Last week, Kevin Drum offered evidence that the major liberal blogs do a poor job in linking to one another, while conservative ones are much readier to share links to new and smaller blogs. Now via Oliver Willis, I see the conversation is continuing. Lots of bloggers seem angry about the stinginess of established bloggers like Kos and Atrios. I don’t want to discount the impulse of these complaints — collectively we should be doing a better job of finding and synthesizing new voices, and I’m not saying that just because I’m pretty low on the blog-traffic totem pole. But let me offer the contrarian case for a second and say that nefarious intentions aren’t the real problem.
First, the main reason bloggers, big or small, don’t link to more things is that it takes time. Even if you have an RSS reader to cut down on your reading time, it’s not easy to click through links and sort through the dross and the “me too” posts and the sports or music musings or whatever and find that bit of insight or turn of phrase worth writing about. I’m not sure why conservative bloggers have more time to do this, but I do know that some of the top liberal bloggers, like Josh Marshall, put their energy into research and analysis and not into fostering a dialogue online.
Second, as someone who studies the culture industry from a non-Noam Chomsky vantage, I get suspicious when would-be explanations leave out the demand side. Readers share a good bit of the blame. Unlike television, the oligopoly exists in blogging only by dent of tipping points that lead readers to seek out a certain few sites as the best or most representative or most worthwhile of the thousands out there. Nothing’s stopping them from going elsewhere.
Third, second and third tier bloggers share the blame. I doubt Instapundit personally goes out and finds all of the blogs he links to. But if those he reads themselves have a wide net, it increases the likelihood of smaller sites’ posts from making their way up the blogosphere chain. Among liberal blogs, even second and third tier sites are focused on the big 10 or so (I’m guilty of this), and that has implications for dialog all around.
Finally, the left blogosphere is split up into various factions. They aren’t mutually exclusive, but they are divergent in their political beliefs and, more importantly, what kind of political discourse they like. Subcultures have even developed along these lines: the Kos-Deaniacs, the wonky TPM-Matt Yglesias-Mark Schmitt faction, the Atrios-Oliver Willis firebrands, the Kevin Drum-JackO’Toole measured “commen sense” approach, the academics of Crooked Timber, I could go on. I guess everyone loves Fafblog, but beyond that we all seem to find different things interesting and that would likely apply to smaller or newer bloggers as well.
In short, the blog oligopoly is showing its dysfunctions, but it probably has its functions as well. In any case, I’ll try to do a better job at casting a wider reading and linking net, even if a link from this modest site isn’t going to be a traffic boon to too many.
And I should commend those who do spread the wealth. People give Kevin Drum a lot of guff for not linking more, but he’s done more than most I can think of in giving smaller liberal voices a bigger exposure. He even takes the time to follow his own unweildy comment threads. Also, I thank Brad Delong for his long inclusion of this blog in his blogroll, dating back to when this was Marxists for Keynes over two years ago.
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