I don’t usually read The Weekly Standard, of course, but this op-ed piece posted on the CBS News site caught my eye.
The author, Dean Barnett, has some interesting analyses of the left blogosphere in general and of Daily Kos in particular.
His analysis is flawed, of course, because Barnett makes the all-too-common error of conflating “the progressive blogosphere” with Daily Kos, as if it is the alpha and the omega of blogging on the left, but there are still some claims in Barnett’s article that merit examination.
More below the fold.
Barnett makes two claims that are somewhat startling to me.
Claim 1: The number of people participating on Daily Kos and in the political blogosphere in general is in sharp decline.
The conventional wisdom is that blogs are a growing force with unlimited potential. But there is a dirty little secret: The blogosphere’s growth has flat-lined, and in many cases shrunk. Last October, the Daily Kos had approximately 23 million visitors. By last month, the number had sunk to 16 million. The decline was gradual and sustained. Kos’ virtual progressive ranks, at least, are not growing.
The same trend is in evidence nearly everywhere else in the blogosphere, too. The second-most influential left-wing Web site, Atrios, now averages fewer visitors than it did eight months ago and there is no data indicating the readership of conservative blogs is growing, either.
This suggests that the blogosphere is already a mature medium and that its rapid growth phase is now past. And there is nothing to indicate that this relatively young dog is about to learn any new tricks.
Claim 2: The political blogosphere is not capable of expanding its influence in politics and is a “one trick pony” (or possibly a two-trick pony).
Certainly, the blogosphere is adept at many things. It can ignite a campaign; it can elevate obscure figures (such as Howard Dean or Cindy Sheehan) or overlooked issues (such as the Swift Boat veterans or the 60 Minutes scandal) to national prominence. It can also be a force in intra-party skirmishes; the smaller the skirmish, the greater the relative power of the blogosphere. But the blogosphere developed these abilities years ago. The notion that its power is still nascent is grounded in media hype, not reality.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/06/16/opinion/main1722921.shtml
Yes, I know, it’s The Weekly Standard and it’s edited by Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes–hardly friends of the Left or even of the Democrats–so one has to be careful when examining claims made from a source with such an obvious bias.
Still, the claims on site traffic at the bigger political blogs is something that I didn’t expect…and I, too, have been wondering if political blogs really have the potential to expand, or if they have reached (or even passed) the limits of their influence.
My suspicion about the a-list blogs mentioned in the clip you posted is that they’ve lost much of what made them interesting way back when: namely, interesting content. Atrios got to the point that it had way too many open threads; Big Orange became mainly a vehicle for cheering on the Democrat party with room for little else. Nothing will kill you faster in “blogtopia” (ysctp) than being boring.
The diaries at the Big Orange do seem a bit…rah-rah, hooray for the home team. The Big Orange got deadly dull after the exodus sparked by the “pie wars”. Raw numbers don’t make a blog interesting–the Big Orange lost many of its most thoughtful, interesting writers in its various purges. I used to find a lot of diaries over there worth reading, but now the diaries are…well, I guess “dull” is the right adjective.
I’m not nearly as familiar with Atrios, so thanks for your insight on that.
Maybe I should have asked in my poll, What are the best-written and most interesting blogs, both left and right? Not the most popular, but the best! (Other than Booman Tribune…and by the way, Booman is ten times the writer that Kos is, and easily the master of any frontpager on Daily Kos).
There are a lot of really damned good ones. Some I’d recommend:
Empire Burlesque
Orcinus
Migra Matters
¡Para Justicia y Libertad!
Left I on the News
Informed Comment
Man Eegee
That’s just a very small starter list. Some of these are run by cats who appear here. Mainly I dig bloggers who have something interesting to say and/or can provide a useful compendium of news that I might have missed out on otherwise. I mention Manito’s blog as he’s managed to foster a bit of a community over the last few months, in addition to some interesting writing.
