Eighteen months ago, I wrote an article called
Diversity and the Two Lefty Blogospheres where I discussed a relationship between linking patterns among progressive blogs and diversity within separate enclaves of the progressive blogosphere:
The Blog Pulse research paper does in fact identify two nearly separate lefty blogopsheres during the period it studies (pre-election), with Eschaton serving as the point at which the two connect.
The commenter describes one reason for this divide: a split between "academia" and "activism." This seems fair enough, for the pre-election time period that the paper studied. TPM had yet to engage in its strong Social Security activism, which I know for a fact has led to a 5+ link exchange with a couple of blogs on the "other side" of the lefty blogosphere. Another reason should be obvious to many others: the second group seems to be part of an expanding dailykos universe, where smaller blogs operated by alumni or associates of kos become part of an expanded dailykos-centric blogosphere.
More interestingly, and related to the previous points, something else is also taking place here: a divide based upon race. From what I can tell, and I admit it is not always easy to tell in cyberspace, almost every single major non-white lefty blogger, such as kos, Oliver Willis, Jesse Taylor, Armando, Meteor Blades and Steve Gillard (there may be others), falls into the "activist / dailykos" group. Of course, several Whitey McWhitersons such as myself fall into that group as well, but by comparison this is a far more diverse group than the "academic" bloggers.
Now, the linking patterns described in the Blog Pulse paper are two years old and out of date. A lot changes in two years online. However, I think the diversity patterns it discovers are important. I have seen studies that strongly suggest that even online, people tend to read voices that they feel they can identify with. In other words, women will more frequently read blogs written by other women than will men, Latinos will more frequently read blogs written by other Latinos than will non-Latinos, etc. While it is certainly not the same level of segregation you would see in housing patterns, there is a tendency for people to group together online. Just one example would be that MyDD recorded an 81% male readership in the last Blogads readers survey and, not surprisingly, all of our full-time writers have been male for some time.
Given this, it also should not be surprising that when studying mass linking patterns online, that even in a group such as the lefty blogosphere we see linking patterns grouping according the ethnicity. As I noted in that older article, it certainly seems as though people are engaging in linking habits with voices they identify with. The BogPulse survey showed that quite a few men of color were linking to quite a few other men of color, and that a lot of white guys were linking to other white guys. They may not even have been aware at the time that they were doing this, but it turns out that they were.
Much more in the extended.
Now, if you will pardon me for being elliptical here, I would like to address what I see as two different ways of looking at solving the diversity problem of the Clinton blogger lunch.
- 1. One view would be that many of the people who attended the meeting--all recognized as leaders in the blogosphere--should not have been chosen. In this view, the lunch would have been better served if a wider range of bloggers, especially regional bloggers, bloggers with less traffic, and bloggers of color, should have been invited instead of many of the people who were invited. In a way, it would have supported a type of blogger affirmative action in order to make sure that a more diverse range of people had the privilege of having lunch with President Clinton. This view also conceptualizes the lunch as primarily, if not entirely, a reward for the blogosphere as a whole, not as a meeting where work would be conducted.
- 2. Another view does not see the invitations to the lunch as the problem, especially since several bloggers of color were invited, but could not attend. In this view, the main problem is not who was invited, but the problem is that the leadership of the progressive blogosphere is itself not very diverse. This view conceptualizes the lunch as a working meeting between leaders of the blogosphere and leaders of the Democratic Party, and in order for it to be successful it would be necessary to have the representatives form both sides currently occupying leadership roles in either constituency. Changing the invite list would thus have only made the meeting less successful and useful to either group. The problem instead has to be solved by working to diversify the leadership of the blogosphere.
Obviously, it is possible to hold both views, or hold variations on one view or the other. For example, argument could be made that the leadership of the blogosphere is more diverse than the invite list, but is still not diverse enough, so the solution lies partially in both views. As someone who has spent a long time studying the demographics of the netroots and as someone who rather immodestly considers himself a leader in the blogosphere, I side quite strongly with the second view.
I do not think a meeting between Bill Clinton, or any other member of the Democratic leadership, and a group of bloggers who were specifically engineered to present a more diverse image of the blogosphere than exists in reality would accomplish much. I especially do not think this would be the case if that diversity was engineered in a way to intentionally reduce the number of leading bloggers who attended. Bill Clinton, or Harry Reid, or whoever, can meet with a diverse group of people anytime they want, for whatever reasons they want. However, if they want to meet with the blogosphere, and they want to do business with the blogosphere, I fail to see what business can be accomplished at such a meeting in terms of media or campaigns (the main reasons Democratic leaders want to talk to the progressive blogosphere in the first place), if instead of sending our leading voices who are most heavily involved in these areas, we instead send a group of far less connected, far less influential bloggers who are engaged in far fewer netroots campaigns to represent us. As long as you conceive of this meeting as primarily business oriented, and I certainly did, that would be akin to union leaders instead sending a representative sample of the various demographics of their membership to meet with Democratic leaders, instead of sending the actual union leaders. That wouldn't make any sense, and would be of little benefit to either the Democratic leaders involved, or the unions involved. If we are going to meet with Democratic leaders, we need to send our leaders too.
