Dispatches from Blogistan: A Travel Guide for the Modern Blogger

7. Blogs as Soapboxes

When members of the mainstream media file reports about blogs, they most often focus on authors who voice opinions and who engage in debates about issues of public concern. This might suggest that pundit and advocacy blogs are the dominant form within blogdom, but it turns out that this isn’t true. A Pew Internet blog survey released in July 2006 found that only sixteen percent of all American bloggers write about “issues of public life” or “general news and current events,” with the greatest number of bloggers writing simply about “my life.”

This doesn’t lessen the impact of these advocacy blogs, of course. Whether writing about local or national politics, the environment, human rights, consumer issues, or corporate accountability, ...