And before anyone reading this goes “Dammit James, you forgot about me” I offer my mea culpa (latin for “my bad”) in advance; time to get some shut-eye. 🙂
Chris Floyd at Empire Burlesque is one I like a lot. The fact that he got banned from the Orange Colored Place is the least of the reasons why I like his writing!
half of those blogs i know and are excellent; ergo, i’m going to check out the other half on the assumption they are excellent, too.
What a grotesque opportunity for a little whoring…or is it pimping?
nowhereweb.com
It sucks!
I don’t have a great record at predicting the future, but it seems plausible to me that the big, centralized blog sites are in decline. I think the future is with very high quality content sites such as Glenn Greenwald’s “Unclaimed Territory” and David Neiwert’s “Orcinus” and Josh Marshall’s “TPM.” I would have put Billmon in that category a year ago, but no longer.
There are probably 100 really excellent wave-of-the-future sites I haven’t seen yet . . .
One big mistake that people make in estimating the worth of blogs is that pageviews = influence.
Nope. If what people are reading on those blogs is not persuasive, or is boring or poorly written, then pageviews or popularity does not mean that they are influential.
If you take somebody like Greenwald, though, or Booman, who are both very good writers and deep thinkers, then you end up with somebody who IS influential–because they are quoted across the blogosphere and can really change people’s view of a subject.
What is popular is often mediocre–I know that’s not an original observation, but it’s true nonetheless.
I see a lot of really intense writing slip down the recent diary list here, and at other places. Like Anna Sukrana’s Al Zarqawi Head on a Pike
Maybe it’s true that many of us are just wiped out with the barrage of sickening news, and can’t dive into the deep end of the pool right now.
It’s funny that the page views at dKos have flattened out since Oct. because last week one of their more prominent commenters, who’s also a member here, made a nasty attack on BMT, after calling Booman a liar, because the numbers here have flattened since the end of the year, last year. But that person ranted that it was due to our (BMT’s) constant attacks (they say) on dKos, and all that’s left is nastiness. He more or less called this place a cesspool. Not his words, but a pretty good description. Makes me want to seek him out again and toss their own numbers in his face.
On a side note, it makes me think that there’s a lot less ass cuddling/coddling going on here, though asses are occasionally cuddled/coddled ;o)
There you go–Kos changed the rules recently so that Trusted Users can only give two ass cuddlings a day.
No, wait…that’s ass KICKINGS a day.
This is an honest and not a leading question: Do you think that the “troll wars”, “pie wars”, etcetera, account for a substantial part of the 8 million pageviews that have disappeared from the Big Orange over the past eight months? Or this just a natural dimunition?
My answer is that it’s really hard to tell. Kos did tell people to “feel free to storm off in a huff” and that he didn’t need the site traffic after “pie wars”, but troll wars didn’t go on for weeks, it went on for MONTHS, and it’s possible that a lot of people were either troll-rated into oblivion or else found the place so restrictive of their speech that they gave up and went elsewhere (or nowhere).
Well, if what Barnett says is true, that the bigger blogs have either lost readership, or flattened out over the last eight months, then it would seem that what’s happening with Kos’ numbers, if true, is part of a larger blogosphere wide slowdown. But I don’t know. I haven’t looked at the numbers.
My own opinion about dKos’ readership, as someone who rarely comments is, that from an outside perspective the quantity of quality has definetily gone down recently IMO. The whole “troll wars” thing can’t have helped to attract new members because it was really unattractive from the outside looking in. There was one particular diary by a lurker there that pretty much said it all. Basically he said that lurkers were laughing at how utterly ridiculous and juvenile it was. And that’s how I saw it. I really don’t want to dealve any deeper into dKos member’s pathos, or inner culture. It has an identity just like BT does. But yeah, I’d say that the troll wars in particular probably turned a lot of people off and turned them away. The pie wars were much more serious in content, and did cause the exodus of some of the site’s finest writers and activists, if maybe on a slightly smaller scale. And like the troll wars, it had to have tuned off a lot of people on the outside too when they saw women being discounted that way. For a so called progressive site to dismiss such a large segment of the progressive movement’s backbone was no small thing.
