in hours the report that Mary Mapes, the

show’s producer, had been preparing for years (Barnes, 2004; qtd. by Rosen, “Rather’s

Satisfaction…” 2004). Immediately following the airing of the show, bloggers and their

audiences began an online examination of the mimeographs used as evidence on the

44
program.13 For example, software publisher and conservative blogger Charles Johnson

demonstrated the striking similarities between the CBS memos and a reproduction he

made with Microsoft Word (Cornfield et al. “Buzz” 2005, 28).

As the online attacks gained credibility, the mainstream media joined bloggers in

covering the scandal. Online discussion was supplemented with research by reporters at

ABC News, the Dallas Morning News, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post

(Cornfield et al. “Buzz” 2005, 29). The symbiotic relationship between blogs and

mainstream journalism was on full display: Conservative bloggers provided the initial

skepticism necessary to define the story, but traditional journalists followed with the

research needed to prove it (Simon 2004; qtd. by Rosen, “Rather’s Satisfaction” 2004)

and added credibility to what the general public may have otherwise dismissed as a

conspiracy theory. Together, bloggers and journalists found significant faults with some

of the documents CBS had built its case upon and created enough pressure that CBS was

eventually forced to apologize and set up an independent panel to investigate. Dan

Rather announced his early retirement as anchor of CBS Evening News.

Disproving the CBS story was a clear victory for the conservative blogosphere.

But even more importantly for conservative bloggers, the mainstream media almost

unanimously dropped the focus on Bush’s National Guard service in favor of covering

the CBS memo scandal. In doing so they concluded that the questionable nature of CBS’

documents de-legitimized the entire set of doubts related to Bush’s Guard service (Pein

2005; see also “Media Advisory” 2004).

13
See Appendix E for a timeline comparing liberal and conservative bloggers’ discussion of the scandal to
that of traditional media and Bush and Kerry campaigns.

45
 The mainstream media’s reaction warrants some concern regarding the mob-like

power blogs can command. Corey Pein of the Columbia Journalism Review argued that

this episode was “less like a victory for democracy than a case of mob rule” (qtd. by

Cornfield et al. “Buzz” 2005, 29). Pein laments that “certain talking points became

conventional wisdom” and that “the speculation framed the story for the working press”

(Pein 2005). The uproar on blogs was verbally aggressive; the communities widely

mocked one innocent contributor and sent calls for termination of employment to his

employer (Cornfield et al. “Buzz” 2005, 26).

Michael Cornfield of the Pew Internet & American Life Project makes the

argument that the conservative blog audience approached the cooperative coherence of a

“smart mob,” one whose cooperative power is amplified by communication and

computing technologies (Cornfield et al. “Buzz” 2005, 22). Although the verbal abuse

was representative of a traditional mob, the conservative bloggers also cooperated using

advanced technological strategies, such as emailing Viacom stockholders, circulating an

online petition, and setting up a website at Rathergate.com to centralize protest efforts

(Cornfield et al. “Buzz” 2005, 22). They did not take to the streets as a traditional mob

would have, but they did advance shared political goals through online cooperation

(Cornfield et al. “Buzz” 2005, 22).

Watchblogs

Fact-checking audiences have become “another layer of oversight for the Fourth

Estate” (Glaser, “Watchblogs”). A new breed of blog has emerged that scales this

process down to the level of individual journalists. These ‘watchblogs,’ modeled on the

46
watchdog mentality, are a double-edged sword. Also known as the “adopt-a-journalist”

campaign, watchblogs exist for the New York Times' Jodi Wilgoren, the Associated Press'

Calvin Woodward, Reuters' Patricia Wilson and the Washington Post's Dan Balz (Glaser,

“Watchblogs”).

Such narrowly-focused attention can be beneficial for three reasons. First, it can

reveal a columnist’s biases by considering all of their works, rather than individual

pieces. They are also another way citizens can interact with the media they consume.

Finally, and perhaps most promisingly, watchblogs can produce “two-way learning,”

where the watchblogger gains a better understanding of journalistic ethics and the

journalist concerned can improve their work to better reflect such principles (Glaser,

“Watchblogs”).

Watchblogs may also be a negative consequence of the micro-targeted niches the

Internet makes possible. The benefits of two-way learning depend on watchbloggers who

are willing to learn without letting personal ideology cloud their coverage. Media critic

Jay Rosen contends that many watchbloggers have praised the work of the journalists

they follow and gained a better understanding of their principles (Glaser, “Watchblogs”),

but this is not always the case. The watchblog concept originated as a response to

conservative criticism of liberal journalists. The related “adopt-a-journalist” effort was

launched by a loosely knit group of Howard Dean supporters to ensure fair coverage of

their candidate (Glaser, “Watchblogs”). The dangerous political implications of

extremely focused pressure on the media for partisan ends are a downside to the

increased interaction between the audience and the media that blogs facilitate. Resistance

to increased partisan pressure will be discussed later in this chapter.

47
Breaking the Bubble

Increased partisan pressure on the media is an alarming trend, but whether it is a

result of partisan times or empowering technologies, blogs can also create positive

pressure on the mainstream media. Their outsider status allows them to provide frank

and honest feedback that breaks the newsroom bubble and draws media attention to areas

that need it.

There are many differences between blogs and the mainstream media, but in

terms of what they discuss, “political blogs are a well integrated part of the national

discourse [with] a distinct role to play on a topic of common interest.” (Cornfield et al.

“Buzz” 2005, 18-19; Kurtz 2006 “The Big News”). Rosen praises blogs as “an antidote

to group think within the journalism profession” written by “people interested in the same

things as journalists who don’t think the same way” (Rosen, “"There is an

Orthodoxy…"” 2004). As a result, bloggers bring different perspectives to the same

issues, “a reminder that America is far more diverse and iconoclastic than its newsrooms”

(Welch 2003).

Pre-print feedback

The feedback blogs produce can be equally important when it is outrage over the

lack of a story. The outsider perspective blogs offer is most important when the

mainstream media lapses in its watchdog role. When this happens, blogs provide a

“bracing slap to the face” (Welch 2003) and “make it clear that there is something pretty

48
strange or pretty unique or pretty interesting or pretty awful” (Washington Post political

journalist Thomas B. Edsall, as quoted by Rosen, “"There is an Orthodoxy…"” 2004).

Trent Lott

A key incident where political blogs alerted the mainstream media to an important

oversight was the bipartisan disgust they exhibited following Missouri Senator and

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott’s racist remarks at Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday

party. Thurmond, the original Dixiecrat, led the Southern walkout of the 1948

Democratic Convention after President Harry Truman introduced a civil rights plank to

the party platform. He ran in the election as a “States’ Rights Democrat” and won the

vote in four Southern states for his steadfast opposition to desegregation and civil rights.

By the 1970’s Thurmond had switched to the Republican party, rehabilitated his public

image and ceased making race an issue (Bloom 2003, 1).

Fifty-four years after Thurmond’s famous walkout, Lott boasted to a public

audience that the state of Missouri was still proud that they had voted for Thurmond in

the 1948 election. He added, “And if the rest of the country had of followed our lead we

wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either.” The audience reacted to his

comments with an audible gasp of shock, but no news program that evening or

newspaper the following morning mentioned the blunder, leading Political Science

professor Joel Bloom to ask, “If one of the most powerful public officials in the most

powerful nation in the world makes a racist comment in front of a room full of other

public officials and political reporters and a nationwide audience of C-SPAN viewers and

no one notices, is it news?” (Bloom 2003, 1).

49
 Lott made his statement in a very public setting: “The audience at Thurmond’s

party included senators, cabinet members, Supreme Court justices and members of the

media from all the major networks and national papers” (Bloom 2003, 1). And yet

almost every present member of the mainstream media dropped the ball and judged the

comments a non-story. The story failed to ignite in the media’s crucial first twenty-four

hour news cycle, but bloggers and their readers acted as “a back-up alert system, another

sphere where the story could circulate, register with people, and provoke a response

...Reactions and rumblings from across the blogs were thus a kind of proxy for public

reaction that had not been able to emerge” (Rosen, “The Legend…” 2004).

The one exception within the mainstream media was Ed O’Keefe at ABC News,

who was in attendance and thought the remarks newsworthy enough to be included on the

4:30 a.m. edition of the next morning’s news. But network executives overrode the

young reporter and prevented inclusion of the story on the far more popular Good

Morning America or any subsequent ABC newscasts (Huffington 2002; qtd. by Bloom

2003). Journalists frequently discredit political blogs on the grounds that they lack the

layers of oversight that editors and others provide in a news organization, but in this case

the mainstream media critics’ fears of internal censorship bore out.

This would have been the end of the story just a few years ago. But O’Keefe also

got a minor reference to the event included in ABC’s online political column, The Note

(frequently compared to political blogs itself), in a “paragraph [that] could not have been

less prominently placed” (Bloom 2003, 2). But information online can be rapidly

disseminated once it is noticed. The minute reference in The Note started a snowball for

bloggers to push down the hill (Bloom 2003, 2).

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 By 11 a.m. on the day after the remarks were made, journalist and blogger Tim

Noah noticed The Note’s reference and amplified it on his blog at Slate. He was soon

followed by bloggers at Salon, Eschaton and Talking Points Memo (in chronological

order) (Bloom 2003, 4). With no network executives to limit their outrage, the story

spread rapidly around the political blogosphere, including condemnation from

conservative bloggers such as Glenn Reynolds.

During the next few days, bloggers kept the story alive and some mainstream

media outlets, including CNN and NBC picked up the story (Bloom 2003, 6). At the

Washington Post, political journalist Thomas Edsall had to convince his editors that the

issue deserved a full story rather than a paragraph (Rosen, “The Legend…” 2004).

Despite widespread attention in the blogosphere and increased attention from the

mainstream media, the story continued to receive no coverage from Time, ABC, CBS,

and Fox, among others (Bloom 2003, 6). It took five days and a public apology from

Lott, an obvious news event, before a wave of newspaper editorials and all three

networks’ evening news programs addressed the fallout (Bloom 2003, 7).

Esther Scott wrote a case study of the episode for the Shorenstein Center for

Press, Politics, & Public Policy at Harvard, in which he demonstrates how “Pack

journalism worked in reverse – other reporters and producers judged it non-newsworthy,

so it was largely dropped” (Scott 2004, 9). This incident exemplifies the problem with

the traditional media process where a limited number of gatekeepers control the news.

The story failed to ignite in the media’s crucial first twenty-four hour news cycle, but

bloggers and their readers acted as “a back-up alert system, another sphere where the

story could circulate, register with people, and provoke a response ...Reactions and

51
rumblings from across the blogs were thus a kind of proxy for public reaction that had not

been able to emerge” (Rosen, “The Legend…” 2004).

A number of theories have been offered to explain the mainstream media’s

oversight. These include the fact that Lott made his remarks on an already busy news

day and could not be addressed in the first news cycle, that it occurred on a Friday and

reporters were headed off for the weekend and that seasoned Washington reporters were

desensitized to Lott making off-color comments (Bloom 2003; Scott 2004). But none of

these weaknesses exist in the blogosphere. Bloggers lack the strict space and time

limitations the mainstream media is structured on and can report any number of items no

matter how busy the news day (as many bloggers did in this case). They are primarily

outsiders and not as jaded to possibly frequent but still offensive remarks by politicians.

Finally, bloggers, who are primarily hobbyists, are not as prone to the effect of an

impending weekend. Thomas Lifson compares the news cycles of the mainstream media

and the blogosphere:

[The mainstream media’s] hierarchies check and make decisions based on a daily work
cycle. After a certain number of hours, they go home, and re-start the cycle the following
day. The blogosphere is run by networks of like-minded people who anxiously check and
correct each others’ work on an ongoing basis…The blogosphere never sleeps. It works
24/7. An individual blogger may log off, and when he ors he returns, find email and links
criticizing what was previously posted. An immediate response, not defined by work
hours or news cycles, is demanded. And usually happens. Or else the blogger loses
audience to other entrants in the free-for-all marketplace of ideas.
(Lifson 2004 “The Blogosphere…”)

Blogs played a vital role in forcing media attention to Lott’s remarks. But they

were still dependent on someone in the mainstream media – in this case Ed O’Keefe at

ABC – to be on the scene and report the comments. Again, blogs interacted

symbiotically with the mainstream media. To keep the importance of this event in

perspective, it should be noted that many despite the self-congratulatory reflections that

52
followed Lott’s resignation as Senate Majority Leader, blogs did not directly cause Lott’s

downfall. Instead, they were an essential intervening variable in that they created the

pressure necessary to attract mainstream media attention and, as a result, pressure from

Lott’s own caucus and the White House (Drezner et al. 2004, 3).

Testing Ground

The reluctance of many in the mainstream media to heed the advice of bloggers

was evident in their refusal to cover the Lott story until it was absolutely unavoidable.

The idea of consulting readers before the news is released may never have occurred to

journalists before the Internet, but it has proven quite helpful. Reporters can use blogs as

a “testing ground” (Fink) and float relevant story ideas and unfinished articles with

interested communities to gain feedback and alternative perspectives. When Gillmor’s

“wisdom of the crowd” can be consulted before a story is committed to print, it reduces

the chance of errors or oversights. Rather than reducing readership, releasing an

unfinished version to the communities most interested in its content can draw much more

attention to the piece. First, because the blog’s readers had a role in its production, many

will read the final version out of sheer vanity. But a more rewarding possibility is that a

journalist’s efforts to consult a relevant community can easily begin an online

conversation on the blog centered on the piece, drawing more attention to it than if it had

simply been published by traditional means and gone unnoticed by the blog’s readers.

This is in turn rewarding to reporters, whose stories get more online page views, an

important metric increasingly used by editors to assess the performance of a journalist.

53
Specialized Knowledge

An increasingly popular way to gather knowledge from blogs is to simply search

Technorati and other blogging search engines. Reporters have found blogs helpful in

finding knowledgeable sources on specialized subjects. By scanning blogrolls they can

quickly determine the most referenced individuals on a given topic.

Mainstream reporters are charged with the task of covering a wide variety of

topics at a basic level, leading to the saying “miles wide but inches deep” (Lusvardi). As

“general interest intermediaries” they “suffer a deficit of specialized, detailed knowledge”

(Drezner et al. 2004, 16). An article in the Fall 2003 edition of Harvard University’s Nieman

Reports notes that “Many readers have begun to turn to gifted amateurs or impassioned

experts with a deep understanding of niche subjects, rather than to journalists who are

generalists and cover topics a mile wide but an inch deep” (Lasica 2003, 73).

Increasingly pressed for time in an era of cuts in research staffs and decreasing

newsroom sizes, reporters can also search the blogosphere to find the knowledgeable

sources they need. For example, many staffers at legal trade journals read the “How

Appealing” blog for both breaking news and in-depth commentary (Drezner et al. 2004,

16).

