Very roughly speaking. According to this Harris poll, 46% of Americans read blogs. Not just any blogs but political blogs, specifically. So I took the US Population, multiplied it by 46% and got 139,632,428.
The Harris report however seems to work really hard to downplay their own numbers. You can compare my post’s title to theirs.
But are people really reading these blogs? The answer is no, as over half of Americans (56%) say they never read blogs that discuss politics.
Only 22% read political blogs on a regular basis, but that is still a huge number. It’s a lot higher than I thought. With the same math above that works out to over 66 million people. It’s a massive audience for a non-broadcast, (largely) non-corporate medium.
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What does that say about long tail?
Does it add? DK is the leviathon, but I don’t think even he was 139 million readers…
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
Caveat: This is all survey sample based
So I’m extrapolating total numbers for effect. There probably aren’t that many 0-18 year olds reading blogs.
The survey says about 46% read more than 2 blogs regularly so that would be the long tail, I guess.
That youth demographic
Age 0-12 probably doesn’t bring a lot of political readers, but from high school on the teen readership for political blogs is I think pretty high. The sense that the old folks have screwed things up royally is widespread, and young people are casting around for a way to deal with that; IIRC, something like that happened before, when I was young, and now it is happening again. Apathy is out; with the young, activism is coming back in.
Obama, deliberately or not (I think not) has captured the focus of that dissatisfaction; in an adolescent way, but that should not be used to discredit the fervor. Lots of young people read political blogs and watch SNL/Stewart/Colbert because they don’t trust the traditional TV news and they don’t read newspapers or political magazines. For better or worse, the media formats that most of us grew up with are headed for extinction.
This shift in sources of information is good, because the internet cannot be stopped, cannot be filtered, cannot be restricted without shutting down the economic engine that the rich need to sustain their own power; governments will try, but they cannot succeed. Children are often silly, but they aren’t stupid. The internet is as powerful a force for liberation as the printing press was in its day, only cheaper and easier to use; they are all over it.
Well I am down to half dozen
blogs that cover a wider net of political coverage where I seriously read for material.The one to which I contribute, TalkLeft, Alternet, TruthOut, and Corrente. I also like the foreign blogs for a different take, EuroTrib.com is a good one. I do visit C&L, the Huff Obama, and Talking Points to check out the Obama side of the story. I was never a DailyKos fan and their tactics I think prove me right. There are an unbelievable less well known blogs often with a local flavour.
The problem I have with the estimate of 46% is that I wonder how many of those just look at the Huffington Post and Politico, which must have the widest net of all. Of course, the right has its blogs, Townhall, Free Republic, Drudge and Red State. They seem pretty secure in their readership.