Blogging data
Okay, sometimes I will just have to post something about blogging and bloggers. Not that I consider these unimportant in today’s media universe, but bloggers writing about bloggers writing about bloggers is really just too incestuous for me most of the time.
But what I’ve been reading THIS WEEK about blogging and bloggers is of interest in relation to journalism in general, and online journalism in particular.
First, there is this report by David Sifry from Technorati data. My capsule summary:
You look at where most links from blogs go, and you find that of the top 33 sites linked to, only four are not mainstream media (MSM). Fact: Many blog links point to traditional journalism on the Web.
But then you go down the list, after those 33, to what Sifry dubs “The Magic Middle,” and you find a lot more non-MSM blogs there. Sifry points out that these are niche blogs, well-written, focusing on such subjects as food, technology and music. He suggests that — and here’s the tip for savvy journalists — THIS is where you’ll spot new trends before they seep into the mainstream. And just to make it easy for you, Technorati has herded them into a special little place called Explore.
So, cool.
Then there was this Linkology thing from New York magazine, part of a clump of articles that includes a timeline of blog history.
I was not going to mention the New York Magazine articles because they struck me as just more of the incestuous blogger-link-party lifestyle, which is terribly important to a rarefied community of blogophiles but really does not come down and rub shoulders with the masses, especially those of us living far from the centers of media power. And yet, there are some tasty factoids in there, and maybe they’ll come in handy for a little blog research project I’m working on with a colleague.
Technorati tags: journalism | blogs | blogging | Magic Middle
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