RALEIGH – The 2004 political season may be remembered for a lot of events – a Republican nationwide victory, a Democratic victory in most of North Carolina, John Edwards’ rise and sorta-fall, vote-counting snafus – but I know that for many close observers of the process it may well be thought of as the Year of the Blog.
It was the 2004 season that really exposed the growth and significance of the blogosphere, that loose amalgamation of true weblogs, independent news sources, activist sites, aggregators, and other Internet properties that collectively represent an alternative means for millions of Americans to learn and converse about politics and public policy.
The easy example is the demise of Dan Rather, whose embarrassing hit piece on President Bush for “60 Minutes II” was exposed within hours by right-leaning bloggers as based on phony documents and concocted conspiracies. But the phenomenon is much larger and more important than this one, admittedly fascinating, event. Nor can the influence of the blogosphere be limited to the few sites – such as Daily Kos, Atrios’ Echaton, Wonkette, and the Washington Monthly’s Kevin Drum on the Left or Instapundit, Little Green Footballs, Power Line, or The Belmont Club on the Right – that attract daily readership in the five or even six figures.
There are countless blogs, in the United States and around the world, with new ones popping up every hour. Their content ranges from the political and philosophical to sports, business, the arts, and the equivalent of personal diaries. Most blogs have only a small number of readers, some just a dozen or two. But when you start adding them up – and considering the extent to which these smaller-circulation sites refer to others and thus create an interlinked, frequently updated and diverse experience – you are looking at an alternative media that dwarfs the audiences of many mainstream print and broadcast outlets.
Here in North Carolina, the blogosphere is healthy, dynamic, and growing. You can visit the North State Blogs site for a lengthy list of blogs, or use Carolina Journal’s somewhat shorter list, which adds a small description for each (the absence of which makes many blogrolls useless, in my opinion). I participated in a Piedmont Bloggers confab earlier this year organized by two Greensboro bloggers, Ed Cone (D) and Dave Hoggard (R), and plan to attend another event closer to home, a Chapel Hill gathering in February, to learn more about the North Carolina scene.
Our own efforts at JLF to expand the blogosphere began several years ago with the debut of this “Daily Journal” feature (which is, strictly speaking, an online column rather than a weblog) and last year’s introduction of The Locker Room, to which dozens of JLF staffers, affiliated scholars, and other commentators have posted in the past year. Some 10,000 different readers visited The Locker Room in 2004, viewing some 250,000 pages, while “Daily Journal” attracted some 30,000 different readers and about 120,000 page views. These numbers reflect only a portion of the total readership of JLF’s various web sites, but they are important because readers typically initiate a direct visit to our online column and blog, while other pages are often found through searches.
In other words, we’re developing a loyal audience. We’ll keep at our efforts to retain and expand that audience, which in the blogosphere is accomplished by providing novelty, maintaining timeliness, and building trust.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.