Eugene David<br>...The One-Minute Pundit

Posted 8:43 AM by Gene

By all appearances, the blog boom is the most democratized revolution in media ever. Starting a blog is ridiculously cheap; indeed, blogging software and hosting can be had for free online. There are also easy-to-use ad services that, for a small fee, will place advertisements from major corporations on blogs, then mail the blogger his profits. Blogging, therefore, should be the purest meritocracy there is. It doesn’t matter if you’re a nobody from the sticks or a well-connected Harvard grad. If you launch a witty blog in a sexy niche, if you’re good at scrounging for news nuggets, and if you’re dedicated enough to post around the clock—well, there’s nothing separating you from the big successful bloggers, right? I can do that.

In theory, sure. But if you talk to many of today’s bloggers, they’ll complain that the game seems fixed. They’ve targeted one of the more lucrative niches—gossip or politics or gadgets (or sex, of course)—yet they cannot reach anywhere close to the size of the existing big blogs. It’s as if there were an A-list of a few extremely lucky, well-trafficked blogs—then hordes of people stuck on the B-list or C-list, also-rans who can’t figure out why their audiences stay so comparatively puny no matter how hard they work. “It just seems like it’s a big in-party,” one blogger complained to me. (Indeed, a couple of pranksters last spring started a joke site called Blogebrity and posted actual lists of the blogs they figured were A-, B-, and C-level famous.)

That’s a lot of inequality for a supposedly democratic medium.

Whoever said blogging was democratic?

And we can figure Adam would run after a chimera given that blogging's popularity with Web surfers may be down.

P. S. None of the MMMMMMMMMMSSSSSSSSSSBBBBBBBBBBs (that's MAINSTREAM BLOGGERS) have paid attention to this story, which proves discussing the caste system of blogging hits a little too close to their treasured castles in the thin hot air.

P. P. S. There is one way to even the blogging playing field a little: for more of the big name Web sites to do what WaPost has done -- link to blogs that link to their stories.