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October 19, 2005
Kinds of Blogging "Actors"
In preparation for the New Media & Entertainment Summit I'm attending next week, I did a little noodling on what kinds of "actors" there are out here in the free market that is the blogosphere. Not all are blogs per se, but still can be characterized as "new media." So here's some thoughts:
The full-time pundit, living largely off donations, or book sales, etc: www.AndrewSullivan.com, Michelle Malkin
The on the ground reporter, living off donations & grants: Michael Yon
A free-lance reporter who has snagged complete corporate sponsorship: Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone From Yahoo! News
A network of blogs, each focused on a different niche, and created from the top down: Weblogs, Inc. or Weblog Empire, ArtsJournal: Blog Central
A network of blogs, each with varying content, organized from the bottom up (and a work in progress): Pajamas Media in Transition - Information Site
Official Bloggers (of sorts) at Old Media Outlets: TKS on National Review Online, OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today
News & opinion aggregation with some commentary: RealClearPolitics
News aggregation on a very focused topic, with no commentary: Iraq Elections newswire
Pick a blog, any blog: any of a number of quality, consistent bloggers, who write about whatever strikes their fancies, but which generally fall into a handful of main categories. Here's a couple: Cella's Review, Gates of Vienna, The Belmont Club.
Same as above, but a group, either of amateurs, or professionals: PoliPundit.com, The Counterterrorism Blog, Winds of Change.NET
Kind of like blogging, but more about info aggregation: About.com
The anchor/master of ceremonies: Instapundit.com
A place where readers also write a good bit: RedState.org, Daily Kos: State of the Nation.
A blog that seems to be turning into a magazine: The old blog: Transatlantic Intelligencer
The new magazine: Transatlantic Intelligencer
What other forms of new internet media am I missing? A commenter the other day brought up forums as something he likes to visit. I don't visit many of these, but perhaps this is a good one [ht: the indispensible ZenPundit, who is like an extension of my own consciousness] Small Wars Council. Are there other forms of new internet media that you use that I've skipped over? I know my categories above sort of paper over things a bit, and probably create some false boundaries too, and reflect largely what I read myself -- someone who's totally into cooking would use completely different examples -- but it seems like a good start.
Thoughts?
UPDATE: Of course, someone did a study once and found that, what -- 95%? -- of blogs are personal journals read by very few folks. Here's one that seems rather popular, which I just discovered in the Truth Laid Bear stats.
Posted by Chester at October 19, 2005 12:51 AM
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Comments
How about this catagory: A blog started by commentators from Little Green Footballs, with great news analysis, humor, freewheeling and biting commentary, and a running soap opera in which all the regular commentators on the site are part of....okay, it's Discarded Lies. How would you catagorize such a blog that is this popular?
Posted by: Jauhara at October 19, 2005 8:15 AM
here is a professor of Blogs - what passes for research, she received a PhD in "celebrity blogs", is no better than what would be a FAQ on Blogging.
http://kaye.trammell.com/blog/2005/05/celebrity-blog-research.html
also c-span has just put up a site for news and they have included a blog list page - it must be the programmers personal list:
http://www.c-span.org/resources/blogs.asp
Posted by: Taylor Gilbert at October 19, 2005 10:17 AM
Specialty blogs - focus on the writer's area of expertise, seldom stray into other areas
Independent blogs - cover a wide variety of topics and the writer has no known affiliations with media or political parties
"Single Cause" blogs - stopharrietmiers.org, for example
Posted by: antimedia at October 19, 2005 10:57 AM
1. You might add Atrios as an example, who is as close as the left gets to Instapundit. He seems to drive about the same amount of traffic in about the same way. Meaner, lefty to be sure, but comparable in style.
2. There are foreign bloggers who consciously blog for a Western, English-speaking audience. In the Arab world, for example, you have Baghdad Burning, Iraq the Model, Big Pharoah, Saudi Jeans, Sabbah, etc. These are all people perfectly capable of blogging in Arabic, but the blog in English because they want to speak to and interact with Occidentals (I put it that way just to piss off Edward Said's ghost). I think this is a category in and of itself (and it extends beyond Arabs).
3. Partisan blogs. There are any number of blogs -- mostly but not exclusively on the left -- that exist for explicitly partisan reasons. They do not even pretend to intellectual honesty or independence.
Posted by: TigerHawk at October 19, 2005 11:09 AM
These are all great comments. I'll update my list. Keep the thoughts coming . . . I'll address in more detail later.
Posted by: Chester at October 19, 2005 11:11 AM
Hey Chester,
In case you missed this site:
http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/csi.asp
Thanks for the link !
Posted by: mark safranski at October 19, 2005 11:23 PM