Inspiration

Bloggers also provide journalists inspiration for future stories and things to

investigate further. An editor at the American Bar Association’s journal also relied on the

“How Appealing” blog for story ideas (Drezner et al. 2004, 16). Rebecca MacKinnon,

former chief CNN Asia correspondent, monitors the conversations that take place on and

between international blogs for interesting items to follow up on with traditional

54
reporting (Mullins). She compares consulting international blogs to having a dinner with

a local contact; it helps bring her into the mindset of people living in the country,

especially in areas that receive little to no attention from the US mainstream media

(Mullins).

Interpretative Framing

Bloggers have first-mover advantages over the mainstream media in formulating

opinions following major news events (Drezner et al. 2004, 16). Because they publish

instantaneously and without editorial delays, they can post and discuss the event as it unfolds.

This creates a “real-time virtual feedback loop that breaks down traditional barriers between

journalists and the public” (Gallo 2004). Political blogger Mickey Kaus notes how the

cooperative audience can outpace any news team: “You can post something and provoke

a quick response and counter-response, as well as research by readers. The collective

brain works faster, firing with more synapses” (Kaus 2003; qtd. in Drezner 2004, 16).

Joel Bloom notes the benefits and drawbacks of blogs’ speed advantage:

“The rapid-fire, spontaneous nature of blogs makes them at once fascinating, immensely
valuable as an early source of breaking stories, and frustrating in that much of what
appears in blogs ends up being clarified or corrected later…On the other hand, bloggers
are generally very willing to update their sties with clarifications, corrections, or just new
information. And unlike newspapers or television, blogs can place the corrections right
alongside the erroneous material.”
(Bloom 2003, 23)

Journalists benefit from monitoring the conversation because it provides them a

context with which to frame their work. The reactions from across the blogosphere also

provide journalists a preview of how a story might to be received by various subsections

of the general public. But when journalists consult blogs before completing their

coverage, they confer significant framing power to the blogosphere. In a paper titled

55
“The Power and Politics of Blogs,” Daniel Drezner analyzes a network of blog links and

conduct a survey of media professionals to find that, “Under specific circumstances –

when key weblogs focus on a new or neglected issue – blogs can socially construct an

agenda or interpretive frame that acts as a focal point for mainstream media, shaping and

constraining the larger political debate” (Drezner et al. 2004, 2).

If the mainstream media’s task is to funnel the entire spectrum of possible

interpretations of a news event into an (ideally) illustrative sample for mass audiences to

consume, Drezner finds that blogs can occasionally influence what reactions the media

funnels:

Scholars of political communication argue that the media can elevate issues and
devise interpretive frames for them that shape the boundaries and content of political
discourse and public opinion. For complex issue areas, there are a plethora of possible
debates and cleavages that can take place…If the mainstream media constructs focal
points through which political actors must operate, the blogosphere has the capacity to
construct focal points through which the media operates.
(Drezner et al. 2004, 17-18)

The media is more likely to accept the construction the blogosphere provides when

there is agreement between liberal and conservative blogs, as occurred in the Lott episode,

when bloggers on both sides of the political spectrum interpreted Lott’s comments as racist

and revolting (Drezner et al. 2004, 18). Even when they fail to reach consensus, they can

draw interest and “generate clear faultlines of debate on policy issues” (Drezner et al. 2004,

18).

Framing Concerns

The skewed nature of the blogosphere means that most of the traffic – including

journalists – goes to the top blogs. This effect is especially pronounced among the ‘elite

media’ sources surveyed (Drezner et al. 2004, 18). As a result, the top bloggers “occupy

56
key positions in the mediascape” and by nature of their audience are granted power

(albeit limited) to frame interpretations of news stories (Cornfield et al. “Buzz” 2005).

Michael Cornfield found strong correspondences of cross-links between blogs and the

media as well as blogs and online discussion groups, supporting the idea “that blogs are

positioned between the two other channels as a sort of guide for the media to the rest of

the [I]nternet” (Cornfield et al. “Buzz” 2005, 18).

This raises concern over the potential for the abuse of this power, but there are

many limits. First, good journalists would never base coverage solely on the reactions of

a few bloggers or even their audiences unless that was the goal of the piece. And when

journalists consult blogs, especially well-known blogs, they are usually aware of the

author’s partisanship. Drezner concludes that the ‘buzz’ blogs can collectively create is

organic. While the top blogs can draw media attention and shape the framing of a story

under the right conditions, they cannot single-handedly launch it into the national

spotlight (Bloom et al. 2003, 23). Finally, the mainstream media already exerts

interpretative framing power on a daily basis and members of the audience who are

bothered by this fact can find alternative information sources online.

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4. The Mainstream Media’s Reaction to Changing Times

“It hasn’t really occurred to most people that

the heart and soul of journalism is being decided right now.”
-University of Georgia Journalism Professor Conrad Fink, qtd. in Farhi 2006

Blogs are also indirectly contributing to the evolution of mainstream journalism

by providing the competitive pressure necessary to accelerate adaptation to a new media

environment, as well as some of the tools they need to do so. Competition from blogs is

just one element of a larger crisis in journalism, one which journalists are more willing to

admit: Is the traditional media moving fast enough to transition to the new economies of

media production? The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University

condemns the current rate of transition: “Traditional news media are not yet willing to

adapt to the principals of the environment in which they find themselves.”

This is not the first time new technology has threatened the news industry, and

likely will not be the last:

The news industry is a resilient bunch. Newspapers, in particular, represent some of the
United States’ oldest and most respected companies. So far, they have weathered
storms of significant social, economic, and technological change by figuring out how to
transform themselves and what they produce.
(Bowman et al. 2005).

The deeper fear is that the current power struggle may be the most disruptive any

news industry has ever faced, because this shift is not to another technology controlled by

similar aristocracies of power holders and content controllers, as occurred with the media

revolutions brought about by the development of the telegram, newspaper, and television,

but rather an opening of the floodgates that has already produced the most democratizing

shift in publishing power in history. The fundamental economics of news gathering and

distribution have changed dramatically in a relatively short time period. “[The Internet]

58
has also altered the economics of media in two important ways. First, it enables limitless

distribution of content for little or no cost. Second, it has potentially put everyone on the

planet into the media business” (Bowman et al. 2005). And perhaps most telling,

advertising spending is increasingly allocated to the Internet. Internet ad spending rose

30% in 2005, to $12.5 billion (Porter 2006).

Mike Burbach, an outgoing newspaper editor at the Akron, Ohio Beacon Journal,

argues that with the ground permanently shifting under their feet and fragmented media

experiences becoming the norm, “If we want to keep at this, and if we believe in what

we’re doing, we have to adapt. Some of what we do and love to do will help us compete,

and some of it won’t. We have to learn the difference” (Farhi 2006). Jay Smith,

president of Cox Newspapers, agrees that evolution can bring salvation:

We've just come through five very difficult years, and if we simply continue business as
usual, it's going to be worse. But if we think about how to preserve and protect the daily
paper and how we can reinvent it, if we build a huge online presence, if we can build
other businesses around it, I think the future looks bright.
(Farhi 2006)

What Must Change

Many in the mainstream media have accepted that they must adapt to survive in a

drastically altered communications environment. But the changes must be significant.

Simply providing online message boards under the assumption that readers will flock to

them (as many Internet Service Providers did in the mid-1990’s) or soliciting readers’

vacation photos (as the Boston Globe does in its new Sidekick section) is not a sincere

embrace of the fundamental shifts taking place online. The companies likely to survive

the current shift must understand they no longer hold monopolies on distribution and that

a conservative approach will not suffice . Those companies that manage to combine this

59
newfound awareness while preserving the best qualities of traditional journalism will

prosper (Bloom et al. 2003; Bowman et al. 2005).

Adopting Blogging’s Strengths

Journalists that use blogs in their work have found it does not have to be painful.

In fact, it can make them better reporters. Journalists can embrace blogs as a complement

to their profession for all of the purposes already explained. And news companies can

benefit from operating their own blogs, as will be explained below. But their futures

depend on proactive measures, not solely an acceptance of the inevitable presence of

blogs in an otherwise established process. The principles of journalism itself must

evolve.

The best strategy may be to retain traditional ideals but also adopt the most

worthy and innovative values the blogosphere has to offer. Blogs have become popular

with online politically active citizens in just a few short years because the best ones are

timely, transparent, relevant, and humanized. Furthermore, the audience is given the

ability participate in a significant manner. These values directly contradict the

gatekeeper mentality and are counterintuitive to the thinking of most major corporations,

but must be integrated to win audiences back. As the traditional media continues to move

its operations to the Internet, it will behoove them to tailor their content for the online

environment with these values in mind.

Timeliness

60
 News companies that have not yet must shift from the one-day print cycle. Rather

than one major content rollout early each morning, the media can post stories as they are

completed. The morning news release means less each day as readers from every time

zone around the world head online to find the latest news, as provided at constant refreshs

by services like Google News or headlines on Yahoo. Sites like this are constantly

updated, so a news company withholding all its content until the morning is surpassed by

competition that fills in the time between. Short of blogging, media companies can also

experiment with less polished versions of news stories that can be uploaded with faster

turnaround, to be followed by a more in-depth piece as it is completed.

Transparency

The Rathergate episode yields an ambivalent view of the blogosphere’s influence

over the media but also lends insight into how the mainstream media must adapt to an

audience of fact-checkers. CBS’ independent panel found that the CBS News team

“compounded [their] failure with a “rigid and blind” defense” of the report (“CBS Ousts

4” 2005). Dan Rather consistently defended the news team’s journalistic integrity in

preparing the report when in fact they had “failed to follow basic journalistic principles”

(“CBS Ousts 4” 2005). Furthermore, he denigrated the doubts of those in the audience

who were not professional journalists, saying, “I don’t see any reason to carry on a

conversation with the professional rumor mill” (Kurtz 2004, “Rather Defends CBS”).

Press critic, Journalism professor, and blogger Jay Rosen suggests a more honorable

reaction for the future: “Let's look at our sources and methods” (Rosen, “Rather’s

Satisfaction…” 2004).

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 Not all blogs are transparent, and this is a potential limit on the idealism of new

media advocates and the future importance of blogs. But online news readers have

grown accustomed to greater access to source material because the Internet allows links

to vast amounts of information. One result of widespread amateur content creation is that

the audience is more aware of how the content they consume is created. Bloggers and

mainstream journalists may have similar conversations with sources, readers, and one

another before publishing a piece. The key difference is that in the blogosphere, this

conversation is often publicly available for the reader to view. Many bloggers frequently

post reader emails or comments and their reaction to these comments in explanation of a

decision. Blog readers enjoy being ahead of the curve and included in the process. CBS

could have significantly reduced fallout if it had been more willing to take the audience’s

doubts more seriously.

Mainstream journalism must evolve to share more of the creation process with

readers. If subscribers are paying journalists for the professionalism that goes into their

work, they increasingly want to see where those resources are being used. Furthermore,

the most interested members of the audience want access to the essential building blocks

of the story, because the Internet allows them it. To retain these (often influential)

readers, the mainstream media should emulate bloggers’ practice of constant cross-

linking to original sources. Allowing readers the option of accessing outside sites does

not drain away readers, as many in the mainstream media originally feared. The reporter

and media company still have value to the reader for alerting them to and pre-packaging

the stories and saving them time by summarizing. But the norm of the blogosphere, and

increasingly all online news, is open-source.

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 The Department of Defense, partially to protect its employees from any media-

created spin, has a policy of publishing any interviews in full and complete form (“News

Transcript” 2006; qtd. in Gillmor “We the Media” 2004, 66). Blogs also typically

provide full interview transcripts. Readers are no longer left to question what context

someone was in when they gave their answer. This is just one way mainstream

journalism can adapt to the open source ethos.

Finally, transparency is the critical tool journalism needs to adopt if it is to

withstand the pressure of partisans and bloggers. If CBS News were, in fact, relying on

authentic documents, they could have withstood partisan pressure from blogs far more

easily by engaging in the discussion. Buzz cannot and will not reach critical level in the

blogosphere unless rational people can see validity in an argument. But the audience no

longer trusts that what the media says is always true. In Poynter Ethics Journal, Kelly

McBride argues that constant pressure from blogs will improve journalism by increasing

transparency:

It’s a sure bet that bloggers will continue to challenge and undermine the work of
journalists. In response, journalists will get better and tougher. Anticipating the constant
scrutiny, reporters will tell readers and editors where they got their information, why they
think it’s sound, what they did to check out their sources. Journalists can no longer
assume the audience will trust the story. Instead, newsrooms will take extra steps to
articulate their mission and educate their audience with every story, every day. This is
what we did. This is how we did it. This is why you should trust us. We used to hide all
this. We didn’t want the competition retracing our steps, tracking down our sources, doing
a better story. The mystery of making the news is no longer worth preserving.
(McBride 2004)

Human Voice

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 The success of the partisan14 Fox News channel in recent years while other cable

news channels’ growth remained stagnant (“News Audiences Increasingly Politicized”

2004) is an indication that the audience has tired of removed, AP-style objectivity. The

detached style still has an essential role in the factual reporting of events, but the

mainstream media could attract bigger audiences if it would allow more of the individual

reporter’s voice into stories. Blogs have quickly shown that if a bias is clearly stated,

readers are capable of taking such information into account as they read.

Objectivity remains the holy grail of journalism, but the reality is that most of the

audience already considers the mainstream media to be biased one way or another. The

Pew Center for the People & the Press’s surveys have shown that Republicans in

particular have developed a strong distrust of the media, with conservative audience

members attributing low credibility to “virtually all major media outlets over the past

four years.” Even CNN’s “once dominant credibility ratings have slumped in recent

years, mostly among Republicans and independents” (“News Audiences Increasingly

Polarized” 2004). Journalists maintain the ideal of objectivity while writers with more

passionate content win readers’ attention. The Pew Center for the People & the Press’s

survey found that even as Americans are more interested in and spent more time on the

news, the traditional news outlets have not seen expanded audiences. (“News Audiences

Increasingly Polarized” 2004). George Packer argues that objectivity is sacred in

journalism only because it has “anointed political journalists as a mandarin class of

insiders with serious responsibilities” (Packer 2004). Will Bunch feels that the objective,

detached writing style has been a major factor in the current newsroom crisis:

14
“Fox ranks as the most trusted news source among Republicans but is among the least trusted by
Democrats” (“News Audiences Increasingly Politicized,” a Pew Center for the People & the Press survey).

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 We have, for the most part, allowed our product to become humorless and dull. In an era
when it seems most people truly will be famous for 15 minutes, newspapers have
stubbornly avoided creating personalities…or having a personality, for that matter. In a
pathologically obsessive quest for two false goddesses – named Objectivity and Balance
– we have completely ceded the great American political debate to talk radio, cable TV
and the Internet, where people have learned that politics is actually interesting and even
fun when people are allowed to take sides.
(Bunch 2005)

Blogs do not herald the end of objectivity, but they are a reminder that readers

respond favorably to a human voice in their news, even if that voice has faults or biases,

Of course, some of the appeal of the unique voice blogs provide is that the reader is often

writing passionately about unique subjects.