I’ve always been a lurker on Daily Kos.
My view of the “pie wars” is the same as yours: a serious disagreement and a very disrespectful, even hateful, response by the site’s owner made that whole scene very ugly.
“Troll wars”…again, we have the same view. I find the whole thing patently ridiculous. It reminds me of a junior high locker room towel fight. The absurdity of “troll wars” confirmed that I was right not to become a regular commentator at Daily Kos, a decision I made during “pie wars”.
two things i noticed about the article…
firstly, barnett propagates the false meme that the left side of blogtopia (and yes, i coined that phrase) is “somewhere around 0 for 20” in supporting successful candidates.
of course this time barnett qualifies his lie with the parameters “in competitive races.” what, is stephanie herseth not competitive? ben chandler? tim kaine? oh, i see, it all depends on what the definition of “competitive” (and apparently, “is”) is.
but more importantly, i wonder if by concentrating on the dkos (and by extension the left side of blogtopia, and, yes, i coined that phrase) and it’s declining site meters, barnett is ignoring, as been mentioned here, the natural migration of readers from the big orange to other, more focused sites (let alone the idea that readers go on to become bloggers themselves).
dkos’ readership may be flat-lining, i would posit that the readership of blogtopia (y!ictp!) is increasing.
i don’t have any numbers for the quantity of lefty blogs in existence now compared to before. i would guess it’s bigger.
and lastly, i would wonder if, with the ratio of influence versus readership, if bartlett’s own weekly standard, with a circulation of around 60,000, isn’t a pot calling our kettle black. the standard is known far and wide as an influence, but i’ll wager real money that the guys in ad sales at the standard would kill for a readership like dkos (or booman) has.
So, basically you’re saying that you created that phrase? ;o)
God I feel so dirty…
nowhere
super, For me it’s an evil pleasure to observe DK vs. BT controversies, and I missed this one somehow. Could you give me a further hint, so I could try to find the statement on DK?
It wasn’t a controversy. Just a short comment beef between he and I over there. I don’t really want to link to it, because I don’t want to call the guy out by name and get something started here. I was making a comment more about the page views, in line with the diary here.
Sorry to disappoint.
Never mind. Found it. DK has an awesome search feature.
Well, can I request, or suggest that you not link it here in this diary. I don’t intend to start another shitfest. Like I said. His claims were pertinent to the diary here.
Yes, I don’t intend to link here. I feel a little sick after reading the whole thread. You battled valiantly.
this is upsetting!
I took the liberty of linking to this diary in a comment over at dkos– if those claims are false, they should respond forcefully.
You can see the site traffic for Daily Kos over the past year by clicking on the Sitemeter logo at the bottom of their page. I checked it out–there has been a decline in traffic since October. Down 8 million, from about 24 million to 16 million per month. That’s a decline of about one-third.
But while pageviews might be a way to sell expensive ads, it is not an accurate measure of influence, as I’ve pointed out elsewhere.
Traffic and interest are both down, but politics are deadly depressing right now and we’re a couple of years out from an election that most people will care about. The traffic will probably start to bounce again, but I’m as skeptical as anybody about the power of blogs to do much of anything. One of the things that has given them a decent media ride over the last few years is that a lot of journalists and columnists enjoy nothing better than a solid seven day stare at their own navels. The only thing that gets them off nearly that much is when somebody else stares at their navel, and bloggers do that quite well. That story is getting boring though. Everybody who was prone to caring about it has already read it twenty times over and has likely blogged their every thought on what they’ve read. My feeling is that one place where this particular medium can make a dent is on a very local level. Or at least that’s what I tell myself. I’ve only ever gotten really involved in one election as a blogger. It was Philadelphia’s last Democratic primary for District Attorney. We got plenty of press, raised a little money and our candidate was great. He still lost by 12,000 votes, but we told ourselves it would have been worse if we hadn’t gotten involved. Sigh.
