The Wall Street Journal posted an article about Spirit of America's fund-raising drive for Iraqi television. For some reason they included links to some big-name blogs such as Glenn's, but made no mention of the blogs aligning to generate support for the drive. One would expect a smaller number from the comments than the article, but four hits isn't a lot for me to get from my namelink on a comment like this. I would bet that the Journal thinks they have more impact than that.

John of Argghhh! posted links to himself and his two rivals in a response comment, and reports logging a grand total of four referrals from the site.

I don't think the amount of blog traffic is a valid measure of anything except the fact that people who read Instapundit are more likely to click on a link than those who see a URL in a print article are to type it into a browser. People who read blogs follow links more than people who don't.

Glenn has a lot of traffic, and he sends a lot of it on, but how does that compare to people reading newspaper or magazine articles. It would be interesting to see some demographic information on the readers of various blogs beyond just the sitemeter counts. I suppose somebody in the polling business could do it, and when blogs become significant enough income earners someone may pay to do it.

Linking is powerful in terms relative to bloggers, but how powerful in absolute terms? How do you compare pageviews to reading a magazine or newspaper? Looking through a newspaper like the NYTimes or the WaPo probably involves the equivalent of many days worth of Instapundit.

I think that Kos' recent misstep shows that blogging as a business could take a lot of the spontaneity and candor out of it.

I think we all sense that blogging could be a paradigm shift in news delivery, but it's too early to tell whether that will come to pass or not.

I think blogs can be an important combination of news delivery and unfiltered critique, and collectively can create and/or sustain a buzz. But I also think that bloggers have an influence offline - they're more knowledgeable about the news than most Americans, and have ready access to a lot more differing viewpoints than anyone who just reads newspapers or watches television news. I would say many bloggers are something of a news source themselves amongst their offline circle of family and acquaintances, because others know the blogger is going to have heard about just about anything before they do. I know it's true in my case. I also take my knowledge from online into my college classroom, even using links I pick up from blogs as sources for my students in homework assignments. So it's not just about what happens online. It's about seeking and developing a more well-rounded understanding of important issues, then spreading that both on and offline.

I do think that the media are showing a fundamental misunderstanding of blogs by always quoting "the usual suspects" - Kaus, Reynolds, Sullivan et al. Triticale's example is a good one.

Given the blogosphere's impact on news dissemination and the comments above, my sense is that the NYT is rapidly being displaced as the "Newspaper of Record" and that Instapundit and other key blogs are now beginning to filling that role. It seems audacious to say something like that, but consider where things stood two or three years ago and think where things will stand in another two or three years.

When I see a link in the free online WSJ, I click on it. When I read a link in a newspaper, it usually takes me a while to get around to investigating it. If I remember it after two or three or seven days, I usually pick out the bits I remember, run them through a search engine, and find it that way. Often the link I come up with is somebody else's blog or page linking to the site I want.

Alternately, I'll read about a site in the paper, forget about it, and then run across a link to it in someone's blog and remember it enough to click on it.

OTOH, when a link in the paper isn't part of a story but instead part of one of those link lists...well, unless it's opinionjournal.com it's usually useless, so I ignore it. Don't even bother to read it.

I'm not denying the basic point, btw, that blogs are more influential on the Net. But offline journals do have a certain diffuse influence.

As folks in the Yellow Pages like to say, forms of media usually don't _go away_; they just become less influential.

If given the choice between sanitized, non-controversial news and opinion and one rich with context unhampered by deference to power, which would you choose?

The major media is a laughing stock in their role as cheerleaders of the status quo. What it has done to our democracy though is not funny. They show no signs of acknowledging the increasing awareness of this fact that is seeping into the connected community.

Perhaps the blog-phenomenon will wake them from their imperious sloth, either to compete with it or to crush it by silently supporting its 'regulation'. Most likely the latter, given the ethical underpinnings of their condition.

I think there are basically two kinds of blogs: link blogs and content blogs. The link blogs - like Renolds - attract linkers, and the content blogs - like Simon or Jane Galt or Belmont Club - attract readers.

Since a link blog like Instapundit attracts people who go to the blog with the main purpose of being directed elsewhere, it's unsurprising that his links would move a huge amount of traffic.

But a content blog attracts people who want to read the essay and the comment thread - and Simon often gets hundreds of comments - so their links are disproportionately weak, because their visitors didn't come there to be redirected, but to linger.

The moral: if you want readers, provide lots of original content; if you want to be a big mover of net traffic, provide lots of links.

I should add that newspapers and the like would probably attract readers, no? Hence the relative weakness of their links.

Links have serious juju. My week-old blog got one link from Misha and BAM! 2000 hits in two days. That's heady stuff. Now I've got actual donations! My gratitude to the Emporer is endless.

DANG! E-M-P-E-R-O-R!

Preview is your friend!

When Instapundit linked to one of my recent posts, the traffic was almost overwhelming. Great stuff.

Brian makes a good point. A few weeks ago we were linked-to by both Instapundit and Simon on the same day.

Throughout the day the instalanch climbed into the thousands, whereas Simon, a blog I read all the time, delivered a mere dozen hits on the same story.

No doubt - the liberal newspapers are dying. The only people who read them are senior citizens. That scares me, because they are a big industry, and if they go under, a lot of jobs will disapper with them. (Related industries, like advertising, will also be hit hard.)

I think that you are right when it comes to print media (and print media online) but not on talk radio. Coast to Coast AM is a program well known for melting down servers by putting up a link on the show website and mentioning it on the air, and I've gotten many more hits from the Russ Martin Show in Dallas reading a post on the air and then linking me on the www.russmartin.info website than I have from my Instalanches.

I think the key to these is that it gets mentioned on the air, and they put a link up on a companion website. I'm not sure that you would see the same effect if people had to type the URL in from hearing it on the radio.