Our leadership certainly is far more diverse than the now famous pictures implied. As Peter Daou has noted, several bloggers of color were invited, but either could not, or chose not, to attend. However, for the reasons I stated above, I do not think that the solution is for future meetings between Democratic leaders and members of the progressive blogosphere would be to exclude our leaders in favor of a more diverse group. The solution has to be, as I believe
Jill implied in her post on the subject at MyDD, and as I believe
Terrance discussed in his most recent post on the subject at Dailykos, to increase diversity within the leadership of the progressive blogosphere.
Now, many of the fixes to this problem that we are used to will not work within the relatively institution-less progressive blogosphere. People cannot be spontaneously elevated to the level of blogosphere leader, because no one out there is hiring blogosphere leaders. We don't have titles. We operate our own blogs. Our readers choose of their own volition. Basically, we are operating a long string of small businesses, often with only one or two employees. We can't change our admission policies, because there is no admission policy and, even if there was, there would be no one to enforce it. We can't give out scholarships or fellowships, because we have no endowment, no board of trustees, and we are basically just struggling to get by on money from Blogads, consulting, and reader fundraisers anyway. In other words, it is difficult to change our policies because we don't really have any policies. This whole thing has sprung up out of virtually nothing in a short span of five years, and as I have repeatedly complained, there are no real institutions, much less institutional memory, supporting it.
But here is, I think, what can be done:
- 1. Diversified linking patterns. Linking is indeed a type of institution within the blogosphere, and as such it is an area where positive steps can be directly taken, and quantified, toward achieving more diversity. I also think that this is a step we should take even aside from this problem, because reading a wider range of blogs, and linking to a wider range of blogs, can broaden knowledge blogosphere-wide. Linking patterns would include both blogrolls and hyperlinks embedded within posts.
- 2. Multi-issue and multi-writer blogs can individually take steps toward diversifying their guest posters and subject content. While there can be no enforcement mechanism for this, as there is no blog regulatory agency (nor should there be), once again I think this will be to the benefit of the blogs who participate. For example, as I noted above, MyDD's all-male full-time writing corps has led to an audience that is 81% male. If we had equal numbers of male and female readers, our traffic would increase by 50%. That would be enough to pay for one more full-time writer, and give all of us a small bonus.
I should note that while diversifying your content and your writing corps can hold real benefits for multi-issue, multi-writer blogs, it is not a solution for single-writer or single issue blogs. Some people cannot afford to split their income with someone else, and could even face major reader blowback if they split their content with someone else. Further, many blogs have carved out an important niche, such as Middle East foreign policy, that would be severely damaged if they were to expand their issue focus. So, this is a fix for some, but not all blogs.
- 3. What few formal institutions we have, such as Yearly Kos, can indeed take many of the positive steps used in other fields, such as affirmative action. Working toward achieving greater diversity on panels at Yearly Kos next year, both in terms of subject matter and who is on the panels, would certainly be a good idea.
- 4. Increased trust online. When this subject came up, many people were either quick to demand that we not have such conversations, or they were quick to make accusations that simply were not true. A lot of us have smartest kid in the class syndrome, where we are more eager to demonstrate why another blogger is wrong than we are toward giving the benefit of the doubt to our fellow progressive bloggers. For example, it never ceases to amazes me how I am quickly accused of an entire laundry list of things from readers of this and other blogs without a moment's hesitation. I have been accused of being DLC on several occasions, and this is not the first time I have been accused of being sexist, racist, ageist, or whatever, without all of the facts in a situation being known. The blogosphere, for all its earnestness and meritocracy, is not a very good place for socializing, and can easily lead to a lack of trust and to a complete breakdown in productive discussion and / or action.
I also want to emphasize how this can be extremely dangerous. Several news outlets have now run false stories claiming that no bloggers of color were invited to the meeting, as several bloggers claimed in the early days of this discussion. Just as with Zephyr Teachout's false claims about Markos and Jerome early in 2005, accusations were made against leading bloggers by other netroots leaders that turned out to be false, but the media ran with those accusations anyway. However, now as then, once it is in the public sphere, that branding will stick with us for a long, long time, if not forever.
- 5. People who are blogosphere leaders need to recognize themselves as such, and act accordingly. I know that there a number of blogosphere leaders who try to claim that they do not have a lot of power online. Attempts to abdicate responsibility to not only lead progressives, but to act progressively, are both counter-productive and really annoying.
- 6. Other bloggers should not throw all of their problems online at the feet of a so-called "A-list." It isn't the fault of a so-called "A-list" that your traffic isn't high. That takes a galactic amount of blogging, lots of networking, lots of self-promotion, lots of good, targeted writing, and, yes, a lot of luck. It isn't the fault of the "A-list" that you are not a full-time blogger. It isn't the fault of the "A-list" that you are not a leader in your chosen blogging niche. In a few cases, it isn't the fault of the "A-list" that you are just a fucking asshole, an incompetent, or a complete lunatic that most people don't want to associate with.
So, that is what I have to say on this subject. If other people have other ideas, I would love to hear them. Being critiqued and / or attacked by dozens of people every day is one of the things you have to deal with as a blogger, but this is the first time in about three months that something someone said about bloggers has really gotten to me. Sometimes that can be a good thing, and I hope that this is a case where it turns out to be just that.