Barnett didn’t say blogs couldn’t do ANYTHING–they can bring notice to a candidate and get stories circulated that the mainstream media will then pick up. At the local level, that could make a huge difference.
No, you’re right, he didn’t. I did though. Not that I totaly agree with myself on that this morning/afternoon either. I tend to be a bit more prone to see things in stark terms at 3:30 in the morning than is always healthy. This is all speculative of course, but it will be interesting, in a very geeky sort of way, to see how it will play out over the next few cycles, especially in local elections. The mayoral primary in my town is likely to be an interesting test case because you can’t throw a rock here without hitting a blogger or twenty and the primary itself is probably going to be a really nasty shit throwing festival. I mention primaries, because we don’t really have a Republican party here to speak of, so that’s where most elections are decided. I’m not sure where I’m going with this, so I’ll stop.
the traffic numbers is to have good data.
A quick look at alexa or sitemeter can give a sense of what is happening (the “majors” have ceased to grow exponentially, they have massive peaks of traffic at pretty predictable times like leading up to and around elections, with the occasional news-driven peak in traffic…)
The majors seem to have leveled off…but the real questions are these:
I do not think that the data to answer those questions is present in the Weakly Standardless article…nor do I think that those authors are particularly interested in finding out the facts…
It is my suspicion that, in fact, the “long tail” is growing massively, that the “majors” are not static in membership, even if their numbers as seen on alexa or sitemeter seem constant…I think folks come to the site, stay for a while, and then move on to greener pastures, sites that fit their specific needs, or to start their own blogs.
I would be interested to see a serious statistical treatment of the relevant data…and I do not think the WS article even comes close.
It’s an interesting topic.
The Sitemeter data are only good for attracting advertisers’ dollars–and not even that great for that purpose, because there is no demographic information attached to those raw numbers.
Advertisers target specific demographics, as we all know (18-34 year old white males being a prime target for many advertisers, since apparently this group will buy anything). Kos has tried to fill in the huge gaps in his user data with marketing surveys as to people’s ages, occupations, and income, but the surveys were not scientifically done and I don’t think most advertisers would pay any attention to them.
Your theory of high turnover in the blogosphere, at least on the major sites, is an interesting one. One way to test it would be to find out if registrations at free blog sites like Blogger.com and at second- and third-tier sites have gone UP or DOWN during this period of decline for major sites like Atrios and Daily Kos. Because if your theory is a correct description of people’s behavior, then those people who are leaving the “major sites” to start their own blogs should be registering in huge numbers at Blogger.com and/or at the second- or third-tier sites.
This October, with an imminent election, will be a better indicator of whether Big Orange is gaining or losing readership.
Personally I think the writer of this piece is a bit confused about cycles. Not everything goes on a steady upward climb, y’know, and spring is not nearly as interesting a time for politics as late summer/early fall.
Personally, I would hope that the blogosphere has widened and deepened a bit. More and better lefty blogs. (
I was thinking about cycles, too, probably because I saw Al Gore’s movie last night with its charts showing how global warming stats go up and down, but the overall trend is consistently upward. We may end up seeing–over a period of l00 years–a cycle in which blog traffic rises and falls depending on how close or far out we are from elections (or revolutions), but the overall trend is consistently upward.
Or not.
Daily Kos isn’t the only “big blog” that’s experiencing a decline in numbers.
Looking at DKos, Atrios, and the Smirking Chimp (a site that often gets ignored in these discussions), I see the same pattern: a peak in numbers around September/October 2005 and a fall-off of one-fourth to one-third of site traffic by May, 2006.
So it could be a cycle, or a leveling of numbers due to natural entropy.