Relevancy to Niche Audiences

Cable television preceded the Internet in addressing the niche audience by

stealing viewers from the mainstream networks. The Internet and specifically, blogs have

taken the concept a step farther. The audience has responded with greater demand for

customized information (Bowman et al. 2005). More people are using the Internet for

news (Horrigan 2006, iv) and the major growth in traffic at news sites has been at sites

like Google News and Yahoo, portals that allow readers to customize the news to their

specific interests (Kurtz 2006, “The Big News…”). Meantime, the major television

networks’ ratings continue to decline while cable ratings are slightly up (Biagi, 2005).

Blogs epitomize this trend of providing increasingly specific and customized

content to consumers. Because blogs are free to start and maintain and do not require a

minimum number of readers to stay in business, they can target incredibly narrow

audiences, from obscure hobbies to hyper-local content. Newspapers and other media

companies can also maintain relevancy while attracting large audiences, but it may

require a redefinition of the intended audience.

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 First, the audience is increasingly online, and online news is the future of news

distribution if young people are any indication. Only 23% of 18-29 year olds regularly

learned something about the 2004 election from the nightly network news, down from

39% in 2000 (Kohut 2004, 3). A Pew Internet & American Life Project survey found

that online Americans under age 36 are “generally less news-hungry” than older online

Americans and are “less likely to get news on the typical day from local TV,

national TV, or local newspapers than older users” (Horrigan 2006, iv). But they

are turning to the Internet for news more than other age groups. Almost half (46%) get

news online on an average day, as compared to 40% of those in the 36-50 year old group

and 43% of those in the over-50 age group (Horrigan 2006, iii). Newspapers still provide

valuable local news coverage that many Internet-only sources cannot yet provide. But

readers have thousands of choices for other news, so newspapers must shift from a

mainstream general interest approach to better meet the audience’s niche topic desires.

Websites that aggregate news content and filter it for users, such as Google News,

Yahoo, and blogs, are growing at the fastest rates (Kurtz 2006, “The Big News…”). But

these sites typically link to individual articles from a vast array of news sources, with the

result that a Google News link may drive people all over the world to a column in a

small-town newspaper in Ohio. Search engines increase this effect. Users are able to

quickly find who and what they are interested in, and so a blogger in California

passionate about copyright law may closely follow the work of a reporter in Maine. The

reporter in Maine is most likely still writing for his or her intended audience in Ogunquit,

but may unknowingly develop a following across the country. The definition of audience

is much different online than in print or broadcast editions. The traditional expectation of

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an audience is the media company’s limited market, unless a writer or program is

nationally syndicated.

Today any interested party can find, link to, comment on, and otherwise interact

with online articles. This is an opportunity for media companies. A Washington press

corps reporter may be assigned to an obscure topic and as a result, be at the bottom of the

totem pole on Capitol Hill and at his newspaper. But within an online community

centered on the issue he covers, he may be considered a major authority in the area. This

attention can be startling at first, but again, the columnist is more relevant to the person

who found their writing online because they were interested in the subject than to a

subscriber who may or may not read the column because it shows up on the doorstep in

the morning. Newspapers and other media companies can extend their traditionally

geographically limited reach by embracing this relationship. Reporters can be given the

liberty to write for an expanded range of topics if they are attracting a wider audience

than the immediate geographic subscriber base.

An easy way to allow reporters to attract attention from the online communities

interested in their particular beat without altering the work they produce for the

immediate market or investing significant resources is to allow reporters to start their

own blogs.

Mainstream Media Blogs

In some ways the mainstream media, by definition of what it is, will never be able

to emulate the hyper-specialized content, timeliness, and passion blogs provide. In this

case, imitation may be the finest form of flattery. The mainstream media can incorporate

blogs by directly leasing successful bloggers to run their blogs or by allowing reporters to

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blog. Several media companies have tried each of these approaches, with varying

degrees of success. Regardless, it can be assumed that any direct threat to media

companies’ revenues will be incorporated if possible, and media companies have found

blogs easy to include in their current operations. Drezner lists opinion journals such as

The New Republic, Slate, Salon, New Criterion, The American Prospect, Reason, The

Washington Monthly, and The National Review as examples of media companies that either

sponsor bloggers or have created their own blogs (Drezner et al. 2004, 6). Other media

companies that have moved to include blogs in one way or another include but are not limited

to the San Jose Mercury News, Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Tribune, Washington

Post, Guardian, Fox News, ABC News, MSNBC and ESPN (Drezner et al. 2004, 6).

Many newspapers and other media companies are offering their content online,

most often for free with registration. But despite strong growth in traffic and avenue,

newspaper websites earn only about $2 billion in advertising online, as compared to $48

billion from print advertising (Farhi 2006). As the companies learn what works and what

does not online, they will need the financial support of their parent companies.

One reason newspapers’ online advertising revenue has not caught up with

traditional advertising revenue is intense competition from websites that offer classifieds

and localized advertising, such as Craigslist.org and Google Local. But another reason is

that not all media companies have changed their content to maximize online advertising

revenue. Content is king on the Internet, where online advertising rates frequently reflect

the average amount of time users spend at the site as well as the number of people who

view the site each day (including multiple visits as new content is posted). A simple text

copy of that day’s newspaper pasted online once a day does not attract high online ad

revenues, but a frequently updated site that users spend long amounts of time on can

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bring in more revenue. These sites can increase the average amount of time spent at a

site as well as the number of times a day the same number of readers view a site by

including the interactive and community features blogs provide.

Reporter blogs

Media companies already have a talented staff of reporters, researchers, and other

personnel. And because of the limited size of column lengths or television programs,

they must frequently leave out much of the research they have done on any given story.

The knowledge they were paid to unearth is left to rot in their notes. This inefficiency

can be transformed into an opportunity by allowing reporters to post unpublished content

on their own blogs. For example, a biweekly New York Times columnist “carries his

crusade against the sexual enslavement of third-world girls into extra depth online”

(Edmonds).

Allowing reporters their own blogs can also improve the transparency of a news

organization. The reporters can update their most interested readers with how they went

about investigating a story without wasting space in the print edition. The average

readers still receive a well presented story and those who wish to see the raw materials

can find it easily online. The Dallas Morning News took this approach at the editorial

level by launching a 12-member editorial board blog to demystify the editorial process

(Falcone). This also indirectly offers protection against charges of bias. Partisan

bloggers looking for an easy takedown will not have the ammunition they usually do

when they demand to know more on the background of the story.

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 Finally, if Rebecca MacKinnon is indicative of other specialists working for a

mass media organization, allowing reporters to maintain blogs can give them an outlet to

offer more expertise than their editors care to see in their mainstream reporting.

MacKinnon is the former chief CNN Asia correspondent, but grew frustrated with having

to simplify her stories for mass audiences. She started a blog to allow her to put to use

the valuable knowledge she learned on the job, but was told to take it down. She quit

because of this growing frustration:

I would say about 80% of what I knew about my region wasn't actually getting in my
stories, and there was no other vehicle to do this. So I became very excited about the
potential of using technology which has become very cheap, to have a conversation with
an audience about more in-depth issues that maybe the same mass audience might not
all be interested in, but there's a smaller sub-segment of that audience that are extremely
interested in getting more detail, and having a conversation.
(Mullins)

MacKinnon’s blog, North Korea Zone, was followed by interested diplomats,

journalists, and even members of North Korea’s government. The blog gave her

increased influence within that community (Mullins). This can be a benefit to the media

organizations that employ the reporter because they now have not just a reporter but a

widely acknowledged authority on a given subject. CNN also asked Kevin Sites, a

correspondent in Iraq, to cease blogging (Falcone).

MacKinnon’s frustration with CNN for refusing to allow her to reach out to niche

audiences as well as mass audiences is an easily preventable situation, but also illustrates

the importance of maintaining objectivity on reporters’ blogs. It is possible to provide a

more human writing style without choosing sides. For example, when members of North

Korea’s government took issue with claims a source on her blog made, she allowed them

equal opportunity to defend themselves (Mullins). Carla K. Johnson, a reporter at the

Spokesman-Review, agrees that she can apply journalistic principles to the fun format of a

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blog: “It’s certainly a balancing act on my part to give the blog a personality, and on the

other hand, maintain some objectivity so that I’m a credible new sources [sic] that people

will come back to” (Falcone).

The Washington Post is one media company that has taken significant steps to

adapt to the presence of blogs. The company has hired a “crossover reporter to bridge the

gap between its print newspaper and Internet site” (“Blogger in the Newsroom”). The

reporter will file for and update the Post’s blog, The Fix, throughout the day, as well as

host occasional online chats and file for the Post’s print edition (“Blogger in the

Newsroom”).

Reporter blogs brings up the question of whether their work will be edited before

or after posting or at all. At stake is the newspaper’s credibility but also the spontaneous

style central to blogs. At this point in time it depends on the individual newspaper’s

policy. The Sacramento Bee drew criticism for its decision to have editors screen blog

entries before they are posted online (Falcone). The decision was a reaction to

complaints by news staffers who wanted similar editing policies for blog and print

stories.

Omblogsman

A spin on the partisan watchblog approach is a nonpartisan industry watchblog.

Individual newspapers can create editorial blogs, as the Dallas Morning News did, as can

journalism experts, such as the Columbia Journalism Review did with its Campaign Desk

blog. The blog was created as another layer of oversight on the media to help correct

distorted framing of campaigns and candidates before it becomes the accepted narrative

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(Glaser, “Watchblogs”). Two editors and five full-time reporters will monitor the media

for spin and limited narratives, such as those in the 2000 election where the media labeled

Al Gore arrogant but smart and George W. Bush dumb but honest (Glaser,

“Watchblogs”).

Economic Realities

Certain differences between traditional mediums and the Internet will not

disappear no matter how open-minded the mainstream media is to change. “The expense,

time, and resources consumed in leveling forests to put ink on paper and transport heavy

newspapers to readers’ hands” (Lifson 2006 “The Antique Media”) greatly exceeds the

cost of maintaining even a highly-trafficked website. This is why the New York Times

recently decided to stop printing stock tables on weekdays and bolster its online stock-

lookup resources. “This recognizes the fact that the vast majority of readers now go

online to get financial information because we can serve them better that way,” said New

York Times business editor Lawrence Ingrassia (“New York Times…” 2006). The

Tribune Co. also stopped printing stock listings in its newspapers’ daily editions.

Young people want and get their news and information online (Horrigan 2006,

iv). Older generations still want the news in print form, but if current trends continue, the

number of print edition readers will not be able to sustain newspapers in their current

form. Newspaper companies can follow the Times’ in reducing wasted space in a

limited-space medium by relocating things like stock tables, real estate classifieds, and

other features online. The shift to providing information online has already taken place

for other industries. Twenty-four percent of homebuyers report they first found out about

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the house they purchased online, as compared to real estate advertising in the “7% or

less” category (“Home Buyer & Seller Survey” 2006). Newspapers must follow suit in

shifting resources online where the audience increasingly is (Horrigan 2006, iv).

As newspapers’ adapt their websites to the unique demands of online audiences,

traffic on their sites continues to rise (Burns 2006). The spring 2006 Newspaper Audience

Database report found that one in three Internet users visit newspaper websites at least once a

month, or about 55 million visitors (Burns 2006). This readership is beginning to rival the

base audience of 116 million who read print editions each week (Burns 2006). The

aggressive rollout of new features is also contributing to expanded demographic reach (Burns

2006).

Content Assimilation

Reporting is a labor-intensive enterprise (Farhi 2006). Daily journalism still

requires raw manpower and there is a finite limit on how efficient the newsroom can

become (Farhi 2006). But the Internet and all of the content creators on it can provide

raw manpower as well as polished content. The solution to the high costs of researching

and preparing content to compete with bloggers and others who do not charge is to

include their content.

Amateur-created media content that originated on the Internet has started to

spread to the mass media. Blogger and software engineer Tom Coates writes, “The

whole of the mainstream media has started to look towards an undercurrent of individual

amateur creation because of the creativity that’s bubbling up from this previously

unknown swathe of humanity”. VH1 has partnered with the IFILM online video website

to produce a television show featuring the Internet’s most entertaining video clips. The

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language describing the show illustrates how television studios, once the creators of all

televised content, are now following the lead of individuals: “If they're good enough for

you to send to your entire email address book they're good enough for VH1” (“VH1 Web

Junk 20” 2006). VH1 has blunted the threat of sites like IFILM stealing viewers’

attention spans by incorporating its content and translating it back to VH1’s natural

medium.

Another example is CNN’s use of blogging to enrich its cable news channel’s

coverage. Jacki Schechner, Internet Reporter at CNN, works to bring out some of the

political blogs’ content to CNN’s television coverage in order to expand its breadth and

involve new voices. She says CNN is not simply following a trend, but rather is sincerely

working to translate the new voices the blogosphere has given rise to for the older

television audience (Schechner 2006).

Howard Kurtz, a columnist for the Washington Post and host at CNN, also

frequently includes references to bloggers in his coverage of the media. Blogger Robert

Cox argues that Kurtz is the “single most important person in the [mainstream media] for

bloggers today, bridging the gap between traditional media consumers and blog

readers…” (Cox, Robert).

News websites have found blogs useful to maintain readers when other content is

restricted to paid subscribers. “As media publications have divided their online content

between free and paid material in an effort to boost subscription revenues, they have

simultaneously expanded their free content to maintain web traffic” (Drezner et al. 2004, 15).

For example, The New Republic in 2003 limited access to print edition stories to subscribers,

but introduced free scholar-blogs as well as four free internal blogs (Drezner et al. 2004, 15).

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 A major development in this area is the introduction of BlogBurst, a syndication

service that delivers commentary from 600 bloggers to newspapers much like newswires

deliver news content. At its launch it already had deals with Gannett Co., Washington

Post Co., San Francisco Chronicle, and other papers. The service automatically updates

newspapers with editor-selected content from accredited bloggers, who in turn receive a

large audience for their writing and traffic driven to their blogs (Auchard, 2006). This

service allows newspaper publishers to treat top bloggers as freelancers.

A far wider range of human voices have been given microphones and the

mainstream media can assist their audiences’ ascendance to producer status by giving up

some control. One major media corporation at the cutting edge of the synthesis of

traditional and new media is the BBC. Richard Sambrook, director of the BBC Global

News Division, says “the BBC’s role is shifting from broadcaster and mediator to

facilitator, enabler and teacher” (Bowman et al. 2005). The company provides free

broadcast and new media training online (Bowman et al. 2005). Rather than feel

threatened by the rise of amateur content, the company is enabling it.

Let Go

Every one of these approaches, from allowing reporters to blog to enlightening

the audience with how decisions are made, require news companies to loosen up their

tight grip on the creation and distribution of news. Media critic Jeff Jarvis argues, “The

Number one lesson of the internet, whether you’re Howard Dean or a media company or

75
a marketer, is that you have to give up control to gain control” (qtd. in Bowman et al.

