The Closing Door

From Chris Bower's latest report on the state of the progressive blogosphere:

It has been over one and a half years since a new blog has broken into the "short head" of the national progressive blogosphere, whereas not long ago new members of the "short head" used to be fairly common. Over time, their appearances slowed to a trickle, and now seem to have stopped entirely. Back in October of 2005, Glenn Greenwald's Unclaimed Territory might have been the last great individual breakthrough. Now, even Glenn Greenwald has gone institutional and blogs for Salon.com. The entry costs to the "A-list," the "top tier," and the "short head" have simply become too high for individuals to sustainably break through on their own. A caste system is solidifying and a new establishment is crystallizing.

Now, the flipside of this is that the existence of high-traffic multiply-authored blogs means that it's now possible for a new blogger to rise to prominence without that meaning a new blog becomes popular.

Comments

Did anyone seriously expect this not to happen? Did anyone really think that a new communications medium would defy the entire history of the human race and fail to rapidly consolidate influence into the hands of relatively few people?

And if so, are these the same people who thought the internet meant an end to business cycles and a new utopia of neverending stock value increases?

Morons, in other words?

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | July 10, 2007 11:31 AM

bah.

there's plenty of talent out there that hasn't broken through the self-maintaining "short head" list. i'd put some of the Obsidian Wings gang up against any of the typical "short head" bloggers. yet i don't see ObWi on MY's list, nor on Bowers', nor on Atrios', nor on DeLong's, etc..

Posted by cleek | July 10, 2007 11:37 AM

The gang at Crooked Timber keeps trying to get the world interested in Phil Nugent, and they are right to do so.

Posted by vanya | July 10, 2007 11:39 AM

There's still a clear path to success which involves becoming a popular blogger at a group site and then spinning off your own blog. But a lot of people enjoy group blogging simply because there's not the same pressure to keep producing new content all the time.

Posted by Steve | July 10, 2007 11:41 AM

It would be worth examining the distribution of blog readership, i.e. to compare the short head to the long tail. It may be a winner-take-all-phenomenon; it may not be.

My SWAG is that the Daily Kos is it's own beast [i.e. everybody reads Kos], after which there's a lot of action in the long tail.

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot | July 10, 2007 12:00 PM

Let's either stop the phrase "short head" completely, or use it to signify a brief bout of oral sex, as God originally intended it to be used.

Posted by roger | July 10, 2007 12:22 PM

As Atrios often points out, so much of this is a matter of degrees. It's quite possible to start a blog and build enough of a readership to reach the upper levels of the blogosphere in 2005 - however, this being 2007, all of the tiers have shifted upward by several factors. In absolute terms though, you still can have (tens of) thousands of people reading what you write daily (not that I do)!

And of course, the real-world influence is somewhat commensurate too. The first national election that was seriously influenced by blogs was 2006, (although the higher involvement really began building shortly after the 2004 elections by my reckoning of history) so again, if you reach the level of several thousands of readers, you can have about the same effect as the leading blogs did in 2004.

It's somewhat a question of what your goals are - it's mathematically impossible to have several dozen blogs occupying the top, and influential spots. Since the self-stated goals of sites like DailyKos are to actually change the nation's political structure, they are led to pursue whatever style will maximize readership. A blog that is more narrowly focused on specific topics and in-depth reports is, by definition, more focused and esoteric.

Posted by observer | July 10, 2007 1:00 PM

i can't say that i'm up on zee blogs enough to know, so what are some examples of bloggers who have risen to prominence within the progressive blogosphere in that last few years, particularly via multiple authored blogs as matt mentions?

Posted by looj | July 10, 2007 1:56 PM

No one reads Yglesias anymore

Posted by Ezra J. Klein | July 10, 2007 8:25 PM

"there's plenty of talent out there that hasn't broken through the self-maintaining "short head" list. i'd put some of the Obsidian Wings gang up against any of the typical "short head" bloggers."

Yeah, but I get the feeling Hilzoy et al. haven't pushed their blog because they want to keep their commenting community small. Also, it took some of those people a while to get up to speed. Sebastian Holsclaw now of ObWi, back in ohh, 2003, used to post to Calpundit. He'd regularly get slaughtered in a debate: I found it relatively easy to debate him. Now I'd get creamed. Practice matters.

I recall Brad Delong doing a back-of-the-envelope assessment of how fluid the blog "market" would be, and now much quality versus reputational/network effects would fix blog audiences. But also there appears to be an experience curve for bloggers.

Posted by Sock Puppet of the Great Satan | July 11, 2007 10:33 AM