[« The myths of left-wing influence in academia and the media....] [More apropos the Durbin controversy.... »]
06/23/2005: Memo to Blogtopia: try to shrink those heads a bit.
My hosting company sends its customers a newsletter every month. The newsletter is in an HTML based email format, and a "feature" of every month's issue is a customer poll, and the results of last month's poll.
I received my June 2005 newsletter this morning, and the poll results interested me. The May 2005 poll was "How credible do you consider the information you read in blogs?"
The results:
As credible as printed news: 6%
As credible as what I see on the TV news: 7%
As credible as what I hear on the radio news: 6%
Not at all credible: 20%
I don't read any blogs: 61%
Granting, this isn't a very scientific sampling, but the thing that interests me is that the readership of my hosting company's newsletter is most probably a fairly internet savvy, web aware, tech oriented bunch. After all, they're running websites, and using the services of the hosting company to do it. A purely scientific poll sampling the general public would probably show a lot more than 61% of respondents in the "I don't read blogs" category. And probably a couple percentage points more respondents in the "Not at all credible" category.
So let's let go of our little delusions, wake up, and smell the coffee, folks.
We're not the cutting edge of the new journalism. We're not even seriously threatening the old journalism.
We're, for the most part, sitting in our little public cages or cubicles, mentally masturbating, and amusing a self-selected audience. The vast majority of the great unwashed public wouldn't know us if we went out and kicked them in their collective butts, and of those that do know us, the vast majority find us to be less than credible.
That being said, I will go on record to the effect that everything you read here from Karen is God's own, complete Gospel Truth, and you can take that to the bank.
:-)
Len on 06.23.05 @ 09:17 AM CST