2005).

Marketers have learned this lesson quickly with viral marketing campaigns.

General Motors ran an interactive website where visitors could create their own

advertisements for Chevy SUVs. Environmental and other critics created videos

attacking the company, but General Motors only took down the morally offensive videos

and left others critical of the company online. The success of the campaign, measured by

pageviews, ads created, ads emailed, average visit length, and earned media attention was

dependent on the company giving up control to its customers (“Critics Hijack” 2006).

The professional media has already lost its monopoly on information, and at this

point its evolution demands flexibility. Whether it be reporter blogs, uncomfortable

experiments with new formats, or bringing readers into the process on a more significant

level, the mainstream media are beginning to, and must continue to, “evolve their

business from an authoritarian ‘top-down’ approach” to integrate new developments

(Bowman et al. 2005). It is, however, still a complicated world, and the audience has a

finite amount of time they will dedicate to consuming the news each day. The

mainstream media can continue to serve their needs and retains a number of advantages

over blogs.

What the Mainstream Media Still Has

Despite recent declines, newspaper companies remain some of America’s most

trusted institutions. They still have trusted name brands that provide authority status over

blogs and other recent media upstarts. Part of this authority is the power to decide what

importance to place on individual stories. The hierarchy of importance is judged by

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placement (such as the front page) in newspapers and amount of time received on

television and radio broadcasts. Blogs, with no space limitations, cannot confer this

importance as well.

Blogs also still depend on the mainstream media’s agenda-setting authority and

specifically, the news they produce. Even new media advocate Dan Gillmor concedes

that the noise-to-signal ratio in the new media forms remain alarmingly high (qtd. by

Edmonds). The mainstream media can continue to serve as human moderators by

deciding what new sources are credible and filtering worthwhile content for mainstream

audiences. They remain the gatekeeper of information for mainstream audiences;

newspapers still have 56 million readers (Farhi 2006) and 62% of online Americans still

do not know what a blog is (Rainie 2005). Locally, newspapers have the most

newsgathering power, community connections, and strong demand for powerful

journalism, such as investigative reporting (Farhi 2006).

The corporate influence many blame for journalism’s decline is also corporate

power that can be used to adjust. The owners of media companies do not plan on seeing

them fade into obscurity. Investments can be made in annexing related online businesses

and improving existing offerings. Alex Jones, director of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center

for the Press, expects the newspaper business juggernaut to move into online businesses

as it enters self-preservation mode and the capital of the news industry is turned loose

online (Jones 2006). News Corporation’s purchase of MySpace social networking

service and Google’s purchase of Blogger are just two examples of major media

corporations that have embraced user-produced content systems.

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 Owners of media companies do not plan on seeing them fade into obscurity, but

some will not survive if cuts are made without reinvestment in other areas. Financial

conservatism is a poor strategy when there are so many risk-takers in today’s new media

economy. Those news companies not being run by shortsighted public shareholders are

adapting better than the rest, with fewer layoffs (Farhi 2006).

Conclusion
A significant portion of blogs’ influence is directly linked to their interaction with

the mainstream media. Bloggers cannot consciously control the ‘buzz’ they occasionally

create (Cornfield et al. “Buzz” 2005, 23). But this does not preclude their sometimes

significant influence:

“Buzz can alter social behavior and perceptions. It can embolden or embarrass its
subjects. It can affect sales, donations, and campaign coffers. It can move issues up,
down, and across institutional agendas (across being issue re-conceptualization or re-
framing). When these changes occur, buzz can shift the balance of forces arrayed in a
political struggle, and so affect its outcome.
(Cornfield et al. “Buzz” 2005, 3)

A simplistic view of blogs as a distinct layer at the bottom of the power hierarchy

between producers and consumers glosses over the tight integration of blogs and the

mainstream media. The future of political blogs, as well as journalism, may be a

combination of new and traditional values. Dan Kennedy, blogger and journalist, says,

“The best and most influential blogs…succeed not because they are something radically

new, but because the people who produce them know how to do good journalism”

(Bloom et al. 2003, 24). The professionals and the amateurs can learn from each other

(Glaser, “Watchblogs) and work with each other in a symbiotic relationship. The

amateurs provide an outsider view and sheer numbers, and professional journalists have

professional skills, resources and connections at their disposal.

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 Journalism is a business, but is also a social institution and “a public trust, an

essential element in the democratic mosaic,” says Pew Charitable Trusts’ President and

CEO Rebecca Rimel (Farhi 2006). As this business suffers a variety of problems for a

variety of reasons, it is important to keep this in mind. Blogs can help the mainstream

media transition to a new environment shared by more voices.

For all of the gloom, “There is a palpable optimism driving experimentation” with

blogs and other forms of citizen media (Bowman et al. 2005). It is “not the end of

journalism or news media companies but a shift in where value is being created”

(Bowman et al. 2005). Google and eBay are both examples of the value that can be

created by simply building the infrastructure amateurs need to participate (Bowman et al.

2005). The mainstream media companies that can produce the best synthesis of

traditional and new media will succeed online as they “discover the right mix of

community, content, commerce and tools...to leverage the power of the many” (Bowman

et al. 2005).

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5. The Promises and Limits of the Blogosphere as a Distinct Media
Entity

The political blogosphere clearly serves the mainstream media in a number of

supplementary roles, but its influence is not always limited to its influence over or

coverage in the mainstream media. This section of the chapter will examine the extent to

which the blogosphere exists as a distinct media entity beyond the scope of the

mainstream media by providing users direct access to information, citizen-created media,

and navigation of a media-saturated world. It will also analyze the real and theoretical

limits of the blogosphere’s influence. Some limits on the blogosphere’s autonomous

influence which are often stated but not as dire as they seem are credibility concerns,

small audience sizes, homogeneous demographics, and top-heavy traffic distribution (as

manifested in an “A-list” of blogs and a large number of abandoned blogs). Other limits,

which do not always receive as much attention but could limit the promise of the

blogosphere, include dependence on the mainstream media for authority and content and

the increasing commercialization of the medium.

Bypassing the Mainstream Media

Direct Link to Information

Blogs may not be the successor to the corporate news media, but the blogosphere

does have some autonomy from the mainstream media as gatekeepers to their own

content and audiences. Bryan Murley compares blogging with the Protestant

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Reformation to explain what is revolutionary about blogging.15 In the Protestant

Reformation, Martin Luther posited that average believers could communicate with God

through Jesus Christ themselves, while Catholics maintained that Priests were necessary

intermediaries to Jesus (Murley 2005, 3-4). For both Catholics and Protestants, Jesus was

the necessary bridge through which they could reach God (see Appendix H) (Murley

2005, 4).

In Murley’s model, information is substituted for God’s role because in a secular

world, it is one of the most valuable commodities and power belongs to those who have

ready access to it, just as power belonged to Catholic priests who held a monopoly on

access to God (Murley 2005, 2). In the traditional mass media system, “media producers

acted as the intermediary between information and information consumers” (Murley

2005, 4). In the new media paradigm, however, “the media producer is not an essential

conduit” to access information (see Appendix I) (Murley 2005, 4). In both paradigms,

technology serves the connective role of Jesus Christ (Murley 2005, 5). In the traditional

system, the technologies were newspapers, radio and television, used to receive the

information disseminated by media producers with access to information. But now

inexpensive means of production and distribution allow individuals to access and

disseminate information without the media as an intermediary.

Blogs, as well as other technology, provide information to the audience without

requiring they consult the mass media. Not everyone in the audience will use technology

to circumvent the mass media, just as not every 16th Century European converted to

Protestantism. But the enlightened will.

15
Murley is not the first to liken journalism with a religion. Jay Rosen does so and considers journalists to
be its priests (Rosen). Hugh Hewitt, a conservative critic of the mainstream media, describes Columbia
University’s graduate school of journalism as a “the highest temple of a religion in decline” (Hewitt).

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Citizen Media

“The venerable profession of journalism finds itself at a rare moment in history where,
for the first time, its hegemony as gatekeeper of the news is threatened by not just new
technology but by the audience it serves.”
(Bowman et al. 2005)

The citizen media movement is broader than the scope of this thesis,16 but blogs

are a popular tool to achieve the larger ideals of citizen media: decentralized, democratic

news that harnesses the wisdom of the crowd. As common citizens report the news and

contribute content to their own trusted online communities, they circumvent the mass

media and attain informational enlightenment through technology.

Most discussions of citizen media have concluded that it serves best, like blogs, as

a complement to the mainstream media. For example, citizen media was crucial in early

coverage of the London Tube bombings on July 7, 2005 and the aftermath of Hurricane

Katrina. Citizens submitted photographs and videos shot with cellphones and digital

cameras to news organizations. As far as a straight news report, citizen media has shown

limitations (Edmonds). But the citizen media movement, with all its limitations, is also a

“tangible indication that authority is shifting from once trusted institutions to

communities or indivudals who have discovered how to earn credibility and influence

online” (Bowman et al. 2005).

User-submitted pictures, though a technological improvement, fits into the same

top-down hierarchy the mainstream media has traditionally operated in. The true promise

16
For an excellent book on citizen media, see Dan Gillmor, We the Media.

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of citizen media is one where content is judged on its merit in a shared market of

information. Blogs have brought millions of average citizens into a state of quasi-

journalism, turning bystanders into sources, reporters, and fact-checkers (Kline et al.

2005). The result is a media of the masses, an invert of the phrase mass media (Baker et

al. 2005).

The citizen media movement is inspired by a general loss of faith in the country’s

established political institutions coupled with widespread public dissatisfaction with the

mainstream media that was supposedly the public’s vigilant watchdog (Kline et al. 2005;

qtd. by Stepp 2006). Blogs have been a key part of “a steadily rising voice – the ordinary

citizenry re-engaging in the lost art of public conversation” (Kline et al. 2005; qtd. by

Stepp 2006).

Conversational Nature of the Blogosphere

Blogs allow the writer’s individual voice to be heard, a refreshing development

after years of the mainstream media “overpackaging” the news with heavy emphasis on

presentation (Schechner 2006). The popularity of blogs in the aftermath of terrorist

attacks in New York City and Bali may be explained by their more personal tone. Legal

academic Ken Parish writes that the blogosphere’s response to the attacks on the World

Trade Center was “raw, subjective and honest as people sought emotions, not detachment

- finding solace and expression in the words of the thousands of blogs that sprang up.”

This intimacy is the antithesis of the mainstream media’s objectivity. Australian political

blogger Tim Dunlop, like many bloggers, rejects the ideal of “detached analysis” and

embraces instead transparent involvement and commitment (Parish 2003). Blogs are

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expected to have a viewpoint, and most wear theirs proudly. The best blogs seamlessly

meld information and commentary.

The author’s voice is certainly not the only one heard in the blogosphere. The

blogosphere’s conversational nature is the critical difference between it and the

mainstream media, and the source of many of its promises and limits. The multitude of

posts, comments, links and other interactions between bloggers and readers in the

blogosphere produces a raw conversational dialogue that is more spontaneous,

interactive, and human than traditional ways of receiving information. The conversation

builds on itself as more participants join in and offer their knowledge and perspectives.

“The thoroughness and depth of coverage of an issue in the blogosphere usually emerge

through a dialectical process over several posts, response, and reader comments, rather

than in a single large, tightly written opinion piece” (as occurs in the mainstream media)

(Parish 2003).

Bloggers as Media Navigators

Despite the benefits of raw dialogue, the vast number of interactions made

possible by extremely low barriers to participation also makes it more difficult to locate

the relevant signal in a sea of irrelevant noise. The huge number of links and cross-

references lead to information overload17. Readers still have limited attention and time to

dedicate to finding the information and entertainment they are looking for, but they now

face an increasingly infinite number of choices (Jones 2006). Those attempting to gleam

information from the raw conversations in the blogosphere often feel they “desperately

17
The modern ailment of information overload has been addressed by many, but notable are Richard Saul
Wurman’s Information Anxiety and Information Anxiety 2 as well as Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, which
argues that one can overcome this dilemma by ‘thin-slicing’, or using only immediately relevant
information.

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need human moderation” to shape the raw data, or “pitch the miscellaneous and keep the

gold” (Weinberger 2006; Nolan 2006).

Rebecca Blood, a pioneer blogger, sees good blogs as “one antidote” for “the

crippling effects of a media-saturated culture” because, despite the general lack of editors

in the blogosphere, the best bloggers act as human filters for their audiences much in the

same way the mainstream media is for its audiences. A good blogger “filters through the

mass of information packaged daily for our consumption and picks out the interesting, the

important, the overlooked, and the unexpected” (Blood 2000).

Blood explains in her history of blogging how filter-style bloggers can act as

traditional editors by highlighting certain segments of a source, providing additional facts

pertinent to the issue at hand, and juxtaposing differing opinions. In this way bloggers

“participate in the dissemination and interpretation of the news that is fed to us every

day” and “begin to redefine media as a public, participatory endeavor” (Blood 2000).

Overstated Limits

Credibility

An overwhelming absence of editors in the blogosphere has not led to the frontier

lawlessness that the mainstream media often depicts (Noonan 2005; Robertson 2006).

Editors are not common in an environment of one-click publishing, but corrections are

pointed out, often immediately, as “the editorial process of the blogs takes place between

and among bloggers, in public, in real time, with fully annotated cross-links” (Drezner et

al. 2004, 17). The BoingBoing blog is like many others in that multiple updates are

attached to an original post as discussion continues in a separate comments section.

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 Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal explains how credibility is gained and

lost in the blogosphere:

What governs members of the blogosphere is what governs to some degree members of
the MSM, and that is the desire for status and respect. In the blogosphere you lose both if
you put forward as fact information that is incorrect…if you are unprofessional or
deliberately misleading. And once you've lost a sufficient amount of status and respect,
none of the other bloggers link to you anymore or raise your name in their arguments.
And you're over. The great correcting mechanism for people on the Web is people on the
Web.
(Noonan 2005)

Blood concurs: “Because the weblog editor can comment freely on what she finds, one

week of reading will reveal to you her personal biases, making her a predictable source.”

Online journalist Jonathan Dube, among other bloggers, supports a code of ethics similar

to the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics:

Among its provisions are to never plagiarize; identify and link to sources whenever
feasible; and never publish information they know is inaccurate—and if publishing
questionable material, make it clear it is in doubt.
(Murley et al. 2005, 14)

The lack of a structure for implementing standards in the blogosphere will prevent such a

code from ever gaining universal adoption, but it is further evidence that reputable

bloggers do take credibility seriously.

Blogger Demographics

A potential limit on the blogosphere’s democratic accessibility is the homogeneity

of the blogosphere. The most recent Pew Internet & American Life Project data finds

that compared to the general population, bloggers are disproportionately white, male,

young, well-educated, and financially well-off (Rainie 2005). But this may merely

reflect the higher average affluence and educational attainment of those with broadband

internet access (Fox 2005, ii), because it has been found that users with broadband

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internet access at home log on more frequently, are much more likely to read news

online, and in general complete a wider range of activities online (Horrigan 2006, iii).

