Ryan Lengerich of the News-Sentinel wrote an article published today on local political blogs titled: "Probing the power of the blog - Some bloggers say they shape public political opinion." The Lengerich article cites this blog along with Indiana Pundit and the weblog of Libertarian and school board candidate Mike Sylvester.
I appreciate the article as well as the head shot of me included with the story. The cut line under the head shot reads "Harper: Analyzes and critiques local media." So here goes.
One of the things I talked to Mr. Lengerich about which didn't make it into the story was that the quality of readership is the true measurement of a blog's impact, not the quantity. What I told him was that television news producers, print and electronic reporters, elected officials, and opinion writers are regular visitors. The topics covered by bloggers then often get picked up by the "mainstream media" which amplifies the reach of a particular weblog.
Weblogs can also be an immediate corrective to rumors circulating in the political arena; weblogs can supplement the information carried in the mainstream media; and, weblogs can correct factual errors or misimpressions in the mainstream media.
The increase in the velocity of information being circulated is an important factor in how weblogs will begin to affect state and local politics this year. Something reported on Fort Wayne Observed can be picked up by Taking Down Words in Indianapolis where it then is seen by Indianapolis print and electronic journalists.
The business of newspapers can be affected as well. For example, original reporting by Fort Wayne Observed touching on the newspaper business has been picked up by Romenesko of Poynter Online, credited to Fort Wayne Observed by the Rocky Mountain News, and credited to Fort Wayne Observed by a news organization in San Francisco (where it was picked up by the Los Angeles Times).
Mr. Lengerich notes the relative size of the traffic on weblogs versus that of other outlets. This then gets back to the question of the quality of the reader and the potential for amplification.
However, Mr. Lengerich did something unusual in his comparison here. I had told him that Fort Wayne Observed probably has the largest readership of the Fort Wayne opinion blogs. We have an open site meter; folks are welcome to peruse the same information in that regard that I am able to see. I also told him that it was our belief that Fort Wayne Observed's unique visitors per day and total page views (hits) were larger than those for Tracy Warner's weblog for the Journal-Gazette and Leo Morris' Opening Arguments weblog for the News-Sentinel.
Mr. Lengerich chose to compare Fort Wayne Observed's average weekly page views (hits) with the hits for N-S reporter Blake Sebring's Komets weblog on a "recent weekday" near the UHL playoffs.
The better comparison would have been with N-S editorial page editor Leo Morris' weblog Opening Arguments for an average week as opposed to one weekday. A recent weekday for Fort Wayne Observed would be over one-thousand. (On Monday, for example, FWOb had 1,025 page views.)
Fort Wayne Observed talked this morning with Tom Pellegrene of the Journal-Gazette about webpage statistics. What he could tell us is that the sports weblogs have more traffic than the editorial weblogs. That on most days Leo Morris' editorial weblog has more traffic than that of Tracy Warner's. That in the middle of the day when a sampling is made of web traffic, the hits for the editorial weblogs is in the middle two digits and the two hockey weblogs are in the hundreds.
Fort Wayne Observed doesn't want to overemphasize the statistics. However, I suggest that a comparison of apples to apples would be appropriate.
Besides, if one wanted to start comparing traffic on single team sports weblogs, Nathan Gotsch, the founder of Fort Wayne Observed, might have some fun with it. His weblog, InsideUSC, was getting more than 1,500 hits per hour in the run-up to the Rose Bowl and the awarding of the Heisman Trophy.
The USC comparison is hardly apples to apples, since Fort Wayne has nothing that even comes close to comparing to the sports magnitude of the Rose Bowl or Heisman Trophy presentation. However, your point about comparing the Komets blog to yours is certainly a valid one.
Ed. note: This comment was sent from an internet address at Fort Wayne Newspapers, Inc.
Posted by: | April 27, 2006 at 07:42 AM