saloons, not salons

Well, it’s whither British blogging time again, so I suppose I’d better come up with an opinion one way or another. Let’s kick off with this:

And who frames this debate? Who to a large extent drives it, shapes it, boosts it? The blogs. Blogging in the US is huge. To take one example, the Daily Kos, one of the leading liberal blogs, gets a daily readership of nearly 850,000. Well over three quarters of a million. Adjusting for population, a UK blog would need to get a daily readership of around 200,000 to compete. And yet how many British blogs get even one percent of that figure? Even half of one percent? Precious few.

What is the matter with us British bloggers? Where are we going wrong?

I think the problem with this is that it assumes that there’s a need for blogs, and that therefore there’s a duty that bloggers in Britain are failing to fulfil. I don’t see it that way. Nothing necessary has happened or failed to happen because it was blogged about. And blogging has produced no new ideas. It’s simply reproduced existing ones in a different format. In doing this, it’s given some ideas more exposure than they would otherwise have. That’s nice, but it makes no discernable difference to life in general.

When people talk about increasing the impact of blogging, they don’t refer to people who happily blog away about cross stitching or baking cakes or their messy bedrooms. They usually mean political blogging. So we have to consider the idea that the reason political blogging hasn’t taken off to the extent that its advocates would like is because lots of people don’t like what political bloggers produce. Even in the US, only a quarter of internet users read blogs of any kind, let alone political blogs.

I’ve said this before but I think it’s still true. Most political blogging is done by men approaching or within middle age, men of the breakfast table autocrat type, men who feel a sense of intellectual entitlement that goes beyond their actual capabilities – men who not only feel that they have the right to speak but that others have the duty to shut up and listen. Men who shout at the telly, in short. This comes across very strongly. Behind every exuberant fisking there’s a high, whiny voice going, it’s not fair, I should be doing that, my job’s boring it’s not fair. I suspect that this puts a lot of people off.

Me, I like it. Back when I started drinking properly, we’d go down the pub and a bunch of us would sit at the same table yakking away and there’d be other groups of mates doing the same thing at other tables. And each one of us would know some of the people at the other tables: there’d be backchat and piss taking and the beermats would fly about. That’s the way a lot of blogging seems to work in Britain. There are lots of small affinity groups of people with a similar outlook, but each one of these has interesting connections in other directions, all of which freshen up the general conversation. It’s a gigantic, cheerfully chaotic saloon bar. It’s not the kind of place where everyone screws you out when you walk in and you have to keep an eye out for the exits. But it’s not a salon either, as blogging advocates seem to wish it would become. It can do serious, but it doesn’t mistake serious for solemn. For all that we have to remember that millions of people don’t choose to drink there.

What’s good about this is that it creates the general feeling that anyone can join in, that anyone can have a go. It’s tolerant of difference. It enjoys someone with something new to offer. It’s a good outlet for people like Harry Hutton, and I’d prefer one actually existing Harry Hutton to a million Will Hutton wannabees.

So if we’re talking about the purpose of blogging, I’d propose the following. It demonstrates that writing can be a viable mass leisure time activity. Yes, kids. Writing is fun. Why don’t you do it too? This, in itself, is a public good irrespective of blogging’s relationship to the professional media. And once someone’s figured out how bloggers can turn their audiences into cash, then we come to a truly radical proposition. For the first time in the history of paid employment, millions of people can be paid for having fun.

Now this is really dangerous stuff. It’s far more radical than self-promoting bollocks about “challenging the mainstream media” or “turning reporting from a lecture into a seminar?” What idiot came up with that, by the way? Who wants to go to a fucking seminar, for christ’s sake? Especially when they could be off down the pub…

Comments

[Matthew]

Kos a daily readership of 850,000? Sitemeter says it gets 850,000 visits a day, of 2 seconds each. They're quick readers.

I don't know much how these figures work, I was under the impression the time thing actually overstated it, not understated it. If it's correct, then I make that 471 hours of Kos reading in that day, which is (if your paper takes you 20 mins, about 1500 readers of a Daily paper, or if you watch a TV show for 30 mins, about 1000 viewers. Even 5 mins each is only 5000 readers, 1 min 25000.

Have I done something wrong with my calculations?

[Matthew]

Ok, it's not as bad as all that. Sitemeter calculates duration from click to click, so those who don't click once after they've arrived count as zero seconds.

This brings the average down, obviously. In fact it would be hard to work it out.

Still, Kos is regularly updated, so I suspect it's readership is only a fraction, maybe a 5th, or a 10th, of those numbers?

[Matthew]

I'll try some heroic calculations.

The average number of pages is 1.1. It seems likely to me that those who click more than once, the vast majority do so only 1 more. So I'm going to say 90% just viw one page (no clicks) and 10% two pages (1 click). This makes an average of 1.1 pages.

The 10% who do two clicks make sitemeter record their time spent, which totals at 471 hours a day. These people I'll say spend the same amount of time as the no click people (very heroic assumption), thus total time spent on Kos is ten times that, or 4710 hours, which would be equivalent (see first post) to about 250,000 readers of 1 min each. Or less than 100,000 a day.

I'm rambling.

[JonnyB]

"When people talk about increasing the impact of blogging, they don’t refer to people who happily blog away about cross stitching or baking cakes or their messy bedrooms. They usually mean political blogging."

Which is a shame. The whole argument gets a bit skewed that way. The amazing political potential of blogging is that it offers us a genuine, unique opportunity to view and understand what other people's lives are like.

Great post.

[Oscar Wildebeest]

Agree with the "great post" bit, but I'd offer another purpose to blogging, which I would never have realised before I started it. By forcing me to put my thoughts into words, blogging has also forced me to back up my assertions with evidence. Being forced to gather evidence, I have come across information and opinion (through following links and suchlike) which I would never otherwise have accessed. Indeed, it has turned my political views both to the right and to the left as I come across new arguments, new points of view, new proposals (more to the left than to the right, I have to admit). It has also given me tons of background information so that my views are actually based on having properly researched subjects, rather than relying on my gut instinct. You might say, in short, that blogging has been enlightening.

[Oscar Wildebeest]

Oh, yes, and I have a bloody brilliant job, which I love. I do shout at the TV, I admit, but only when Blair's on.

[KathyF]

Are you talking about Brit blogging when you talk about it being done mostly by men? Because that simply isn't true in the US. Most of the US poliblogs I read are by women.

And I don't see an answer here to the question, why aren't there more political bloggers with huge readership here? By your analogy to drinking, which is done much more here by both sexes, there would be a lot more bloggers too, or maybe they're all drinking instead of blogging?

And btw, there are new numbers at Kos posted today. Something like 23 million visits and 26 million page views, up from 6 million a year ago. That's almost a million page views a day, and is apparently a conservative (no pun intended) number.

[Simstim]

KathyF: most of the US poliblogs that I read are by men, but then I'm quite aware that my surfing habits probably have a hefty gender bias to them.