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| Fifth Column |
| New York Times Claims Blogosphere is Mostly for Democrats |
| 2006-06-11 |
| Sometimes I think that if you really want to know what’s going on in the world, you should read The New York Times…and assume the exact opposite is true. Take Saturday’s article “Gathering Highlights Power of the Blog” for example. Author Adam Nagourney visited Las Vegas to attend the meeting of mostly liberal bloggers discussing how they’re going to change the world in an event called “Yearly Kos” not so inconspicuously named after the blogosphere’s liberal mainstay, Daily Kos. Unfortunately, after listing and quoting some Democrat dignitaries in attendance – quotes to follow for your amusement! – Nagourney actually wrote (emphasis mine), “Blogging is nowhere near the force among Republicans as it is among Democrats.” Really, Adam? And exactly how did you come to this conclusion? Could you provide some statistics to support this assertion, or did you pull this non sequitur out off your…hat? In reality, the data quite refute Nagourney’s contentions. NewsBusters executive editor Matthew Sheffield recently compiled some statistics on this very subject that quite go counter to this report. Now, to be sure, the two most popular political “blogs” as measured by Alexa are the Huffington Post and Daily Kos. Yet, as the following list demonstrates, ten of the top 20 political blogs are conservative leaning: MOST POPULAR POLITICAL BLOGS (Based on SiteMeter data and Alexa estimates) 1. Huffington Post 530,000* 2. Daily Kos 490,261 3. National Review 355,000* 4. Raw Story 354,152 5. Free Republic 255,000* 6. Crooks and Liars 177,634 7. Instapundit.com 142,855 8. Michelle Malkin 131,645 9. Eschaton 115,447 10. Talking Points Memo 110,000* 11. Common Dreams 105,774 12. America Blog 101,450 13. Little Green Footballs 100,098 14. Firedoglake 65,888 15. Power Line 65,723 16. NewsBusters 54,899 17. Wizbang 48,475 18. Washington Monthly 43,642 19. Hot Air 39,779 20. Hugh Hewitt 35,976 However, this data don’t tell the whole story. After all, the granddaddy of the blogosphere – and still by far the most powerful! – is the conservative leaning Drudge Report which, on a daily basis, receives more visitors than all of the top twenty blogs combined. In fact, on Friday Drudge got 12.6 million visits. How does that impact your “Blogging is nowhere near the force among Republicans as it is among Democrats” premise, Adam? Beyond this, two other extremely popular conservative websites – NewsMax and World Net Daily – aren’t figured into blog rankings because they are not considered blogs per se. Yet, their existence does pull from the total available traffic looking for conservative opinion on the Internet. As such, when you add the daily visits of the Drudge Report, World Net Daily, and NewsMax to those of the top seven conservative “blogs,” these numbers thoroughly dwarf the visits to the top liberal blogs by at least a factor of ten. This suggests that Nagourney’s view of a Democrat-dominated blogosphere is as accurate as Al Gore’s claim that he invented the Internet. Speaking of goofy statements made by Democrats, here’s what Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) was quoted by the Times as having said about blogs: "One of the reasons I so admire them is they have the ability to spread the truth like no entities I've dealt with in recent years.” Isn’t that delicious? Here’s a guy that is regularly quoted and referred to quite favorably by all of the drive-by media stating that blogs “spread the truth like no entities I've dealt with in recent years.” I guess from that statement, Harry, we can assume that, in your view, The New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN aren’t spreading the truth? Thanks for making our case for us, Harry, and fully validating the mission of NewsBusters and the Media Research Center. |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #8 No, no, Frank G, some of us are married. ;-) |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2006-06-11 23:19 |
| #7 we have a singular crowd here.... |
| Posted by: Frank G 2006-06-11 22:49 |
| #6 On the site lists were everything (not just politics but games downloads music, google, purchases, the whole nine yards) is counted rantburg shares are in the 70ks which is not bad. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2006-06-11 21:26 |
| #5 Any blog that has both JosephMendiola and Gentle as contributors is truly ecumenical. |
| Posted by: RWV 2006-06-11 20:28 |
| #4 I would call Rantburg a "hard news" blog. It is almost comparable to a newswire in presentation, yet is focused, without (most of) the fluff & puff stories that are the sign of a slow news day. Also, like a newswire, it is a "collection" site, a "primary" site, with its contributors acting like a hundred editors to select links that in their opinion are the most newsworthy. Many blogs are reliant on other blogs for their news, they don't do the surfing themselves. This makes them second tier. Political blogs are unavoidably as much opinion as news, so while they may be more popular, it is the popularity of "CNN Crossfire", where information is just to feed the argument, rather that to stand on its own. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2006-06-11 20:28 |
| #3 Fred's had script kiddie attacks for simply ages, though. And although there have been times when he was getting nearly 10,000 hits a day, I think Rantburg is a bit esoteric for most tastes. I mean, some of us are registered Democrats, some are avowed atheists, and some of us don't own guns. ;-) |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2006-06-11 19:41 |
| #2 Rantburg must be 21 (and climbing), Fred even has hacker attacks now so he must be "telling it on the mountain". This is an old liberal method from way back. The Jeddi Mind Trick. |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2006-06-11 19:06 |
| #1 Rantburg is where on the list? |
| Posted by: no mo uro 2006-06-11 18:48 |