May 14, 2009

Rags & Mags vs Bits & Bytes

Richard Davis, a political science professor at BYU, has authored the book Typing Politics – the Role of Blogs in American Politics. In the book Davis relates the not-too-surprising results of a survey. A larger percentage of average Americans who read both blogs and print newspapers consider the blogs more accurate and informative than the rags. From another survey of more than 200 political reporters, Davis found that the ink jockeys feel the same as the general public, and that many use blogs for source information.

Davis seems to have ferreted out some interesting trends, too. He says that even the more conservative word-slingers spend a greater amount of time reading, and take more source information from, the liberal blogs... even though there is equal or greater awareness of the conservative blogs.

"...more journalists know about Michelle Malkin than Talking Points. Yet twice as many journalists actually read Talking Points than read Michelle Malkin"


Dinosaur that I am, I still read my newspapers. Withdrawal symptoms occur if I go more than a day without my Fort Worth Startlegram, and I’ll pick up a copy of the Dallas Morning News if I’m ever in their service area. I hate MacPaper, so when I travel I always get out early and find the local rag to peruse over breakfast. But when I'm at home I spend time reading a variety of rags in their cyber versions and I’ll spend way too much time reading from what has grown to be a huge list of news and political blogs.

Below is my list of conservative political blogs, some that I read daily and others I visit less often. This seems to cover the right side of the spectrum rather well, representing libertarian to moderate to wingnut. Does anyone have a recommendation for list additions?

Glenn Reynolds (InstaPundit)

Michelle Malkin and her other site, Hot Air

Andrew Sullivan (Daily Dish)

Pam Geller (Atlas Shrugs)

James Joyner (Outside the Beltway)

Drudge Report

Hugh Hewitt

Gary Becker / Richard Posner

Donald Luskin (The Conspiracy to keep you Poor and Stupid)

Rick Moran (Right Wing Nuthouse) and (American Thinker)

Little Green Footballs

Red State

Dana Pico (Common Sense Political Thought)

Bill Dupray (Patriot Room)

John Cole (Balloon Juice)

Tom Maguire (Just One Minute)

Megan McArdle (Asymmetrical Information)

The Ace of Spades

Conservatism Today

Tigerhawk

LMAO

Cox & Forkum

Bruce McQueen (Q & O)

The Volokh Conspiracy)

John Hawkins (Right Wing News)

John Hinderaker / Scott Johnson / Paul Mirengoff (Powerline)

Urban Conservative

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4 Comments:

Old NFO said...

Interesting list, I'll have to go look at them in my "spare" time between 0300 and 0315 :-) I used to have fun getting papers from various locations, like DC, STL, SFO and find similar articles and compare them to what I knew was actually going on. VERY interesting the slants in the respective towns...

Mule Breath said...

Reading broadly keeps a fella from getting single tracked by ideology. This list is only the conservative blogs I read, but I have a good many moderate sources, and at least this many lefties. I also semi-regularly read BBC and some of the British rags, English language versions of several middle eastern (including Israeli), Asian and South American publications. I've found that it pays to know what the rest of the world is reading. Some of the stuff coming out of D.C. makes more sense if you can see it in an international light.

Wes said...

I'd also recommend the Jawa Report.

Mule Breath said...

Thank you Wes, I'll give it a look.