Where do blogs go from here?

There is no doubt that blogs have already changed the dynamics of news and politics. However, their total effect is limited and the results, so far, fall short of their revolutionary potential.

Most people are not regular blog readers. The people who are reading represent the early adopters, the committed partisans, the info-junkies. They are, alas, only a small sliver of the news audience and electorate.

The rate at which blog readership expands will depend more on the actions of current readers than on those of bloggers. As those readers put their personal credibility behind blog content, they increase the blog-audience in ways the best-written post cannot.

The most obvious way readers vet content is by emailing posts to friends, family, and co-workers. I'm sure some of this happens today. The "problem", though, is that we currently do not have the means to measure this. Nor, do the current blog metrics (links, visitors, page views) tell us anything about the total audience size and its growth rate.

If such metrics are to be developed, they will have to come from the blogging community. The content providers in a given medium fund/develop nearly all the audience measurement tools used in that medium (Arbitron, Nielson, etc.). Those tools are not the products of disinterested scholarship nor is the research undertaken in the public interest. The metrics are used to sell advertising.

Clearly, it is not in the interest of publishers or network executives to spread the word about the rise of a competing media. It is also clear that reporters and editors disdain blogs and bloggers. Any research done by conventional journalists will pass through the blinders of professional jealousy, ideological commitment, and economic worries. Dismissing blogs (guys in pajamas writing ideological screeds that only lunatics take seriously) is easy and provides a nice ego-boost. That template will be hard for the MSM to give up.

It is unrealistic to expect the "professionals" to clear a place at the table for bloggers. As Papa said, "Hawks do not share." That attitude, however, is more harmful to the MSM than to bloggers. As Photon Courier has pointed out, it is textbook thinking with the textbook being Clayton Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma.