What we are

From an ex-coworker of mine now working at the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a look at this odd species, bloggerus.

-54% of bloggers say that they have never published their writing or media creations anywhere else; 44% say they have published elsewhere.

-54% of bloggers are under the age of 30.

-Women and men have statistical parity in the blogosphere, with women representing 46% of bloggers and men 54%.

-76% of bloggers say a reason they blog is to document their personal experiences and share them with others.

-64% of bloggers say a reason they blog is to share practical knowledge or skills with others.

-When asked to choose one main subject, 37% of bloggers say that the primary topic of their blog is "my life and experiences."

-Other topics ran distantly behind: 11% of bloggers focus on politics and government; 7% focus on entertainment; 6% focus on sports; 5% focus on general news and current events; 5% focus on business; 4% on technology; 2% on religion, spirituality or faith; and additional smaller groups who focus on a specific hobby, a health problem or illness, or other topics.

Although not highlighted by Pew in their executive summary, I found this interesting:

Another distinguishing characteristic is that bloggers are less likely to be white than the general internet population. Sixty percent of bloggers are white, 11% are African American, 19% are English-speaking Hispanic and 10% identify as some other race. By contrast, 74% of internet users are white, 9% are African American, 11% are English-speaking Hispanic and 6% identify as some other race.

Hmmm, some other race... well, we got Asian American, and Native American--what else is there?

Some more tidbits:

-55% of bloggers blog under a pseudonym

-59% of bloggers spend just one or two hours per week tending their blog. One in ten bloggers spend ten or more hours per week on their blog.

-52% of bloggers say they blog mostly for themselves, not for an audience. About one-third of bloggers (32%) say they blog mostly for their audience.

-The majority of bloggers cite an interest in sharing stories and expressing creativity. Just half say they are trying to influence the way other people think.

-Community-focused blogging sites LiveJournal and MySpace top the list of blogging sites used in our sample, together garnering close to a quarter (22%) of all bloggers.

I think lumping MySpace in the same category as blogs like Daily Kos is a little silly; most of what you see on MySpace is not blogging, it's rambling.

Then there are these results, which made me laugh:

-34% of bloggers consider their blog a form of journalism, and 65% of bloggers do not.

-57% of bloggers include links to original sources either “sometimes” or “often.”

-56% of bloggers spend extra time trying to verify facts they want to include in a post either “sometimes” or “often.”

Uh... blogging is not journalism. You have no editor, no hard deadline, and usually no fact-checking. And often it's just out-and-out plagiarism.

People who have never worked as journalists have no idea how fundamental having that second person, usually your editor, is.

They assign the story and determine the original angle, watch over your shoulder during the reporting process, and once the story's filed a lot of times they go in and perform major surgery, reorganizing and often rewriting so the end product isn't just the reporter's view (which is always a little myopic and tends to be overly-sentimental), but is placed in broader context, usually tied into issues of systemic failure or societal truths.

Further, journalism does not exist without an audience. Who your audience is drives everything, from the stories you pursue to how you present them. Journalists spend quite a lot of time thinking about their responsibility to their audience; it makes you do things you otherwise would be too lazy or too timid to do.

Without that other person and an audience, blogging can't be journalism--it's just gossip at worst, self-expression at best. Which is not to say blogs don't produce valuable original content. Given that increasingly the very same sources journalists turn to often have their own blog, it's obvious that they do.

But believe it or not, journalism is not just facts about a topic, or even truth. Journalism is people working together to tell a story, in context. And the process is deliberately set up so that the reporter is just part of a team--heck, print reporters don't write the headlines, broadcast reporters don't write or deliver the anchor lead-in.

Journalists are inherently social creatures, in the sense that it's one profession that can't be practiced on a deserted island. No editor, no sources, no audience.

Not to mention no coworkers to go drinking with.

Undated photo of The Washington Post's publisher Katharine Graham, reporter Carl Bernstein, reporter Bob Woodward, managing editor Howard Simons and executive editor Ben Bradlee discussing the Post's Watergate coverage by Mark Godfrey/The Image Works.