Daily blogging is simply not as convenient with a slow dial-up connection.

Doug Bailey, political consultant and founder of Hotline notes that the digital

divide has similarities to the voting divide: those who do not vote are also less likely to

be online and are not being reached online or off (Bailey, 2006). If the current divide

between bloggers and nonbloggers reflects civic involvement levels, the issue is broader

than just Internet access.

When considering the extent of influence of homogenous demographics, it is

important to consider that most journalists fit a similar profile (Biagi 2005, 255).

Conservative blogger and talk radio host Howard Hewitt, on a visit to Columbia

Journalism School, sat in on a class of predominantly female, socially liberal students

(Hewitt 2006). Journalists defend similarities in demographics and ideologies with the

ideal of professional objectivity. Bloggers reverse this concept by trading in their

objectivity for transparency and clearly stated biases, with the assumption that anyone

who feels strongly enough can start a blog to represent their viewpoint.

There is reason to believe that the blogosphere is becoming more representative of

American society. The percentage of Internet users who have created a blog has risen

from just 2% in 2003 (Lenhart et al. 2004 “Content Creation Online”, 3) to 7% by

November, 2004 (Rainie 2005). The 19% of online teenagers who create blogs (Lenhart

et al. 2005 “Teen Content Creation…”, 3) suggests that the demographic divide between

bloggers and nonbloggers will continue to decrease. The online news audience has also

grown to include a far wider slice of society as more Americans get broadband Internet

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access (Horrigan 2006, ii). Political science professors Daniel Drezner and Henry Farrell

cite two surveys that find that the demographics of bloggers do not significantly differ

from general Internet users (Carl 2003; “Bloggers and Their Blogs”) and are actually

more representative of the general population in terms of gender balance and income

distribution (Henning, “The Blogging Iceberg”) (Drezner et al. 2004, 7).

The American Journalism Review provides a real-world example of the diversity

of bloggers in an article on the more than fifty local political blogs that discussed

Virginia’s 2004 gubernational campaign. At a summit that was convened at the

University of Virginia, the state’s top political bloggers were predominantly white and

male (Fisher 2006). But they were also representative of a wide range of political society:

“an elected county prosecutor, a former candidate for the legislature, several newspaper

reporters, a lobbyist, a paid operative from Dean's former campaign and a 14-year-old

boy, who everyone agreed was among the best of the bunch” (Fisher 2006).

Blogosphere Distribution

The A-list

A network analysis of the status of the most popular and influential political blogs

finds that the blogosphere is far less egalitarian than its praise suggests. Few subjects are

as divisive in the blogosphere as the notion of an ‘A-list’ of blogs that receives a

disproportionate amount of blog readers, inbound links, media coverage, and even

Congressional attention.18 The very notion undermines the view of the blogosphere as a

democratic soapbox and anecdote to the problems of the established mainstream media.

“The A-list bloggers occupy key positions in the mediascape” because “journalists,

18
See FEC section.

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activists, and political decision-makers have learned to consult [them] as a guide to what

is going on in the rest of the internet” (Cornfield et al. “Buzz” 2005, 5). Meanwhile less

popular blogs hit a ceiling in traffic growth (Thompson 2006).

The division is the result of the interlinked nature of the blogosphere. Analysis of

interlinked networks of blogs has shown that the blogosphere operates on a skewed

lognormal distribution (see Appendix J), where a small number of the network’s nodes

(or blogs) enjoy a majority of the ties (or links) from other blogs and websites, while the

rest receive far fewer links (Drezner et al. 2004, 9). This skewed distribution can also be

found in many social systems, such as markets, where the rich have a majority of the

resources, and in film casting, where a relatively small group of actors is constantly

filming while others perpetually await their “big break” (Thompson 2006).

The blogosphere’s distribution of links and nodes has grown in such a way that

existing blogs are likely to be linked to by new blogs entering the network (Drezner et al.

2004, 9). Matthew Hindman, et al. found that this pattern exists in the distribution of

political websites, although they did not limit their study to blogs (Hindman et al. 2003).

The practical result of the blogosphere’s skewed distribution is that the top political blogs

receive almost all of the incoming links. Clay Shirky examined the links between 433

blogs and found that “the top dozen bloggers (less than 3% of the total examined)

accounted for approximately 20% of the incoming links” (Shirky 2003; qtd. by Drezner

et al. 2004, 10). Eventually the pattern reinforces itself in a phenomenon called

homeostasis, as “popularity breeds popularity” (Thompson 2006). As a result the first

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blogs have a crucial advantage over newer blogs, as can be seen in Technorati’s list of the

top 100 blogs (Thompson 2006).19

Journalist Clive Thompson attributes some of the bitterness less popular bloggers

have against the A-listers to their submissive relationship: “They envy them, but they

need them, too, because one of the quickest ways for an unknown blog to acquire traffic

is to feed scoops to an A-lister, in the hopes that the editors there will use the tip and

include a thank-you link pointing back to the tipster.” A link from a popular site causes a

flood of traffic that can quickly elevate the status of their blog. To earn this link, lower-

status bloggers alert the top blogs to exciting content (Drezner et al. 2004, 13). Drezner

argues that the blogosphere’s skew towards a few focal points is actually a mutually

beneficial relationship that allows the cream to rise to the top and thus reduce costs for

outsiders to gleam the most significant information (Drezner et al. 2004, 13).

Bloggers may also flatter more popular bloggers to gain a permanent link on their

blogroll (Thompson 2006). A-listers are notoriously “cliqueish” with who they award

permanent links to (Cox, Ana Marie), but recent research on how blogs become popular

indicates that A-list blogrolls are not as important as they may seem. The study found

that blogs become popular by two main measures: citations in individual posts and

affiliation, or links on a blogroll (Marlow 2004). Of these two measures, citations were

found to accrue traffic more quickly and be more indicative of actual influence while

blogrolls measured popularity (Marlow 2004).

The A-list blogs have a number of incumbent advantages, but it is not a given that

they will stay popular. Turnover is much higher at the top of the blogosphere than in

19
The makeup of Technorati’s top 100 list is shifting, however, with increased representation from
international blogs. See Scott Karp, “Technorati Top 100 Is Changing Radically” at
http://publishing2.com/2006/04/21/technorati-top-100-is-changing-radically/

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traditional mediums like television. David Sifry, the CEO of Technorati, says that the A-

list shifts quickly. “Cultural winds can drive blogs in and out of favor” so even

established blogs must work to stay relevant (Thompson 2006). Thompson compares a

blog to a shark: “if it stops moving, it dies.” Peter Rojas, the editor of the successful tech

blog, Engadget, says that staying at the top is much harder than starting a blog or making

it grow, demanding 80-hour weeks (Thompson 2006). As a result, it is not uncommon

for popular bloggers to burnout and “retire” from their blogs, as Ana Marie Cox did with

her Wonkette blog, passing the reins on to a new editor and using her quasi-celebrity

status to move on to other things. Most blogs still do not make their authors much or any

income and the intensive time commitment needed has led even very successful bloggers

to quit (Terdiman 2004).

It is also not impossible for lesser known blogs to reach A-list status. A network

analysis found that “each node in a network has at least some chance of receiving a new

tie,” so “while ‘rich’ sites are still likely to get ‘richer,’ …‘poor’ sites too stand some

chance of getting rich, if they are lucky” (Pennock et al. 2002; qtd. by Drezner et al.

2004, 10). The effect occurs in subject-specific segments of the Worldwide Web, such as

the niche areas many blogs address (Pennock et al. 2002).

Compared to the barriers to starting a successful newspaper or television channel,

the blogosphere is still relatively a very democratic (if crowded) medium. Although it

may be too soon to tell, thus far dominant blogs have exhibited far shorter lifespans than

those of dominant media outlets in other mediums.

Dead Blogs

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 Despite intense competition for the top spots, the remainder of the blogosphere

consists primarily of vast numbers of abandoned blogs, teenage diaries, and other

politically irrelevant blogs (Lampa 2004). A survey conducted by the Perseus

Development Company in 2003 highlights that “two thirds of public weblogs created via

centralized hosting services have not been updated in two months and are considered

“abandoned”” (Lampa 2004). Because these blogs make up the majority of the

blogosphere, they are frequently mentioned as evidence of a limit to the influence of

blogs (Lampa 2004), but they are more or less irrelevant to the influence of popular

political blogs. Low barriers to entry in virtual communities produce low barriers to exit

and higher dropout rates (Putnam 2000). Starting a blog is typically free, so the number

of failed blogs cannot be meaningfully compared to the much smaller number of media

companies that fail each year.

Blogger Amy Gahran argues that the majority of blogs can be poor quality or

abandoned or unimportant without signifying that all are: “Well, that’s like saying most

of the universe is hydrogen and dust. Yeah, BUT: There are galaxies and black holes and

planets and nebulae, too. Which would you rather focus on?” Columbia Journalism

Review’s Matt Welch acknowledges that most news-related blogs are poor quality, but

says, “the action at the top 10 percent is among the most exciting new trends [journalism]

has seen in a while.”

Audience Size

Relevancy

The ratio of the number of blogs to the number of blog readers and the skewed

nature of traffic in the blogosphere means that most blogs have relatively small

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audiences. “This is usually said to imply that blogs are inherently inconsequential, at

least in contrast with the mainstream media” (Gahran 2005). But small audience size has

not been a major limit on the influence of blogs. Such claims fail to recognize that in a

user-customized media environment, relevancy with niche audiences is increasingly as

important as the size of less interested mass audiences (Gahran 2005).

Blogs typically serve niche audiences, so the audience is generally small, but

readers find the blog extremely relevant to their life, work, passions and interests. A

reader who identifies with a blogger’s voice and purpose is far more dedicated than a

subscriber in a one-newspaper town: “Only a percentage of newspaper readers will read a

particular story or even a particular section, while far higher percentages of visitors to

blogs are reading or at least skimming the content there” (Bloom et al. 2003, 18). In

Murley’s comparison of blogging with Protestantism, he writes that “the doctrine of the

priesthood of all believers is not a powerful Christian doctrine because of its scope, but

because it is relevant to each believer” (Murley 2005, 13). This raises fears that audience

members will insulate themselves with likeminded news sources, but as is explained in

the partisanship section of Chapter 6, research by the Pew Internet & American Life

Project directly refutes these fears (Horrigan et al. 2004).

Dissemination

The rapid diffusion of information online means that even a blog with a small

audience blog can have great influence. First, if it has something compelling posted, it

can be linked to by a popular blog and immediately receive hundreds of thousands of

visits, especially if the less popular blogger takes it upon herself to notify the A-list

blogger.

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 John Hiler writes that, “unbeknownst to most, weblogs have a significant impact

on Google search results” because Google’s search algorithms favor the high rate of

linking and fresh content, both of which blogs are optimized to provide (Hiler

“Google…” 2002). This suggests the possibility that of the 91 million searches

conducted on Google each day, a significant number of users read content from blogs

without realizing it (Sullivan 2006).

The A-List’s Audience

In considering the most popular political blogs, “one need not even make

arguments about diffusion to argue for their influence. A lot of people read these sites”

(Bloom et al. 2003, 18). The A-list blogs have large audiences in their own right as their

direct influence continuously increases (Rainie 2005). The top conservative blog,

InstaPundit, has been eclipsed by the top liberal blog, DailyKos, but both have audiences

rivaling the biggest newspapers in the country (Bowers et al. 2005). DailyKos, for

example, receives close to 500,000 unique visits a day (“Daily Kos Site” 2006). Michael

Cornfield compared the 32 million blog readers (as of early 2005, Rainie 2005) with

traditional media’s audiences and found it to be “20% of the newspaper audience and

40% of the talk radio audience” (Cornfield et al. “Buzz” 2005, 3).

The top blogs are also read by very influential people, so their influence is not

accurately measured by number of hits. “While only 4% of web users knowingly read

blogs in 2003, far higher percentages of political reporters, politicians and policymakers

did” (Bloom et al., 14). In the 2004 Virginia election, the campaign blogs did not attract

very large audiences but were “important to an elite crowd [of] consultants, lobbyists,

flacks” (Fisher 2006).

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Understated Limits

Dependence on the Mainstream Media’s Authority

For all of anti-media rhetoric in the blogosphere, political blogs still depend on

the mainstream media to do research, create content, and determine the priority of stories.

The “capacity of blog operators to make buzz and influence decision” is circumstantial

and “contingent on the behavior of other public voices”, most notably the media

(Cornfield et al. “Buzz” 2005, 2). Liberal blogger Duncan Black agrees that all but the

most popular blogs “need to be amplified by media with bigger megaphones” (Scott

2004).

Most bloggers rely on the mainstream media’s credibility-granting status because

they have “relatively small direct influence through their own readers, a larger influence

when larger media sources link to their blogs, and perhaps an even larger influence still

when their blogging actually gets them (or their story) in the mainstream media outlets,

especially national television” (Bloom et al., 14). In the end, outrage in the blogosphere

means little unless the story eventually reaches critical mass and makes the transition to

the mainstream media.

Dependence on the Mainstream Media’s Content

In an era of newsroom cutbacks, only 5% of the content on blogs involves

original research (Kurtz 2006, “The Big News…”). Washington Post reporter Mike

Shear refers to blogs as “leeches” (Fisher 2006, 45). Many journalists view bloggers as

“repeating, not reporting” (Farhi 2006). In a survey of where bloggers get their news,

half reported that they got most of it directly from newspaper companies, while 19%

reported they got the majority of their content from other bloggers (who were, in turn,

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likely to have gotten it from a newspaper or other mainstream news outlet) (Murley et al.

2005).

Commercialization of the Blogosphere

Blogging has evolved rapidly from a tiny subculture to a semi-commercialized

media industry. The original concept of a blogger, a lone individual with a unique voice

that happens to touch a cultural nerve and become successful, is increasingly giving way

to planned, commercialized group blogs (Thompson 2006). Individual blogs are still

popular, but for those seeking to make money off of their blog, the field has become

much more sophisticated than just a few years ago.

Many of the original A-list blogs have matured into a hybrid of blog and

mainstream media source. They have audiences that rival newspapers (Drezner et al.

2004; Cornfield et al. “Buzz” 2005, 3) and some have taken action to protect their

credibility as the blog matures by using editors and fact-checkers (Gahran 2005). The

authority conferred onto the early political blogs by the mainstream media has evolved

into actual authority because of the trust their audiences place in them and their status as

established blogs.

In New York Magazine, Clive Thompson details the frustration of those trying to

run popular blogs as “the blogosphere is slowly developing solid business models.”

Advertisers have begun using blogs because they are typically cheaper than advertising in

the mainstream media and can offer marketers extremely focused niches (Copeland

2006).