Smirking Chimp numbers here (hope the link works)
http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=sm9chimpy&r=36
Or, in line with Omir’s comment about cycles, it could turn out to be just a natural dip in interest between elections. I’d expect a long-term chart would show huge spikes building up to Presidential elections, then a tapering off, then a spike around Congressional elections, then even more of a dip, then a building up again to the next Pres. elec. Maybe.
The Left Blogosphere is becoming more diverse. Different themes that used to appear on Daily Kos now have their own blogs, some affiliated with the Daily Kos (such as Street Prophets). The pie fights create several new blogs that have a substantial number of regulars. The importance of states in the upcoming Congressional elections have produced state and local lefty blogs.
This would lead to a single blog having less influence and the aggregate of all lefty blogs having more.
The Weekly Standard is in PTSD denial after the staggering event of Yearly Kos, at which pie fights were temporarily forgotten, state folks were gathered together, and the panels had participation from more of the specialized blogs.
And the Weekly Standard conveniently ignores the fact that the traffic at many political blogs tracks the cycle of public interest in the election cycle.
with all of the bannings and bullying of some of the more interesting diarists and commentors, what do people expect? When you rule the most important issues of the day off limits — vote suppression/theft, women’s autonomy, GBLT rights, pulling out of Iraq, etc — why should people bother going there? To get hit up for money? To keep up on the latest center-right agitprop?
If there is a problem w/ people demanding purity, it’s the center-right Dempublican fellators demanding that all color, passion and hope be drained away, just leaving a VERY white, sterile and comfy place for white middle class middle managers and techies.
ZZZZZZ.
So many good and passionate places to read.
For me, discovering more of the truth, and reacquainting ourselves with the idea that the truth ultimately always serves us better than does those fictions we too often prefer to believe in; these two things are prerequisites for any kind of informed, meaningful and effective action going forward.
And for me it is the availability of truth and the thoughtful consideration and exploration of same that is the blogosphere’s central value. And the more people that are exposed to the truth and come to recognize it’s importance, the more difficult it is for the propagandists and the authoritarians and the moneygrubbers to get away with their scams.
I don’t want the blogosphere to become just another corruptible mechanism of the political process any more than I want the political process to be beholden to the dictates and desires of the most prominent blog voices. I want truth and accuracy from the blogs so I can make up my own mind about where to go and for whom, if anyone, I might choose to vote.
I think I agree more with the idea that there is more of a dispersal of blogs/views/resources, rather than a decrease in lefty blogs and influence.
With Atrios there is hardly any “there” there anymore, but that doesn’t seem to matter much as, oddly enough, the comments section of his site seems to be more famous and attractive to some than anything he posts. Reminds me of some sort of hidden catacombed city or something.
Dailykos puzzled me for a long time, the purges and all that, but now that they are unveiling more of the site direction – basically a positioning for the richer-whiter-righter (and “male”er) faction, it makes sense. If you are seeking power and influence in politics and life in the US, that is the demographic you want.
Also, as more offshoots form (like BooTrib… a little farther to the left of kos, and MLW, a little farther to the left of BooTrib) eventually DK, instead of being considered the nexus of “crazed lefty moonbats”, will occupy the “pragmatic centrist” position (in more than just the minds of we crazed leftists) and thus gain more electoral currency, especially as the “fighting/libertarian/whatever” Dems they back start to win.
This used to bother me… okay, it still does, but I actually think it is healthier that the leftish scoop type blogosphere especially to have more rather than fewer choices, although I do hope that some of the leftier ones begin to get more influence and louder voices to balance out the more rightwing voices.
I also dearly wish madman and wilfred would further develop liberal street fighter, as I consider that one of the best “no compromise, take no prisoners” lefty sites and I think it needs a stronger presence. Other sites as well, such as our word and ones I don’t even know about, so that the full panoply of voices on the left can be heard.
I have a feeling I’ve wandered from whatever the actual topic was, but oh well ;).
