Which blogs are read by the media?

Nothing spurs forward progress in research like competition. First Henry Copeland has his blog survey. Now I read that Eszter Hargittai is starting her own project on blogs and the media, and she’s looking for a “way of finding prominent political blogs.” Which means that now is as good a time as any to post the results of the survey of media professionals’ favorite blogs!! Between September 2003 and January 2004, Henry Farrell and I received responses to five survey questions about blogs, the media, and politics. Beyond my initial post, the survey was widely linked around the blogosphere, including Instapundit, CalPundit, OxBlog, Crooked Timber, the Volokh Conspiracy, James Joyner, Jim Romenesko, Boing Boing, Scripting News, Howard Bashman, Andrew Sullivan (OK, that was me when I was guest-blogging), and National Review Online. The result was 140 proper responses from media professionals, i.e., those that made their living working for a media outlet (or freelancing for more than one). 33 of these responses were from what I’m characterizing as “elite” media outlets — defined as general interest intermiediaries of national standing for those interested in politics.* More informally — these are the outlets read by the movers and shakers in the political sphere. Examples of this latter category include the Economist, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, CBS, CNN, ABC, AP, Reuters, and Bloomberg.** Participants were asked to list “the three blogs you read most frequently.” The result was a total of 391 total responses and 89 elite responses (some respondents provided fewer than three blogs). What were the ten most popular blogs among all responses? In order:

1. Andrew Sullivan (Daily Dish) — 59 2. Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) — 43 3. Mickey Kaus (Kausfiles) — 23 4. National Review Online (The Corner) — 20 5. Josh Marshall (Talking Points Memo) — 19 6. James Romenesko (Media News) — 14 7. Atrios (Eschaton) — 10 8. Daniel W. Drezner — 9 9. Eugene Volokh et al (The Volokh Conspiracy) — 7 10. Cory Doctorow (Boing Boing), James Lileks (The Bleat) — tied with 6

The lineup looks slightly different when looking only at the elite responses:

1. Sullivan — 21 2. Instapundit — 11 3. Kaus — 7 4. Talking Points Memo — 5 5. The Corner, Drezner, Romenesko — tied with 4 8. Brad DeLong (Semi-Daily Thoughts), Volokh — tied with 3 9. Atrios, Markos Moulitsas Zúniga (Daily Kos), Gawker, Howard Bashman (How Appealing) — tied with 2

Now, let’s make the obvious caveat — the responses are obviously going to be affected by which blogs linked to the survey questions. Neither Atrios nor Josh Marshall, for example, advertised the survey at all (they were asked), so their results are likely to be biased downwards. People were e-mailing me their responses, and I have no doubt that the only reason I’m on the list is that some journalists were just being polite. Also, since the survey took place in the fall, newly emerging blogs like Daily Kos are probably more read now by media professionals than they were last September. This is certainly true of Wonkette, which didn’t exist last September. That said, two counterpoints are worthy of note. First, while there is likely some rightward political bias, the magnitude of the bias might not be that significant. Several high profile left-leaning blogs did link to the survey (Kevin Drum was nice enough to link twice). Second, it is striking that if you do a Nexis search of the names listed above during the same time duration, you wind up with very similar relative numbers in terms of media mentions. So if the numbers are out of whack, they’re not that out of whack. Which leads to a provocative possibility — Eric Alterman may have a point. In What Liberal Media?: The Truth About Bias and the News, Alterman argued that claims of liberal media bias are vastly overblown. Looking at the Top 10 lists, it’s hard to deny the prominence of rightward-leaning blogs on the list. Marshall and Atrios are there, but they’re a bit lower on the list than either Blogstreet’s Most Influential Blogs or The Truth Laid Bear’s Blogosphere Ecosystem have them. The elite responses are somewhat more liberal than the overall responses, but the difference is not terribly great. At a minimum, the media professionals that consume blogs seem to have far more centrist tastes than is often proclaimed by those on the right. Before Alterman starts jumping up and down, however, bear in mind that there’s another possible selection bias in the responses. If media professionals who seek out blogs to read are those who find mainstream media reporting unsatisfactory because it’s skewed to the left, then these responses are not necessarily indicative of the political preferences of the larger media ecosystem. This came through in several of the responses. It’s equally possible that liberal journalists are practicing The Godather, Part II dictum of, “keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer” — i.e., reading blogs they disagree with politically because they want to know the counterarguments to their beliefs. This came through in a lot of the surveys as well — and, of course, it comes through in the recent Pew survey of the media as well. A lot to chew on — want to play around with the raw data? You can access the Excel spreadsheet here — all names, official positions, and other biographical information have been excised from the data set. Finally, a big thank you to Crescat Sententia’s Amanda Butler, who provided invaluable assistance in collecting and collating the data while displaying the utmost discretion. UPDATE: Kevin Drum and Glenn Reynolds both have useful links on the relationship between the mediasphere and the blogosphere. This American Journalism Review article by Rachel Smolkin is particularly interesting. And Laura at Apartment 11D is working on her own project about how blogs affect political participation. Meanwhile, John Hawkins has a post on which blogs conservatives like to read. * If you look at the raw data, you might notice that responses from the same publication were divided into elite and non-elite categories. In thise cases, it was because the non-elite respondent was a freelancer. ** A few more specialized publications are included in the elite category because they specialize in politics — Roll Call, the Hotline, and Foreign Affairs fall under this category.