Shaun and Waldo have been conversing today about the state of the Virginia Political Blogosphere and the decline of its content. As Waldo wrote:
These days most Virginia political blogs make virtually no effort to persuade anybody to change their minds. A blogger will state his opinion, make no attempt to explain it, and insult those who disagree with them. Telling me I’m stupid does nothing to endear me to your cause. It is not persuasive, so it can have no impact on the political process. It reveals nothing about the blogger — at least, nothing flattering. No attempt is made to educate, so no new facts are gathered by the reader. If anything useful results from this process, I cannot understand what it is.
The result of this is that people take to reading only those blogs that espouse opinions that they already hold, because reading others is such an unpleasant experience. Such bloggers set the tone for the discussions, too, such that rational discourse is impossible. And thus begins the ghettoization of ideological positions and with it the end of the enormous value that once made Virginia political blogs so noteworthy.
Shaun agrees and mentions in his comments “The Daily Me” as coined by Cass Sunstein in her book Republic.com. The concept of “The Daily Me” is that while the internet provides outlets for ideas all over the spectrum, some readers are going to limit their selections to sites that simply echo their own thoughts and beliefs. People who fall into this rarely feel the need to detail why they feel certain ways and don’t look to other sites to do so either.
The last six months have seen some of the blogosphere’s big thinkers close up shop, namely Jaded JD and Chad over at VAConservative, while sites that spout the same talking points and market in rumor mongering are flourishing. The growth of the latter is going to be natural in an election year (which means every year here in Virginia). But I think that time will help weed some of these out. Not all will fold up, but personal observations over my five years of blogging has shown that many blogs don’t last more than six months, their writers either boring of the job or finding themselves without a market. Strong blogs with real content will out last the fly by night “splash and trash” operations.