Dailykos puzzled me for a long time, the purges and all that, but now that they are unveiling more of the site direction – basically a positioning for the richer-whiter-righter (and “male”er) faction, it makes sense. If you are seeking power and influence in politics and life in the US, that is the demographic you want.
Exactly right.
Speaking as someone who worked rather hard pre-pie to make the site a diverse site which actually resembled what used to be the Democratic party base I must say that I wish the site’s owner had been more, well, honest about his intentions early on although reading and watching the horror that is DHinMI in a ‘leadership’ role should certainly have given me a clue.
They’ve ‘unveiled the site direction’ several times. At one point the site was “a site by a liberal and for liberals”. I took the owner at his word there, a huge mistake.
I’ve gotta say that reading DK and particularly studying the people employed by the Democratic party in some capacity who write there and watching DK change over a period of several years has made me a firm political independent.
Speaking as someone who worked rather hard pre-pie to make the site a diverse site which actually resembled what used to be the Democratic party base I must say that I wish the site’s owner had been more, well, honest about his intentions early on although reading and watching the horror that is DHinMI in a ‘leadership’ role should certainly have given me a clue.
Well sure, but (just call me Pollyannanette), just think of the experience you’ve gained, not only in being more questioning and cynical (which sometimes is of great benefit) but also in the wealth of experience you gained by helping to build an online organization that resembled the party’s base, even though it turned out that that was actually wanted. Your experience is invaluable, and will be even more so as things progress, I think.
When I was much younger I was involved, pretty much from the ground up, in helping to build an organization (3D world) that actually turned out to be something I didn’t believe in, and didn’t want to be a part of at all and for a long time I felt I had just wasted years. Now I value that experience, even the negative portions of it, mostly for the lessons (and skills) learned. Can’t stand the people but at least I know how to defeat them.
Here, have some lemonade 😉
It’s the Latinos who put millions of people in the streets and made the politicians sit up and take notice.
And they did it with Spanish-language radio. I’ll bet none of the demonstrators in Chicago, Los Angeles, and elsewhere ever even heard of Daily Kos or any of the other blogs, let alone read them or participated.
The nerdy white males who think they’re experts on science because they read the latest issue of “Popular Science”, or who think they’re experts on foreign policy because they read the latest issue of “US News and World Report”, aren’t going to change anything–because they aren’t going to get up out of their chairs at any point and get into the streets.
Look at the history of the United States–only the movements that put people in the streets and then into the voting booths had any significant impact (the civil rights movement to take the most prominent example).
Look at the history of the United States–only the movements that put people in the streets and then into the voting booths had any significant impact (the civil rights movement to take the most prominent example).
Yes, but I’ve come to the sad conclusion (possibly erroneous, but still) that any number of people don’t especially want a movement with a significant impact… they want a tweak of a system which is working well for them in general, even if it’s not working at all for some.
This, of course, doesn’t mean that we can’t have a movement for great social change… I think that is pretty much inevitable. It’s just that I believe it will be resisted by not only the right but some on the comfortable left, and I think we need to acknowledge the different goals and plan accordingly.
The Latinos (and others who were involved) had a great start, but they can’t do it alone, and we need to figure out ways to broaden not only the impact but the goals and participation, in my view.
The anti-immigration “reform” marches by Latinos (not just Mexicans but Central Americans) was a demonstration of the earth-shaking potential of “people power”. The organizers of those marches are now reaching out to African-Americans, Anglos, and Asians to broaden their movement into one for social justice.
All of this activity is invisible on the blogs (ironic, considering that one of the centers of organization is San Francisco, and Kos is a Spanish-speaking Latino). INVISIBLE.
I believe that in global warming as well as in politics, things reach a “tipping point” beyond which they gain their own unstoppable momentum. The movement for social justice is building–tens of millions of Americans are tired of business as usual, politics as usual, and being exploited.
Ok, that was a speech and it’s based as much on intuition (and perhaps wishful thinking) as much as my own observations–but most people on DailyKos are not plugged into the street action.