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Unique or edgy advertisements can also spark conversation on the blogs they are

displayed on, increasing the value of its placement (Copeland 2006). Henry Copeland

founded BlogAds to mediate the process for advertisers and bloggers. Advertisers get the

attention of specific target audiences and bloggers receive advertising revenues without

courting individual clients. DailyKos, the most popular blog, currently charges $3,900 a

week for the space at the top of the page (“Blogads for opinion makers,” 2006).

The commercialization of blogging extends to the creation process. Publishers

are now crafting blogs the way Condé Nast creates magazines: by targeting audiences

that advertisers will pay high rates to reach (Thompson 2006). Blogs are also protecting

their reputation as high-class outlets; blogs like celebrity-obsessed Gawker brag of

turning away distasteful offers from lower-market companies such as Ford and Chevy

(Thompson 2006).

When blogs like Ariana Huffington’s Huffington Post have investor financing, a

full-time staff and office, media connections, and celebrities like Seinfeld-creator Larry

David writing posts, it represents “a sort of death knell for the traditional blogger”

(Thompson 2006). Today’s most popular blogs are often the result of a corporation’s

careful planning and promotion (Thompson 2006).

Conclusion

The amateur spirit of the blogosphere has been joined by commercial efforts, but

not eliminated. Despite all of the limits detailed throughout this chapter, “citizen media

has grown from a promise to a legitimate presence in today’s media sphere” (Bowman et

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al. 2005). Blogs are certainly not a suitable replacement for the mainstream media but

they do provide unique value that it does not yet offer.

There is much more to the blogging phenomenon than a supplement to the

mainstream media. The complete effect of blogs a force in political communication has

not yet been completely realized. Although blogs rely on the mainstream media for

content and authority, they will continue to gain more of their own authority as it shifts

from “once trusted institutions to communities or individuals who have earned credibility

though hard-won public discourse” (Bowman et al. 2005).

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7. Blogs & Politics

Howard Dean’s unlikely rise in the 2004 Democratic primaries has been widely

attributed to his campaign’s groundbreaking use of Internet tools. The social networking

website Meetup, an official campaign blog, and a network of supportive blogs helped

move Dean to the front of a crowded slate of candidates and shatter Democratic

fundraising records (Edsall “Dean Fundraising Sets” 2006). Then, in January, Dean

placed second in the Iowa primaries, and in an unscripted speech to rally his supporters,

screamed with enthusiasm. The gaffe tapped into a preexisting sentiment among many in

the political press that Dean was an irrational hothead (Meyer 2004). But the video and

audio of the event also spread virally online, gaining cult status as amateurs remixed the

audio clip with popular music (Morrison 2004). The Internet, specifically blogs,

contributed to Dean’s rise and downfall, a reminder that the blogosphere is a

communications medium, not one candidates’ tool.

The Internet has brought about significant changes to American politics,

especially campaigns, and political blogs have been a driving force behind many of these

changes. The influence blogs can have in conjunction with the mainstream media and in

their own right has serious implications for political communications. Political blogs

have been influential in campaigns at the state and federal level, changing basic elements

of campaigns, including fundraising, advertising, mobilization and political attacks

99
(Nagourney). This influence is increasingly limited, however, by savvy political actors

who have recognized the presence of political blogs with attempts to co-opt them for their

own ends. The lingering possibility of future Federal Election Commission regulations

also acts a potential check on the political power of blogs.

Political Ramifications of Media Influence

“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own
governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”
- James Madison (qtd. by Trippi 2004, 234)

Since the earliest American newspapers, politicians have battled the press to

control how they are portrayed to mass audiences. Reporters have been subpoenaed and

jailed for refusing to disclose information (Schmidt et al. 2004). President Franklin

Roosevelt established the ‘fireside chat’ radio address to circumvent the media and

address the American people directly, as Richard Nixon did with television in his

sentimental “Checkers speech” in 1952. Today media consultants who work to ‘spin’

coverage in their candidates’ favor are fixed members of campaign staffs. Most recently,

the Bush Administration has pioneered a strategy of ‘strategic non-communication’ in

which the role of the press is downplayed (Rosen, “The Jerk at the Podium…” 2006;

Auletta, 2004).

The presence of blogs and their integration with elements of the mainstream

media has greatly complicated this task for politicians. Even when the press is duped by

a crafty politician, skeptical bloggers and their audiences on both sides of the aisle

quickly cry foul if they can find any inkling of wrongdoing (and sometimes even if they

do not). As Chapter 3 showed, this pressure can be distressful for the media, but even

more so for political actors who wish to control their image. The occasional ability of

100
blogs to attract mainstream media coverage to an issue and shape its coverage, by

extension, impacts the national political agenda (Bloom et al., 20)

The press is traditionally viewed as a check on political actors, but it can

occasionally be controlled by shrewd political maneuvering. And despite the ideal of an

informed citizenry, “most real-life citizens of modern western democracies show little or

no inclination towards increased civic or political participation” (Parish 2003). A

compromised press and generally apathetic citizenry is an ideal environment for political

actors to escape attention, but political bloggers are acting as an additional layer of

“monitorial cyber-citizens” (Parish 2003). Australian think-tank blogger Robert Parish

posits that political bloggers are “best seen as self-selected monitorial citizens, keeping

the bastards honest on behalf of the silent, politically disinterested majority.” This

concept is seen as “a more realistic alternative to fostering a universally informed

citizenry” (Schudson 1999; cited by Parish 2003).

In this environment, political bloggers can provide transparency and alarm the

press and by extension, the public, when a situation demands society’s attention. While

not ideal, it is an improvement over the traditional disconnect between the public and

political world that the media has had mixed success filling with popular but shallow

infotainment (Parish 2003). Such a relationship still depends on the press to fulfill

critical tasks of deep research, insider access, and appeal to the mass audiences of the

general public.

Blogs are also a new audience that politicians should consider in addition to the

traditional audiences of the public and the media. Whether a politician caters to bloggers,

as Howard Dean did, or is unaware of their existence -- as Trent Lott was -- they can

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have a major impact on a politician’s career. The fallout over Lott’s comments

demonstrated that blogs can hold politicians accountable, just as the fallout over the CBS

memos story demonstrated how blogs can hold the mainstream media accountable.

Political bloggers have created their own media authority, especially in covering

campaigns that receive little attention from the mainstream media. When the Republican

Party was faced with electing a new House majority leader, a couple of bloggers

organized to get access to the top prospects before the decision was made. Two of the

three candidates fielded spontaneous questions and weathered significant criticism, but

emerged with more support from the bloggers than the third, Roy Blunt, who attempted

to control the process and limit attacks. The candid nature of the first two candidates

significantly improved their reputation among the top bloggers involved (Krempasky

2006, “Blogs…”). This incident demonstrated the increasing power of top political blogs

as well as the values these authors deem important.

Political blogs serve as ideal outsider safeguards on the political system.

Bloggers of all political stripes can and will dissect every suspicious event and they have

unlimited outlets to disseminate information. Even unpopular blogs or individual

audience members can attract attention to a compelling development. Bloggers, as

Online Influentials, are influential in campaigns, telling neighbors who to vote for,

participating, and amplifying their thoughts across influential communities online

(“Political Influentials…” 2004, 7). Finally, many of the top bloggers are in fact, insiders

as political journalists and lawyers, and they contribute context and professional training

to the conversations.

Democratic Ideals of Deliberation and Participation

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 The Internet has long been considered a medium that would promote democratic

engagement (Grossman 1995), but such an ideal “was unlikely to come to fruition as long

as the Internet was predominantly [seen as] a forum, as it was initially, for conventional

news outlets to offer their wares online” (Kerbel et al. 2005, 2). Political blogs and other

citizen media are considered by many to be a rebirth of the public democratic deliberation

that once existed in small town hall meetings (Drezner et al. 2004, 23). And to an extent,

they are. Major political issues, as determined by the media’s agenda as well as

bloggers’ own feelings, are discussed every hour of the day. Debates draw opinions and

presentations of relevant evidence over important and minor issues. Even seasoned

political aficionados come across new issues and new viewpoints on existing issues

(Horrigan et al. 2004, 2). Marc Fisher describes the interplay of different groups

interacting together on blogs as “an amorphous mix of opinion and fact, grass roots and

establishment that is already changing the dynamics of politics in the Internet era” (Fisher

2006).

Howard Dean’s campaign manager, Joe Trippi, writes in The Revolution Will Not

Be Televised that the Internet could be an antidote to the dumbing down of the electorate

as represented by televised campaign ads, because communication on the Internet is

primarily based on reading and writing, not attention-grabbing graphics (Trippi 2004,

226). The leveled playing field of the Internet, Trippi writes, empowers the public at the

expense of elites (Trippi 2004, 3). Trippi is not the only seasoned political consultant

who laments the effect television has had on American’s political system; Doug Bailey,

founder of Hotline and longtime political consultant, sees the Internet as a second chance

to win elections without running over democracy (Bailey, 2006).

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 Dean’s campaign, though ultimately unsuccessful, accomplished the task of

reinvigorating rather than diluting democracy. Political science professors Matthew

Kerbel and Joel Bloom found that Dean’s campaign blog, Blog for America, was “an

example of how the Internet is emerging as a vehicle for enhanced civic involvement

with the potential to counteract the negative effects of television on the political process.”

Rather than treat voters as passive viewers, as television inherently does, the postings on

Dean’s blog “worked to energize readers for participation in the political process by

assuring them that their work is meaningful and valuable and that they are not alone in

their efforts” (Kerbel et al. 2005, 2).

The glorification of the Internet’s enhancement of citizens’ political roles is

slightly marred by a digital divide. Such concerns remain valid, although the number of

Americans without Internet access has decreased to about one in five Americans, and

almost one half of this group does not want Internet access for various reasons (Fox

2005). The new divide is between dialup and broadband access, a major factor in what

activities individuals conduct online (Fox 2005; Horrigan 2006). One variable unique to

blogging is time; maintaining a popular blog requires intensive time commitments that

cannot be met by individuals working multiple jobs. One must also be politically

passionate to devote so much time to blogging, which may depend on other

socioeconomic factors. Parish notes that most of the bloggers and their readers are

“predominantly highly educated and very politically aware”. Political involvement is

often linked to education levels (Inglehart 1990, 345) and other socioeconomic factors

that are beyond the scope of blogging.

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 For those who have access to a computer, the Internet, and the time and

inclination to do so, the blogosphere approaches a meritocracy. Parish is impressed by

the “relative lack of intellectual pretension” of the political blogosphere, which “tends not

to confer exaggerated respect on either academic credentials or journalistic celebrity”. In

the blogosphere, one builds their credibility with each comment or post they make, and a

seasoned blogger can have more authority with her audience than an unfamiliar

academic. David Glenn, in the Chronicle of Higher Education, is also impressed with the

democracy of participation in the blogosphere:

To a remarkable degree, blogs also appear to bring full professors, adjuncts, and
students onto a level field. With no evident condescension, senior faculty bloggers
routinely link to the political-affairs blog maintained by Matthew Yglesias, a senior at
Harvard University. “Nobody knew my name when we started this,” says Josh
Chafetz...In many ways it really is almost a pure marketplace of ideas.”
(Glenn 2003)

An even more amazing example of the democratic nature of blogs is the 2004

Virginia elections, where one of the most popular and acclaimed bloggers was actually a

14-year old boy. Kenten Ngo emerged as a political force to be reckoned with:

He's been quoted in major newspapers. Campaigns use his maps and charts. Other
bloggers cite his analyses. Ngo has won this credibility despite his lack of political or
journalistic experience. Ngo is a ninth-grader at West Springfield High School in the
Washington, D.C., suburbs.
(Fisher 2006)

Ngo’s campaign blog exemplifies the major changes the Internet has brought to

campaigning. In past elections, a teenager would have carried little weight in a

campaign. In this 2004 election, he was considered an authority by other bloggers, major

newspapers, and the campaigns themselves (Fisher 2006).

Campaigns Online

As the Internet has become an integral part of campaigning, blogs in particular

have provided campaigns more efficient methods of fundraising, supporter recruitment

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and mobilization and information dissemination. Former Minnesota Governor Jesse

Ventura was a pioneer of online campaigning because his website allowed his campaign

to market their candidate more directly to voters and, as an independent, the website

fulfilled some of the roles normally carried out by party infrastructure (Eggers 2005). It

was used to raise money, issue press releases and policy reports, recruit and motivate

volunteers, and gain credibility with the media (Eggers 2005).

Arizona Senator John McCain followed Ventura’s lead in the 2000 Republican

primaries. He surprised the political media by raising over one million dollars in two

days in online contributions immediately after winning the New Hampshire primary

(Phalen 2000). Michael Cornfield at George Washington University said at the time,

“The net converts buzz - a.k.a. momentum - into money, volunteers, and more buzz with

the speed, power, and drama of lightning” (Phalen 2000).

The conversion of buzz, excitement and energy into campaign funding played a

crucial role in Vermont Governor Howard Dean’s unlikely front-runner campaign in the

2004 Democratic primaries. In terms of cash raised online, “Jessie Ventura was the hop,

John McCain was the skip, and Howard Dean was the quantum leap” said Cornfield

(Eggers 2005, 161). Dean’s online contributions gained media credibility and

momentum, which led to increased contributions, eventually shattering fundraising

records (Trippi 2004, 127).

Blogs were central to Dean’s efforts. University of Virginia political scientist

Larry Sabato explained that because lesser-known candidates cannot afford high-priced

consultants, “they have to depend on person-to-person fund raising, and that’s the

Internet. There’s almost no overhead with Internet fund raising” (Lefkowitz 2003,

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“Howard Dean…”). The person-to-person environment Sabato described is one that

blogs can foster.

Dean’s campaign was decentralized and relied on blogs to organize, fundraise,

and earn media attention. The campaign gave some control to online volunteers, giving

them more meaningful roles than typical campaign tasks in the spirit of the open-source

software community (Trippi 2004, 149-150). The official campaign blog coordinated

online efforts, such as the frequently noted example of the Bush-Cheney challenge.

Dean’s official campaign blog coordinated efforts with other bloggers to match the

amount to be raised at Vice President Dick Cheney’s $2,000-a-plate fundraiser. The

move appealed directly to Dean’s populist message, as one blogger wrote:

This is what it's all about. Not $2000 a head dinners so the fat cats can buy their "special
interests" by keeping the status quo, but by people all across the country giving what they
can, because they believe in a candidate, and because they want to make a change for
the better.
(Hanscom 2003)

The campaign acted on a suggestion from an online supporter and posted a picture of

Dean eating a turkey sandwich, reinforcing the populist sentiment. The opportunity to

out-fundraise the rich and politically connected was well-received online, as Dean’s

campaign matched the $250,000 Cheney raised at the dinner (“Candidate: Howard Dean”

2005).

The campaign also used Meetup.org, a website that specialized in gathering

online communities of users and translating their interests into offline pursuits, to

mobilize supporters for campaign events and a variety of other events organized without

the campaign’s direct involvement. These events included informal get-togethers as well

as letter writing campaigns and house party fundraisers that raised a substantial amount

of money for the campaign. Supporters would also “meet up” to greet Dean as he

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traveled the country, frequently amazing even their own campaign with their high turnout

and energy (Trippi 2004, 95). Meetup.org acted as the offline equivalent of blogging:

former strangers getting together over shared interests and taking political action.

