[Media]

On Blogs.

A cross-post from commentary on BlueOregon. It's aimed at Oregon readers, but you'll get the point.

Since its new redesign--which seems in part a response to the popularity of blogs--the Oregonian has run commentary about blogs by Regina Lawrence, a PSU professor of political science. In today's issue, Lawrence discusses the function and use of blogs--and she completely misses the boat. She argues that blogs are now dominated by a few main sites (she identifies Drudge and the Free Republic, neither of which are blogs) which dominate all discourse. These dominant blogs are guilty of the same crime they accuse the mainstream media of committing--focusing too narrowly on a few stories--which further skews reality. Finally, blogs, acting in reaction to the "failures" they identify in the MSM, are hopelessly partisan.

Lawrence, as a political scientist, may be measuring the effect of blogs on the political process. Based on the success of the liberal blogs, candidates like Howard Dean and Paul Hackett have managed to mount surprising dark-horse campaigns, buoyed by support and dollars from a previously-disconnected base. In this regard, her analysis of the effect of blogs may be accurate. But as an analysis of blogs as emergent media, she misses the actual function of the blogosphere and patterns of consumption. Worse, by addressing content at the expense of delivery, she misses blogs' most potent function.

Let's take function first. Blogs don't exist, like mainstream outlets, as stand-alone media. Blogs would surely wither and die if they didn't exist as a neural net. Because bloggers don't have vast newsrooms, they depend on other bloggers to cover the entire newscape. To argue that they all cover the same thing is willful blindness: Juan Cole, an expert on the Middle East, almost never expresses an opinion on domestic political races, but is the blogosphere's go-to guy on Iraq. Look at the top fifty leftist blogs, and you'll find just the opposite of what Lawrence describes: a sorting out of the best bloggers by subject area. Kos, which she eventually does cite, is the go-to guy for political strategies, while Josh Marshall is the inside man on Washington scuttlebutt, and Brad DeLong and Max Sawicky (professors both) cover economics. Other blogs cover the environment, law, labor, and media.

In terms of consumption, I'm wary of her reading of the numbers. Blog readers do tend to select a few central players (she identifies aggregate stats to support this). But then readers also add a few other sites that have more focused content or smaller readership. BlueOregon is a perfect example (as was, alas, the now-defunct Communique). No one that I know of has done an in-depth survey of blog readership, but the existence and traffic of blogs like this one demonstrate that while the bigs pull in the lion's share of readers, other blogs can find their own robust readership.

But the biggest mistake Lawrence makes is confusing blogs as just another content-delivery medium. This is a mistake the MSM has made from the start, and they do it at their peril. The reality is that blogs are the first organic, interactive medium. They are focal points for ongoing conversations. When I booted up BlueOregon this morning, I saw that Jack Roberts had joined the discussion on a post about an interview he'd done on another blog. This kind of conversation has never existed before--and can't, within the confines of a daily print newspaper or TV broadcast.

While the MSM is busy panicking about the fragmentation of media, bloggers are seizing on it. Not everyone can join in a conversation about whether Jack Roberts should run for the Supreme Court--but as newspapers know, very few would even want to. The O has recently shifted its local content away from politics precisely because there aren't enough readers interested in it. The O has a daily circulation of 350,000 readers. BlueOregon's is less than 1% of that figure--though at 2,000 hits, it's one of the "bigger" blogs. We capitalize on the interest of the readers that the Oregonian can no longer well serve--exactly the reverse of the trend Lawrence sees.

Blogs are a poor substitute for newspapers. Few of them are hosted by professional journalists, and most of them depend on newspaper reportage to craft their posts. (This post is an example.) But blogs aren't trying to deliver the news. They're trying to make sense of the news. Had Lawrence pondered their efficacy on that score, she might have come away with a different conclusion. I'd love to see the O continue to look at the effect blogs are having--but they must be critiques based on someone who actually understands the medium.