Trust me…things ARE going to happen. The federal government has either gathered all the powers it needs to be an authoritarian state, or else had those powers handed to it by a traitorous Supreme Court.
But there are some who will resist…
For anybody who wants to check it out–those activities aren’t invisible at blogs like LINK: ManEegee’s or LINK: Duke’s or LINK: XicanoPwr’s , and their blogs lead to an array of other Latino blogs where that activity is visible and growing. Personally, I think we self-described Lefties or liberals or progessives ought to be checking out the news on at least one of those blogs every week.
The notion that the immigration marches were fueled through latino radio is somewhat of a misnomer that I believe came about because the MSM missed the whole story until it happened and figured the “media” component must have been something traditional … hence radio.
In fact a large percentage of the organizing was done online.
Although they played a large role, the radio stations came late to the party.
I’ll let you all in on the secret of how the big ones were done. (but you must promise … not to tell the MSM.)
Weeks before the marches the national organizers set up websites… giving out minimal info, but looking for local organizers. Over the following weeks one by one grassroots efforts joined in. They would post up at the site the contact info for each cities organizers. E-mail addresses, websites, even home phone numbers were included in the info. One by one all the various marches joined the list.
from there the effort branched out. Graphics were posted up for posters and signs in English, Spanish, some in Korean or Chinese. These are the signs many of us saw in shop windows and on lamposts.
The next step was speading the word. Much of it was done by e-mail, text messaging and through Myspace. Myspace was huge. Many of the children of immigrants, communicating through Mysapce got the info to interpret for their parents through Mysace.
That’s how everyone knew to wear white, where to meet, what time, the march route … it was Mypsaced across the internet.
By the time the radio stations got in the show , the show was already on. They played a big role in reaching many, but they were not the driving force behind this stuff.
I know this all because I watched it unfold.
Before the first march in Chicago, about a week before to be exact, I noticed tons of traffic coming to my site from Chicago. All of it going to a page that explained HR4437 (it was just dumb luck, because since no one was really covering the issue then, I ended up being on the top of the 1st page of a Google search for “HR4437”). I went from 50 hits a week to 300 a day. But I didn’t know why until the march happened.
After that I started watching this stuff. Watching to see who was hitting the site and from where. Before the LA march on 3/25, I found the organizing site and managed to start posting up their info. During that period traffic went crazy. 1500+ hits a day, again looking for info on HR4437 or the march. This is how I found out about the Myspace link. Kids all over were sending links from my site to their friends. Sometimes up to a hundred an hour.
The same thing repeated itself during the big National protest days, first on April 10 then culminating in the May 1 Boycott. In fact for that one the organizers contacted me through e-mail weeks in advance to see if I would post up their info and list the various protests and contact info since I was already showing up on google searches due to all the linkage and was getting close to 2000 hits a day. They were very tech savy that way, they followed the linkages, they watched the search engines and site meters, they knew how to work the internet to their advantage.
So it was all pretty much a matter of dumb luck on my part, but it allowed me to see first hand how this whole movement worked and was organized. It was totaly grassroots … I mean can you imagine people posting up their home phones and saying “call me if you want info” … well they did.
and as someone posted above …there is a huge network of latino blogs, many in spanish, some in English, some in both. They covered this stuff from day one.
But more importantly for progressives on a whole, this movement provided a blueprint for organizing real world events through a combination of new and old technology.
For me it was pretty amazing to watch … even if much of the watching was done through a computer screen.
As with most questions, I think that the true answer lies a blowin in the wind.
I’ve never experienced this, but apparently at dKos levels, bandwidth costs become very expensive. I think it mostly came down to a business decision to start the mass bannings.
IMHO, poliical blogs are great, at best when they serve as a vehicle for ideas to form. They can be think tanks on wheels, but become less so when ideas are surpessed and the uninfluential get ignored.