The successes of pioneers like Ventura, McCain and Dean were well noted by the

nation’s political elite and websites have become the norm for political campaigns. Paul

Herrnson, director of the Center for American Politics and Citizenship at the University

of Maryland, found in a survey that “House campaigns considered websites and email a

superior form of communication than many other forms, including broadcast TV, cable

TV, radio, and newspaper ads” and also relied on the Internet more than mass telephone

calls, debates and forums (Herrnson et al. 2004, 4-5). Only direct voter contact, free

media, newsletters and direct mail, and door to door campaigning were considered

substantially more important than websites (Herrnson et al. 2004, 4). When campaign

websites begin taking on these roles, as Howard Dean’s did, it further blurred the lines.

The 2004 presidential campaigns regarded the Internet as “an asset for

fundraising, voter-profiling, and insider communication, but not for advertising”

(Cornfield “Presidential Campaign…” 2004, 1). The Pew Internet & American Life

Project concluded that “the numbers of adult Americans who relied on the Internet to

learn about the campaigns, to help make up their minds, to help others make up theirs,

and to register and vote is simply too large relative to the final margin to think [the

internet had a minimal effect]” (Cornfield “The Internet…” 2005, 6). Twenty million

more Americans visited the candidates’ official campaign websites in 2004 than did in

2000 (Cornfield, “The Internet…” 2005, 4).

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 Blogs globalize local politics by drawing their readers’ attentions to important

races throughout the country. For example, Tara Sue Grubb, a Libertarian candidate in

North Carolina, ran against Republican incumbent Howard Coble in 2002 (no Democrat

ran in the race). Coble had won chairmanship of the Subcommittee on Courts and

Intellectual Property of the House’s Judiciary Committee (Lefkowitz 2003, “Towards

Micropolitics…”). This subcommittee drafts all legislation concerning intellectual

property online, so major movie and recording industry groups donated large amounts to

his campaign (Lefkowitz 2003, “Towards Micropolitics…”). But bloggers from around

the country also found out about and took action in the race, despite (like the industry

groups) not living in the district. Although they did not have a vote in the election and

did not have the resources of the major industry groups, they had a network of like-

minded people and used it to funnel donations to a previously unknown third-party

candidate. Coble still won in a landslide, demonstrating yet again the power of

incumbency, but the fact that bloggers found and took action for Grubb’s campaign

illustrates how they can influence elections across geographic borders.

Blogs have had a significant impact on fundraising. Thus far Democrats seem to

be benefiting from this newfound capital substantially more than Republicans (Drezner et

al. 2004, 23), although this can change with each election. The low-overhead of online

donations is beneficial to candidates because online donations tend to be lower-than-

average amounts contributed by greater numbers of individuals (Marre 2003). The

largely unexpected increase in individual contributions online has eased the transition to

the soft-money ban enforced by the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.

Limits of Political Influence

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 The political influence blogs have accrued has made them a target for traditional

political actors. Like the mainstream media, politicians have moved to incorporate blogs

to reduce the threat they present and benefit from their strengths. While there are some

significant limits to blogs’ political influence, most notably the reactions of traditional

political actors, the Internet as a medium is resilient to many of the tactics that have been

successful at co-opting television.

Candidate Blogs

Candidate-authored blogs do not appear to be terribly effective. The value of

having an already extremely busy candidate post to a blog is further undermined by the

facts that each comment must be carefully vetted and that the audience is aware of this.

Even the discourse on Dean’s highly regarded blog became more conventional as Dean

gained mainstream success (Kerbel et al. 2005, 2).

Election results provide more reason to question the importance of blogs in

comparison to traditional ways of winning elections. Howard Dean and John Kerry both

had more online fundraising and blogging support than their competition (in the primaries

and general election, respectively) but both lost their races. George W. Bush had a very

official blog consisting primarily of press releases in 2004 and in the 2000 election was

“dead last in online fundraising” (Stone 2000) and won both elections.

A Wary Public

There has been no significant public backlash to the political and media influence

blogs have accrued, but it is not an unimaginable scenario. The public has not embraced

bloggers as the noble watchdogs they see themselves as; despite all of the media

attention, only 38% of the public reports understanding what a blog is (Rainie 2005).

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And not all of the media attention has been positive; stories on bloggers frequently depict

them as “a fringe group of political geeks” (“Political Influentials…” 2004, 14). The

public could grow wary of the blogosphere’s frequent and partisan calls for resignations;

all of Bloom’s six case studies involved trying to get a political enemy fired. Such a

backlash could reduce the blogosphere’s media and political influence.

Partisanship

A frequently noted concern about politics on the Internet, especially with blogs, is

the rabid partisanship. An extensive body of literature has been constructed on this topic

by prominent scholars such as Robert Putnam, Cass Sunstein and Alan Wolfe (Drezner et

al. 2004, 21). Putnam warns of “cyberapartheid” and “cyberbalkanization” and Sunstein

warns of “echo chambers,” where people choose to hear only their own voices and

opinions they agree with (Putnam 2000; Sunstein 2001; qtd. by Drezner et al. 2004, 21).

Wolfe partially blames blogs for the partisan tone of U.S. politics (Wolfe 2004; qtd. by

Drezner et al. 2004, 22). A Pew Internet & American Life Project report summarizes

these fears:

They worried that citizens would use the internet to seek information that reinforced their
political preferences and avoid material that challenged their views. They feared that
people would use internet tools to customize and insulate their information inputs to a
degree that held troubling implications for American society. Democracy functions best
when people consider a range of arguments, including those that challenge their
viewpoint. If people screened out information that disputed their beliefs, then the chances
for meaningful discourse on great issues would be stunted and civic polarization would
grow.
(Horrigan et al. 2004, 2)

Bloggers cite the interlinked nature of the blogosphere as a safeguard against

these problems. Yale law professor and blogger Jack Balkin argues that this and the

conversational qualities of the blogosphere are adequate protections:

[M]ost bloggers who write about political subjects cannot avoid addressing (and, more
importantly, linking to) arguments made by people with different views. These links are

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 the most important way that people travel on the Web from one view to its opposite. (And
linking also produces a good check on criticism because you can actually go and read
what the person being criticized has said.)…The fact that these customs developed says
a lot about the health and vibrancy and pluralism of the public sphere in cyberspace.
(Drezner et al. 2004, 22)

Network researchers Lada Adamic and Natalie Glance provide evidence

contradicting this defense with a “study [of] the linking patterns and discussion topics of

political bloggers…to measure the degree of interaction between liberal and conservative

blogs” (Adamic, et al., 1). They find that the political blogosphere is indeed divided and

the idealized global conversation is not being practiced: “91% of the links originating

within either the conservative or liberal communities stay within that community”

(Adamic, et al., 4) (See Appendix K for a visual depiction of linkage).

There are also significant arguments that partisanship is not limiting readers’

awareness of opposing viewpoints. A Pew Internet & American Life Project report has

disproved widespread fears of self-selective news consumption producing an echo

chamber effect. The Pew survey found that “internet users are not insulating themselves

in information echo chambers”, but rather that “wired Americans are more aware than

non-internet users of all kinds of arguments, even those that challenge their preferred

candidates and issue positions” (Horrigan et al. 2004, 3). The findings were not

dependent upon political interest, but rather Internet use (Horrigan et al. 2004, 3).

Another Pew survey concurs that the average Internet news reader is better informed than

people relying on other media for political news (Kohut 2004). Finally, online politics

may be so hostile because of offline politics. Concretely divisive events, such as the

widely contested 2000 election, an unpopular war in Iraq, and generally trying times

could contribute to the divisive partisanship blogs demonstrate.

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 An example of the blogosphere overcoming partisanship is the fallout over Trent

Lott’s racist comments. Prominent conservative bloggers such as Glenn Reynolds were

among the first and most vocal in condemning Lott (Bloom et al., 5), demonstrating that

bloggers can overcome their partisanship. Another example of this is the coalition

formed by conservative blogger Mike Krempasky, liberal blogger Markos Moulitas and a

variety of other bloggers to protest potential FEC regulations.20 Prominent bloggers led

bipartisan support of their mutual interests.

The partisan nature of most political blogs has not gone unnoticed. According to

New York Times public editor Daniel Okrent (Drezner et al. 2004, 22), the most partisan

blogs lose their credibility and thus their influence in the media. But it is likely the

blogosphere will remain partisan. Many political blogs are created because their author

feels their ideology is not properly expressed in the mainstream media. The mainstream

media is generally ideologically centrist, in order to appeal to the broadest possible

market, but blogs are suited to serve niches audiences, such as political extremes.

Politicians learning

Television was originally considered a democratizing political medium because it

allowed campaigns to circumvent local power brokers and directly showcase the

candidate to voters (Rafshoon 2006). But politicians soon mastered the new game, hiring

handlers and political consultants to approach television as a business, with negative

advertisements and massive budgets (Rafshoon 2006). Today the Internet is seen by

many political actors as a way to make up for political television’s excesses, a chance to

not only win elections, but also serve democracy (Bailey, 2006). But like television,

many politicians have become aware of political blogs and are beginning to use them for
20
See http://www.onlinecoalition.com

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their own purposes. No one has been able to duplicate Dean’s runaway success

fundraising online because no one has made the Internet as central to the campaign as it

was in Dean’s campaign, but political consultants have moved quickly “down the

learning curve” to harness the influence blogs can wield and limit their “disruptive

impact” (Drezner et al. 2004, 23).

Daniel Drezner describes how savvy political actors can read blogs to “predict the

direction of future news cycles,” giving them the “ability to develop strategies to counter or

blunt the influence of blogs before media groundswells develop” (Drezner et al. 2004, 20).

He cites the contrast between the reactions to Trent Lott’s and Pennsylvania Senator Rick

Santorum’s insensitive comments:

Less than six months after Trent Lott resigned, Santorum gave an interview…in which he
explicitly equated homosexuality with bestiality. This prompted condemnation from across
the political spectrum of the blogosphere, including repeated mentions by top-tier
bloggers…However, Santorum was not asked to resign his leadership position. President
Bush intervened at an early stage of the news cycle to issue a statement expressing
support for Santorum…because his interpretation of Santorum’s statement was more
benign than other interpretations. By creating an alternative framing of the issues at an
early stage, political elites were able to blunt criticism from bloggers far more successfully
than in the Trent Lott case.
(Drezner et al. 2004, 20-21)

This response is an indication that political actors are learning how to behave in a world

of bloggers.

Co-opting

Politicians are not traditionally at the cutting edge of technology. William D.

Eggers notes the “minefield of resistance” to new technology in the government,

especially among current powerholders who are content with the status quo (Eggers

2005, 10). This argument is supported by findings that challenger candidates relied more

heavily on campaign websites than incumbents (Herrnson et al. 2004, 5). But there are

also many savvy political actors, especially those in the political consulting industry who

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make a living by turning potential threats to their clients into opportunities. As a result,

“politicians have formed uneasy alliances with bloggers” (Murley 2005, 6). Bloggers are

not naïve to political maneuverings: “Many expect their little club will be overtaken by

the same consultants and professional campaigners who have spent the past couple of

decades trying to stage-manage the relationship between candidates and the press”

(Fisher 2006).

Another sophisticated intersection between political elites and blogging is the

connections between the bloggers behind Rathergate.com and “longtime conservative

direct mail impresario Richard Viguerie” (Cornfield et al. “Buzz” 2005, 25).

Conservative blogs were also “emphatic about distancing themselves from Creative

Response Concepts (CRC), a Beltway PR firm which counted Swift Boat Veterans for

Truth among its clients, after a CRC executive claimed credit in a PRWeek story for

alerting Drudge and otherwise getting the memo doubts amplified…They wanted to be

seen as independent actors” (Cornfield et al. “Buzz” 2005, 25).

Most blogs are run by individuals, and there are no established ethical standards

to follow. This warrants some concern over “consulting fees” and other undisclosed

payment of bloggers. An example of blogs being co-opted in the business world is the

recent revelation that Wal-Mart, through its public relations firm Edelman, works with

sympathetic bloggers to improve its image (Barbaro, 2006). Although the firm does not

pay the bloggers, one blogger was found to have directly quoted from a Wal-Mart email

without attributing the quote, a breach of one of the few codes of conduct that exist in the

blogosphere (Barbaro, 2006). There are no sanctions in the blogosphere other than a

lowered reputation. Further complicating the story is that prominent conservative

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blogger Mike Krempasky is a consultant to the firm. A spokesperson’s comment

indicates that like political elites, businesses will not hesitate to participate in the

supposed civic dialogue taking place online: “As more and more Americans go to the

Internet to get information from varied, credible, trusted sources, Wal-Mart is committed

to participating in that online conversation” (Barbaro, 2006).

Political co-opting is to be expected given the competitive nature and billions of

dollars invested in elections, but there are promising signs that the blogosphere is not as

corruptible as other mediums. As Krempasky stated when he spoke before Congress

against FEC regulation of blogs, Internet users self-select what they consume

(Krempasky 2005, “Capitol Hill…”). Even the advertisements users see are a reflection

of the websites they choose to visit. Prominent blogger Duncan Black points out that

“There isn’t a real connection between the effectiveness of a site and how much money is

spent on it” (Broache 2005). There are no space limitations in the blogosphere, so unlike

television and radio, a well-financed campaign cannot simply buy up all available airtime

and inundate viewers with their message. Campaigns have yet to find a way to ‘buy’

control of the Internet.

The blogosphere’s limit of dependence on the mainstream media and other

traditional actors for authority is also protection against co-opting. The “buzz” created on

and between blogs is organic. An issue or candidate cannot be forced into discussion on

blogs and cannot from there be forced into public affairs. Drezner and Farrell find that,

“for [an online] conversation to acquire the intense simultaneity of buzz, and for buzz to

register with force in public affairs, requires a number of other factors to be present, few

of which are likely to be at the disposal of a single blogger, or even a blogging collective,

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ready to activate at will” (30-31). A story must be the correct “narrative fit as perceived

by voices in all…channels, and…enacted by the players cast in the crucial roles”

(Drezner et al. 2004, 31).

The blogosphere’s autonomy is also a protection. “There is no central

organization to the blogosphere” or “ideological consensus among its participants”

(Drezner et al. 2004, 4). The sheer number of computers and people using them prevents

monopolization of the medium. Nevertheless, the FEC has considered regulating

political blogs, and could be forced to in the future, which could dramatically impact the

political blogosphere.

FEC Regulation

When the Federal Election Commission (FEC) made a broad exemption of the

Internet from the definition of “political communications” under the “federal election

activity” requiring regulation under the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 ,

BCRA’s sponsors (Congressmen Christopher Shays and John McCain) filed suit against

the FEC (Whitaker et al. 2005). In Shays v. FEC, the U.S. District Court ruled against

the FEC, requiring the agency to regulate political communications online.

A CNET News story on an early draft of proposed rules found that regulations

would apply to many blogs, such as those read by over 500 people a day and those whose

“aggregate disbursements…do not exceed $250 per calendar year” (McCullagh 2005,

“Bloggers narrowly…”). This amount could be met by “hosting fees, Web design

software, domain name registration, fees paid to PayPal” and other site-related payments

(McCullagh 2005, “Bloggers narrowly…”).

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 Bloggers immediately took action, concerned by comments by FEC

Commissioner Bradley Smith in the CNET News story and remarks by Chairman

Thomas at the 2005 Politics Online Conference that the scope of online regulations

would exceed their assumptions. They were particularly worried that a monetary value

would be assigned to the links they created and that bloggers would have to consult

lawyers before publishing political speech, producing a chilling effect on political speech.

Bipartisan bloggers banded together and created a petition to the commission.21 They

also received political support, such as Senator Harry Reid’s bill that would have

overturned the court’s decision to include the Internet under campaign finance law

(McCullagh 2005, “Internet election rules…”).

The FEC published its new proposed regulations in April 2005, and in March

2006 unanimously voted to exempt almost all political activity online except for paid

political advertisements. According to FEC Chairman Michael Toner, the exemption is

“categorical and unqualified” for all individual and group political activity online and

“effectively granted media exemptions to bloggers and other activists using the Web to

allow them to praise and criticize politicians, just as newspapers can, without fear of

federal interference” (Edsall “FEC Rules Exempt” 2006). Toner settled, for now at least,

the question of bloggers receiving the same rights as journalists: “There will be no second

class citizens among members of the media” (Pace 2006).

It is not unreasonable to assume that the FEC may be required to further regulate

blogs in the future. The first rounds of regulations were drafted before any case of

politicians buying blogs had been discovered. Michael Cornfield notes that “Internet

users do not see blog content as a consequence of someone else’s financial arrangement
21
See http://www.OnlineCoalition.com

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to have that content placed before them, as with advertising” (Cornfield et al. “Buzz”

2005, 5), but this could change. The Wal-Mart case is an example of how bloggers can

be co-opted. The current FEC rules, furthermore, do not require bloggers to disclose

money they receive from campaigns to their readers (although they do have to disclose

such payments to the FEC, which other bloggers could find) (Grebb 2005).

The Internet has brought dramatic changes to politics, especially campaigns, but

bloggers are just one subset of actors in an environment of powerful political elites.

Blogs have less political power than they do media power. There are also far more limits

on their political power than on their media power. As a result, political blogs are a more

potent force as a form of political media than they are as direct political actors.

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Conclusion

Blogs have ushered in fundamental changes to the traditional methods of news

distribution and political campaigning. But this thesis argues that blogs are not limited to

helping the United States’ media and political systems evolve. The media and political

influence blogs can wield is an important development in political communications, but

blogs are important in their own right as a new layer in the traditional political media

hierarchy.

The accessibility of the blogosphere is a positive development for democratic

discourse. But there are internal and external limits to every promise political blogs offer

society. For example, blogs serve as independent watchdogs, providing greater

accountability to the government and press. But they have also contributed to a climate

of partisan political attacks on individuals. The mob rule atmosphere of political blogs

must be channeled into more productive outlets, such as group research and discussion.

For the political blogosphere to coalesce as a positive political media institution, it must

mature into more sophisticated roles while withstanding increasingly sophisticated

attempts at manipulation.

The communication technologies that make blogging possible are revolutionary,

but there is constant pressure to use these technologies simply to amplify traditional

politics to a global scale, the way other industries have been amplified by the Internet.

Blogs retain the promise of a more democratic, participatory democracy and more

transparent, accurate media. Even seasoned political consultants fear the corruption of

this medium (Bailey 2006; Rafshoon 2006).

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 Chris Bowman et al., in a 2005 report for Harvard University’s Nieman

Foundation for Journalism, summarizes the promise blogs present:

Will the blogosphere become a Fifth Estate? …It would be a good thing if it meant
institutionalizing the ethos of the current blogosphere. The national discourse could
benefit from a sector favoring transparency over opacity, conversation over presentation,
small pieces over big works, flexibility over anchorage, incompleteness over
conclusiveness, documentation over description and, paradoxically, individuality over
institutionalization. Not all bloggers and especially not all commenters on blogs adhere to
these values…But enough do at the present time to assure their dominance.
(Bowman et al. 2005)

The vast number of blogs precludes any sweeping generalizations of the medium,

but the success of the most popular blogs and the participation of millions of lesser

known bloggers and readers is a potent combination. The wisdom of the crowd present

in blogs and other participatory citizen media efforts championed by Dan Gillmor is

becoming more evident as technology facilitates virtual communities. The top blogs

serve as focal points and are becoming their own increasingly entrenched media

presence. Combined, the political blogosphere offers a groundswell of amateurism and

near-professional level elites.

For all their limits, political blogs offer a renewal of the oft-stated but infrequently

realized ideal of an active citizenry. Of course, not everything written on the blogosphere

is an experiment in political philosophy; the focus is thus far more political than civic-

minded, and the number of citizens participating on political blogs remains low among

the general population (Rainie 2005). But most of those individuals who want to

participate are able to do so, and even politically uninterested citizens indirectly benefit

from the accountability they provide (Glaser, “Watchblogs…”).

The technical format of blogs will continue to change with the development of

new technologies, but the values of the blogosphere are more permanent. The

mainstream media’s adoption of many of these values as well as the fact that they arose

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naturally from the writings and conversations of millions of citizens indicate they are not

a passing trend. It is the environment that blogs foster that is revolutionary, not merely

the technology. “Most people who create and read blogs see tools as merely a means to

an end. That end is having a voice in the public conversation.”

The democratization of once-professional tools and distribution channels

continues to empower the audience to play a more substantial role in political media.

Blogs are at the eye of this storm, connecting the country’s oldest political institutions

with the cutting edge of online technology. Whether blogs ultimately become a

permanent fixture in political media or just another milestone in the broader social

changes driven by the internet, they have already had lasting impact.

122
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 Appendices

Appendix A

(Burns, “Blogosphere Doubles Every Six Months” 2006)

136
Appendix B

(Burns, “Blogosphere Doubles Every Six Months” 2006)

137
Appendix C.

Growth in traffic at two popular political blogs

(Bloom et al., 16)

138
Appendix D.

Rise in number of blogs and blog audience

(Rainie 2005)

139
Appendix E.
Media Blog Readership Survey

(Drezner et al. 2004, 27)

140
Appendix F.
Media Blog Readership Survey Raw Data
NUMBER DO BLOGS
OFBLOGS AFFECT HOW
READ FAVORITE BLOG FAVORITE BLOG POLITICAL INFLUENTIAL ARE
DAILY #! FAVORITE BLOG #2 #3 DISCOURSE? THEY?
3 Drezner Brad DeLong Sullivan no little
6 Instapundit Sullivan Samizdata no little
3 Gawker CollisionDetection Corner no none
2 Sullivan BestoftheWeb yes some
6 Kos Atrios Drum no little
13 Yglesias TalkingPointsMemo Gawker yes little
8 Instapundit Sullivan TimBlair no little
5 Corner Sullivan Instapundit yes lot
4 Corner JaneGalt Sullivan yes little
2 Sullivan Taranto yes lot
12 Instapundit Sullivan Den Beste no little
1 HowAppealing no don't know
2 Romenesko Quatloos no don't know
6 Sullivan Instapundit Taranto yes little
1 Sullivan no little
6 HowAppealing Volokh ElectionLaw yes lot
Cockeyed
10 Absurdist Twinkle Twinkle Dong Resin yes little
7 Sullivan Instapundit SteynOnline yes don't know
5 TalkingPointsMemo Sullivan Drezner yes little
5 Instapundit Romenesko Kaus no little
7 Kaus Sullivan Vokokh no little
3 Sullivan Kaus Romenesko no lot
5 Kaus Sullivan Brad DeLong yes little
5 TalkingPointsMemo Sullivan Corner yes little
11 Instapundit Sullivan Intel Dump no little
2 Instapundit Drezner no some
12 Sullivan Instapundit Romanesko yes no
4 Postrel Drezner DeLong yes little
7 Kaus Sullivan TalkingPointsMemo yes lot
7 Sullivan Kaus Volokh yes some
Oregon
10 Kaus Sullivan Commentator yes little
6 TalkingPointsMemo Altercation Sullivan no lot
10 Atrios Cursor.org DailyKos yes lot
1 Sullivan no no (British)
1 Slashdot.com Romenesko Peter King MMQ yes little
9 JacksonFreePress MagnoliaReport JacksonCrime yes lot
6 TalkingPointsMemo CrookedT FistfulEuros no little
13 IraqDemoWatch Juan Cole Steve Gilliard no none
5 Instapundit Sullivan Kaus yes little
6 TalkingPointsMemo Drezner Marginal yes lot
12 Instapundit Sullivan Den Beste yes lot
4 Instapundit Sullivan OneHandClapping yes little
6 Matt Welch Kaus SacramentoBee yes some

141
 2 Sullivan Drezner yes little
4 MerdeinFrance InnocentsAbroad Eurosoc no little
6 Calpundit Billmon'sWhiskeyBar Electrolite no some
7 Instapundit Volokh Sullivan yes little
3 MediaNews BostonPhoenix Media Log Atrios yes little
17 Neal Boortz RightWingNews BluntedonReality no some
12 ilind.net LewRockwell Hit & Run yes some
100 Instapundit Tim Blair Eye on the Left yes little
3 Sullivan Drezner Instapundit yes little
8 Corner Soberingthoughts.blogspot Maderblog.com yes little
2 Romenesko Spoiler Slayer no little
Traditional Catholic
11 Corner Reflections Hugh Hewitt yes lot
7 Corner Sullivan Catholic Word News yes lot
5 Instapundit BrothersJudd LGF yes some
1 HowAppealing SCOTUSblog TalkLeft yes lot, legal
4 Instapundit Corner Lileks yes lot
2 Corner Sullivan yes lot
60 Boingboing Wheaton Gilmour no little
17 Daily Howler TalkingPointsMemo Atrios no lot
5 TalkingPointsMemo Sullivan Brad DeLong yes little
David Harris
5 (Salon) David Appell Dan Gillmor no little
5 Anildash Gawker deanjorgebocobo yes lot
18 Instapundit Sullivan Corner yes none
5 Altercation Kaus TalkingPointsMemo no lot
13 Atrios DailyKos TalkingPointsMemo yes little
2 Metafilter Fark Bookslut no little
8 Instapundit Lileks Kaus yes little
6 Kaus Weintraub smallvictory yes lot
9 Instapundit Sullivan gutrumbles.com yes lot
5 Instapundit Sullivan BuzzMachine yes lot
3 TalkingPointsMemo CrookedT Samizdata yes little
4 Sullivan Instapundit Kaus yes lot
3 TalkingPointsMemo DailyKos Steve Gilliard yes lot
20 Lileks Powerline SCSUScholars yes lot
4 Sullivan Instapundit Kaus yes lot
50 Dan Gilmour SimpleBits Boingboing no little
24 Sullivan Lileks Oxblog no lot
Church of the
7 Corner Mark Shea Masses yes lt
11 Boingboing suematra8 szalmas yes lot
1 Sullivan DissidentFrogman MerdeinFrance no little
4 Daily Howler Atrios TalkingPointsMemo yes some
0 no none
15 Romenesko I Want Media MediaWhoresOnline no little
2 Sullivan Greg Easterbrook Fluxblog no little
10 Sullivan Kaus Instapundit yes some
13 Instapundit CalPundit Drezner yes little
20 TimBlair Sullivan OliverKamm no some
8 Dave Barry Sullivan Instapundit yes lot
5 Sullivan Instapundit Kaus yes little

142
 Guardian
3 Metamorphosism Mymarkup.net onlineblog.com yes little
7 Lileks Instapundit Sullivan yes lot
6 Corner Sullivan iraqi.blogspot yes little
80 Lucianne Atrios yes lot
5 Romenesko Kaus LegalReader yes some
8 TheNote Instapundit Sullivan yes some
8 Lucianne Corner Sullivan yes lot
4 TalkingPointsMemo Daily Howler Sullivan no no
3 Sullivan Kaus MerdeinFrance yes little
90 Boingboing JD Lasica Dead Parrot Society yes little
23 DailyKos Thinking it Through Atrios yes lot
5 Instapundit BrothersJudd LGF yes some
5 Volokh Shark Blog Karen de Coster yes little
3 Sullivan Kaus BestoftheWeb yes lot
5 BestoftheWeb Instapundit Corner yes some
6 Instapundit Sullivan Lucianne yes none
1 Romenesko no little
? Some of email not ? Some of email not
8 Instapundit LAObserved Cathy's World printed printed
8 Gawker Romenesko TalkingPointsMemo yes lot
10 Oxblog Instapundit LGF yes some
30 Minor Fall Major Lift Gawker Gothamist yes none
12 Agitator Atrios TalkingPointsMemo yes little
23 E-Media Tidbits Romenesko BuzzMachine yes none
1 Sullivan yes some
40 Sullivan Corner Hit & Run yes little
20 Instapundit Volokh Den Beste yes little
11 Fark Metafilter Bifurcated Rivets yes small
2 Corner BBC "Have your say" yes little
1 Romenesko yes little
18 TimBlair Sullivan Tony the Teacher yes lot
10 Atrios Billmon'sWhiskeyBar Orcinus yes some
5 Sullivan Instapundit TalkingPointsMemo yes lot
4 BestoftheWeb Lileks Corner yes don't know
4 Kaus TalkingPointsMemo Instapundit yes little
15 Volokh Corner MarriageDebate yes little
4 Sullivan Corner Kaus no little
10 Instapundit LGF OneHandClapping yes don't know
6 Sullivan Greg Easterbrook yes lot
10 Sullivan Instapundit Oxblog yes lot
4 Instapundit Den Beste LGF yes little
6 SoCalLaw LAObserved FroggiesPond yes little
12 Boingboing Whereisraed Dave Winter yes little
1 HowAppealing yes don't know
20 Instapundit Hit & Run Dr. Frank yes don't know
1 TheScoop.org yes little
5 Weintraub Drezner Kaus yes little
5 Mefi Boingboing MediaNews no little
7 Instapundit Corner Agitator yes little
(Drezner, http://www.danieldrezner.com/research/Blogsurveypublic.xls)

143
Appendix G.

Liberal vs. Conservative Blog Chatter over Rathergate

(Cornfield et al. “Buzz” 2005, 20)

144
Appendix H.

(Murley 2005, 4)

145
Appendix I.

(Murley 2005, 5)

146
Appendix J.

(Drezner et al. 2004, 24)

147
Appendix K.

Linkage between conservative (red) and liberal (blue) political blogs:

(Adamic, et al., 4)

148