As far as driving voting patterns, I think that a blog’s influence is negligible, which may lead one to ask, if this is true, then why do so many politicians show up at dKos, and why then is Warner working so hard to get into bed with the likes of Kos?
The answer is that to a politician, the netroots are an ATM machine. Nothing more really. One “appearance ” by a politician (or by an underpaid politician’s staffer) at dKos probably nets thousands of dollars in contributions by misguided souls who think what they are doing is something more than just adding more heft to another (at heart) cynical politician’s coffers.
In addition to dKos’ self-imposed decline, other blogs sprouting up (such as booman) and gaining popularity probably has an effect, but neither of these factors could account for an 8 million readership drop.
I think in general that the vanilla-ization of many of these blogs has had a major effect on readership and I think that this will continue to have a major effect as the sites become wonkier with less emphasis on allowing folks a forum to vent, which IMHO was the true secret to dKos success (& a fact that they have long forgotten over there) This could not be happening at a worse time (Just before November elections).
In other words, the political blogs are becoming boring, and more and more people will generally become disinterested with politics and simply move on.
Xbox live anyone?
As for the booman/dkos rivalry that seems to be developing, does this remind anyone else of the east coast/west coast rapper wars?
No that’s not fair to Booman.
Booman doesn’t want a “blog war”.
We should respect that.
And yeah, I know, I’m the one who started this…but I’m not trying to fan any flames and I don’t see anybody else here doing it.
Besides, the “war” is mostly just a few overzealous “thought police” from DailyKos who can’t tolerate dissent.
I think it may be simply that for all the passion and outrage from the left and the right on the blogs, the fact that there is so little real change taking place in the political arena, and the fact that there is little sign of ideological or strategic epiphany taking place with the politicos themselves, (particularly the influential Dems who’ve been driving the party into the ditch since the mid-nineties); that all of this is just so discouraging to so many of us that we ose interest in the more minute details of campaigning here or there or supporting this or that candidate.
Many of us now tend to see that the (so-called) opposition party is so dysfunctional, so beholden to the big money boys, so willing to embrace the aggressively murderous foreign policy of which the invasion of Iraq is a centerpiece, and so shallow and cowardly with respect to standing up for even basic constitutional principles; that all of this suggests that the best thing that can happen politically is for the Democratic party, in it’s current iteration, to suffer further humiliating defeats both in ’06 and ’08, so that the DLC crowd and their battallion of failed strategists and consultants can finally be repudiated en masse and kicked out of power within the party.
Admittedly I see things this way to a large extent, and yet I’m always willing to entertain evidence that things are not that bleak. Sadly, I see no such evidence presenting itself, no epiphanies from the opposition party with respect to strategy or positioning on the issues.
The DLC answer every defeat the same way: the problem is that the Democrats didn’t move far enough to the Right, didn’t mimic the Republicans enough! Defeat only strengthens them.
That’s why I suggest that perhaps 2 or 3 more election cycle losses will finally persuade the sleeping and denial-afflicted democratic masses that these guys need to be repudiated completely and thrown out on their greedy and self-serving asses.
Just as the public at large needs to understand that the GOP has full ownership of the debacle that is the Bush regime, so too the Democratic constituency needs to understand that the DLC gang and creatures like Carville and Schumer and Clinton and Immanuel and Shrum etc., are in fact the exclusive owners, the architects of the badly deformed and almost completely ruined Democratic party.
Defeat only strengthens them.
heh.
Not as much as victory but I certainly agree that defeat strengthens them. What’s more they never, ever take responsibility for their losses, never admit to strategic error or the lameness of their pols.
Or maybe mainstream media got Rove’s memo:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/6/16/234559/237
Rove targeting the blogs.. not impossible, particularly if they’ve embarassed him.. which they have.
Also, http://www.dailykos.com/tag/diary%20rescue is a great tag to skim over. They highlight worty entries that didn’t get the Rah Rah stamp of Recommended approval. Lots of REALLY great entries there.